You can’t beat freshly baked bagels

I discovered bagels after moving to the UK – not that they don’t exist in Germany, i just never came across them before. I love the sheer chewiness of the dough, which is the result of the bread first being boiled, then baked.

The following recipe originates from an American bread book, Peter Reinhard’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which I found on The Fresh Loaf. I simplified it to use only ingredients I already have, and now use a mix of white bread flour and malthouse flour to get a more intense flavour. I prepare the dough on a Saturday night and leave the bagels to rest overnight. In the morning I boil and bake them to have fresh bagels for a special Sunday breakfast. They freeze and defrost easily for a quick and delicious packed lunch, greatly appreciated by a usually fussy tweenager.

The Evening Before:

Sponge:

• 4 cups strong white bread flour
• 1 tsp instant yeast
• 2 1/2 cups water

Mix the ingredients until well blended. Cover with a lid or a tea towel and leave to rest for 2 hours.

Dough:

• 1/2 tsp instant yeast
• 3 3/4 cups bread flour (I use 1 cup white and 2 3/4 malthouse flour)
• 3 tsp salt
• 1 tbs honey or maple syrup

Add the remaining ingredients to your sponge and knead until the dough comes off the bowl. Leave the last cup of flour until the end – it might get a bit difficult to work it in as the dough is rather dense. Knead it well to ensure the bagels won’t disintegrate when you boil them!

Once your dough is nice and firm, split it into 16 pieces and roll them into balls. Cover with your tea towel and let them rest for 20 minutes.

Uncover and punch a hole through each of the balls, rotating them until they are even and, well, bagel-shaped. Place them on a baking sheet on oiled parchment paper. Cover and leave to rest for a further 20 minutes. The Fresh Loaf suggests to cover them in a small plastic bin bag, which is an easier and more sustainable solution than cling film.

After the 20 minutes pop the sheets in their bag into the fridge for the night.

The Morning After:

• cornflour or semolina for dusting the baking parchment
• seeds (sesame, poppy, sunflower etc.) or porridge oats  as toppings

Preheat the oven to 240C. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Drop a few of the bagels into the boiling water and let them boil for about a minute before flipping them over to boil for another minute. Sprinkle a bit of cornflour on the parchment paper before you put the boiled bagels back; sprinkle seeds on top of the still wet bagels before popping them in the oven.

Bake at 230C for 15-20 minutes; you might need to turn them at some point to ensure they are baked evenly.

I hope you’ll find them as easy to make as we do. And if you’re getting bored already, why not upgrade to a sourdough version, the Mercedes of Bagels? Or should it be General Motors?!