The Bakery · Bread
Bagels
- Advanced
- 3 h 20 m
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan option
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners, toasted, nutty warmth throughout.
Ingredients
- 500g high-gluten or bread flour; 8g yeast; 10g salt
- 260ml water, a LOW hydration; bagel dough should feel like a workout
- 1 tbsp barley malt syrup (or honey) in the dough + 2 tbsp in the boiling pot
- Toppings: sesame, poppy, everything mix, coarse salt
- A pot of water and a hot oven in sequence: the boil is the birthright
The skills inside
Boiling bagelsFermentationSautéing & the shallow fryProofing: the rise before the oven
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · sesame
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Knead the stiff dough well: it will resist; win. Rise 1 h. 60 min
- Divide in 8; roll ropes and join into rings (or poke-and-stretch); proof 20 min, then refrigerate overnight uncovered: the cold ferment builds the shine and the tang. 20 min
- Boil straight from the fridge: 45 seconds a side in malty water, longer boil, chewier crust.
- Top generously; bake at 230°C, 18–20 min to burnished bronze. 20 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Fermentation 53 recipes
- Held somewhere with a steady temperature it can actually work at, chosen on purpose rather than wherever there happened to be room.
- There is visible activity before it is called started: bubbles, rise, or movement in the liquid. A ferment showing nothing after its first hours is not slow, it is not going.
- It smells clean: sour, yeasty, or alcoholic, with nothing putrid, and with nothing fuzzy or coloured growing where air meets it.
- Everything is under the liquid or under a cover, as the method requires: nothing solid left sitting dry in the air to spoil while the rest works.
- Judged by taste and behaviour and then STOPPED: chilled, baked, or refrigerated at the point wanted, rather than left running because the stated hours had not elapsed.
Where it goes wrong It was run on the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed. Fermentation is a rate and not a duration, so the same number of hours gives an under-developed ferment in a cold room and a slack, over-soured one in a warm one, and only tasting it would have said which.
Proofing: the rise before the oven 78 recipes
- Judged on volume against the container rather than on the clock: visibly grown, and grown by roughly the amount the recipe describes.
- The poke test agrees: a floured fingertip pressed a centimetre in leaves a dent that springs back slowly and only part of the way. Straight back means it is not ready; no spring at all means it has gone.
- The surface is domed, smooth, and slightly sheened: not cratered, wrinkled, or collapsed, and not skinned over and dry from proofing uncovered.
- Handled, it feels alive and airy: light for its size, with bubbles visible under the skin.
- It springs in the oven: the piece lifts in the first minutes and the scores open. A shape that does not move at all was proofed past its point before it went in.
Where it goes wrong It was proofed to the clock in a kitchen colder or warmer than the recipe assumed: overproofed, it collapses as the blade touches it and bakes flat and dense with a sour edge; underproofed, it tears at the side and bakes tight.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.