It’s impossible to get good bagels further west than about New Jersey, so I make my own. My recipe’s adapted from Baking Illustrated, Alton Brown’s pretzel recipe (yes pretzels, see below), and some techniques I learned at Wheatfields.
There’s a few keys to making everything turn out right:
- Use the highest protein flour you can find. King Arthur Bread Flour is the best commonly available one you can find (at about 12-13% protein). If you can find something higher, go with it.
- You probably need a stand mixer. Done correctly, the dough’s incredibly stiff; kneading by hand is unlikely to get the gluten formation that you need. If you do knead by hand, you’ll need to put in a solid, no-cheating 15 minutes or more. Under-developed bagels will be flat and hard as a rock.
- If you’re looking for good bagels you already know this, but the water bath step is not optional. But you may not realize that it’s not just the boiling water: it’s boiling in a highly basic solution. To be really traditional you should use a lye solution (1 tablespoon lye per quart of water, or a 1.5% solution), but lye scares the crap out of me so I use the baking soda method below instead. The baking soda bath makes the outer crust slightly lighter and less formed than a lye bath will, but the flavor and texture is correct, so I’m OK with the compromise.
- These are best baked on a pizza stone or stoneware sheet. Metal trays may over-cook the bottoms of your bagels. Unglazed Terra Cotta tiles (from the hardware store) make really solid baking stoneware, and they’re way cheaper than a pizza stone.
This recipe makes 8 bagels. It can be scaled up to 4x simply, but beyond there you’ll need to play with the yeast to deal with the bulk effects of the dough.