This is a transcription of a fairly simple bagel recipe that I originally found on Sally’s Baking Addition. As with most of these recipes that I find, my kitchen tablet can’t cope with the excess of pictures and adverts so here we have the trimmed down version.

Before getting to the recipe, a note on flour (potentially specific to the UK?). I originally made this with “Strong Flour” (Alinsons is the brand) and it’s around 12% protein. I struggled to get well formed bagels with that (they tasted great but were often misshapen). After discussion I scored some Marriage’s Strong white flour which is 14%. This has significantly improved the situation and my last couple of batches have been easier to shape and kept their shape while boiling.

Recipe

1 Wet Stuff

Get the bowl you use in your kneading mixer (or whatever bowl you want if you’re doing it all by hand).

Add

• 360g warm water
• 2 3/4 teaspoons of yeast (that’s quite a lot!)
• 1 tablespoon dark sugar (or granulated if that’s all you’ve got)

Whisk this mixture and leave to come alive (5-10 minutes)

2 Dry Stuff

Add to the wet mixture

• 500g flour
• 2 teaspoons salt

Give it a quick mix up by hand then get it in your kneading mixer on a slow speed for a couple of minutes. It should soon form a single lump getting thrown around the bowl. Stop at that point

3 Knead and Rise

Knead the dough by hand for around 10 minutes until it feels good and elastic.

• Get another clean bowl and lightly coat with oil.
• Put the dough in and spin it around to get the outside also lightly oiled.
• Leave to rise for around 90 minutes somewhere reasonably warm.

4 Boiling

Get a wide pan at least a couple of inches deep (we have a monster frying pan I use for this). Get a couple of inches of water boiling hard and drop a tablespoon of honey in there. Not sure what the honey does - maybe not required.

Take the dough and split into 8. I do this by hand just halfing, halfing and halfing again.

From each lump, form a bagel (the original site has guidance on this but make a ball, poke a hole in the middle and shape it a bit!).

Boil each bagel for 1 minute on each side.

Technique and timing: I don’t like to shape the bagels then put them down - they stick and get messed up when you pick them up again. I make eight dough balls then shape one at a time and add to the boiling water. I can boil four at a time so I do two batches that way.

After boiling you have choices. You can just bake them (see Baking section) or you can coat them.

5 Coating

To coat the bagels make an egg wash and brush it on the tops and sides. Roll each bagel in whatever topping you like (I use sesame seeds, poppy seeds and onion seeds).

For the egg wash I just beat a whole egg. The original recipe says just use the egg white and mix with a little water.

6 Baking

• Oven at 220C
• Bagels on silicone mats or baking paper
• 10 minutes
• turn trays round (you’ll see the cooking is uneven)
• 10 more minutes
• take out and allow to cool for a while (20 minutes)
• remove from trays and cool properly

7 Storing

I store these in an airtight container (unlike my other bread which I keep in a cloth bag). I suspect these will go stale quite quickly if left out. In the airtight container I’ve happily kept them for about a week (I did lose one to mould though so don’t keep them around too long!).