I started out this crazy day with another strength training workout with my pal, Lindsey Bomgren (okay, she answered my question on Instagram once so we’re basically best friends for life) … (just kidding, but I’m a huge fan) on her YouTube channel Nourish, Move, Love. I have been doing strength training for the last five weeks now and it has really transformed my body. Again, kidding. Thank you, 30th birthday. (Did you know women start to lose muscle mass after turning 30?!)
But you know what really transforms my body are carbs. Cheesy carbs! Oh, yum.
I have been working on bagels quite a lot. The results can be inconsistent. Sometimes the dough is too tough or it doesn’t rise, even when I repeat the process exactly the same way as when it worked. I cannot explain it. But I do know this: the cheese bagels work every time.
As you might have already suspected, making bagels is super putzy, but boy, are they special. If you have the time, you’d pick them over Panera any day.
How do you top your bagel? I like to butter the top half and put cream cheese on the bottom half sprinkled with a little bit of Trader Joe’s Everything but the Bagel seasoning on top of the cream cheese. Also, I’m not into sweet-flavored bagels. Chocolate chip, blueberry, or cinnamon crunch bagels are too sugary in the morning for me. I like the savory start to my day. Plus, breakfast sandwiches are supremely upgraded on a savory cheese or everything bagel. You can’t do that with blueberry!
There are a few tricks to making bagels that I go over in the instructions but I will reiterate them here:
- You need to knead the dough by hand, at least after the mixer has gotten everything combined. The gluten in the flour really toughens up the dough and you will break your mixer if you let it knead bagel dough. I repeat: You’ll break your mixer! So do not miss this critical hand-kneading step!!
- You need bread flour. Don’t substitute all purpose flour. Have you ever gotten a headache in your temples from chewing something really tough? If you want to recreate that feeling, make your bagels with AP flour.
- Don’t overproof the dough. Overproofing is when you allow your dough to rise so much that it will deflate when poked or prodded. After you let your bagel dough rise, you have to man-handle it to get it into a boiling pot of water. Manhandling will definitely deflate the dough if it’s overproofed. I let this dough rise once, and only for an hour. To check for overproofiing, poke the dough. Does it start to spring back into place after a few minutes or does it stay dented? An unrecovered dent in your dough means it’s been overproofed. The best fix for overproofed dough is to re-knead and reshape it, and then let it rise again, this time more aware of timing. If you go forward with boiling and baking overproofed bagels, they will be flat, deflated, and lack airiness.
4. Finally, the trick is boiling the bagels in water that contains honey, baking soda, and salt. The honey lends a malty flavor that commercial bagel bakeries use, except they will actually use malt. Use that if you have it! The baking soda will give the bagels a warm brown color. The more you use, the more pretzel-y and alkaline the bagels will taste.
5. Bonus: I tried to make heart-shaped bagels. Didn’t work. You can shape the dough into an Ewok racing the Milennium Falcon, but after the dough rises for an hour, it’s going to be a puffy ball. Sorry.
6. Post Bonus: Prep your baking pans ahead of time. You’ll need two, and put parchment paper on them to minimize cleanup. (It’s not for non-stick purposes. Bagels are naturally non-stick. I just hate scrubbing pans that don’t fit in my sink.) Four bagels per pan. Don’t bake both batches in the same oven at the same time.
7. Actual tip: Don’t forget to brush the dough with egg white after boiling it. It makes the bagels shiny and also helps toppings stick.
Returning to the rest of my day, the great weather today obviously made it the right time to spot two beautiful leather armchairs on Craigslist at laughably low prices and gloriously carry them across our snow-and-ice-laden sidewalks. It was only -9F with the windchill, and these chairs only weighed about 50 million pounds each. But honestly, I don’t think the beautiful Hancock and Moore I’m reclined on right now would have made it here without my mother-in-law spotting the chairs, my husband and friend Maddie hauling them home, my brother-in-law helping move them, or Lindsey Bomgren’s strength conditioning and my bagel-y, carb-y – powered energy shoving them up our stairs. For all of these things, I am eternally grateful.
Hope you enjoy the bagels.
Cheddar Cheese Bagels
Ingredients
Dough
- 1 tbsp Instant yeast Dry active yeast will work, too, but make sure to bloom it first.
- 1½ cups Warm water ~115°F / 45°C
- 1 tbsp Light brown sugar
- 1 tbsp Kosher salt
- 4 cups Bread flour no substitutions
- ½ cup Shredded cheddar cheese plus more for sprinkling
For boiling and baking
- 1 tbsp Honey
- 1 tbsp Kosher salt
- 1 tsp Baking soda
- 1 Egg white
- Additional shredded cheese for sprinkling
Instructions
- In a large bowl or stand mixer bowl combine yeast, warm water, brown sugar, kosher salt, and bread flour. Either by hand or with a dough hook, combine and fold in cheese. Carefully watch your mixer if using it to mix the dough, and only use it until dough comes together into a ball, about 5 minutes.
- Bread flour has a higher protein content than all purpose flour, so the dough will become very strong. If using a stand mixer, the dough will overpower your mixer if kneaded for too long. After the dough is formed, knead it by hand. This step is critical. Knead for about 5 minutes.
- Pinch the dough into two parts. Continue pinching the dough in half until you have eight equal pieces of dough. Knead each one and roll into a ball.
- Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Place four balls of dough on each pan, spreading them apart equidistantly. Flatten the ball gently with your hand so it's about the 4" in diameter. Using a chopstick, the end of a spatula, or your finger, push a hole in the center of the dough that goes all the way through. You might need to lift up the dough to get a clean hole. Dampen paper towels and wring them out. Gently place the moistened towels on the bagel dough to cover them loosely.
- Preheat your oven to 175°F / 80°C. Once it reaches that temperature, turn off the oven. Place both pans in the warmed oven. Allow dough to rise for one hour.
- Once dough has risen, you can prepare to boil it. In a large pot (preferably large enough to hold four bagels) add honey, salt, baking soda, and then fill half way up with water. Bring to a boil.
- Preheat oven to 425°F / 220°C.
- Boil bagel dough in batches, 2-4 at a time. Boil for one minute per side. Return the boiled dough to the parchment-lined baking pans.
- Once all dough has been boiled, brush with egg white and top with more shredded cheese. Bake for 20 minutes on the middle rack. Only bake one pan in the oven at a time.
- After baking, allow to cool on the pan for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack to cool for another 10 minutes. Then you are free to slice, toast, slather with butter or cream cheese, and EAT IT.