Anyone who follows my Instagram feed knows I’ve become a little obsessed lately with making bagels. No, I haven’t completely abandoned baking other forms of carbs–last night I experimented with steamed buns filled with flavored custards–but I just can’t seem to stop making bagels. It’s probably a phase, I know. I get fixated on perfecting a single item, then make it until I’m thoroughly bored, then move on to the next project. Remember my rustic sourdough phase, at the beginning of Covid lockdown, when just about everyone obsessed over starters and sourcing flour? Bread flour was GOLD back then. My friend Karen and I were scouring the internet desperate to find any vendor who still had bread flour in stock, grateful for the opportunity to split a 50-pound bag.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I still purchase 50-pound bags of bread flour on my own (though I’ll happily split one with Karen). Before you ask, yes, I really will go through that much flour in a few short months, and I hate running out. While all-purpose flour works for a plethora of things (e,g, cookies, cakes, biscuits, pie dough, etc.), it simply doesn’t have enough protein to produce the proper gluten structure necessary for the kind of crispy, chewy texture you want (and demand) in a good pizza crust, baguette, or bagel. Even for “soft” bread like shokupan or milk bread, the higher protein in bread flour provides the optimum amount of gluten to produce that fine-textured crumb. The way I see it if you’re going to invest time and energy in making your own pizza or bagels at home, use the right flour to get the best results. A flabby pizza crust or just a meh bagel is not worth the effort or calories. And for the record, I don’t trust any pizza or bagel dough recipe calling for all-purpose flour.

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Okay, now that I’ve put in my two cents…back to bagels.

My love affair with the holey carb began as a kid when my mom first discovered House of Bagels, the original bakery out on Geary Blvd. in the Richmond District. I’m not sure what drew her to the place initially–perhaps a friend recommended it. We’d never had a bagel before, much less aware of its existence. Back then in San Francisco, commercial bagels weren’t a thing on the grocery store shelves (thank goodness), so fortunately my introduction was to the fresh-baked variety. The shiny crust pleasantly crackled as I bit into the still slightly warm chewy bread. I was HOOKED. We didn’t even bother toasting the bagels, eating them straight out of the bag. Eventually, we discovered the miracle of cream cheese (cue chorus of angels).

My favorite flavor used to be the golden-hued “egg” variety. To me, it was a level up from the plain, yet not so full of extraneous “stuff” like poppy or sesame seeds that would get stuck in between my teeth (very important to a teenager with full-on railroad track braces), or bits of onion that would give me onion breath. In college, it was toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, my go-to meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. One of the perks of working at the campus cafe was having an endless supply of free toasted bagels. These days, I vacillate between everything and pumpernickel bagels, preferably shmeared with cream cheese and topped with sliced cucumbers and smoked salmon.

My latest bagel-making frenzy was sparked by a package of smoked salmon in my freezer, which I occasionally buy to have around for making sushi rolls–only this time I wasn’t craving a smoked salmon-avocado roll.

I had a small tub of spreadable cream cheese and an English cucumber in my fridge–signs telling me to whip up a batch of bagels. And so I did…and I did again…and again…and again.

It had been a while since I’d made bagels but I remembered really liking Claire Saffitz’s recipe in NYT Cooking, which I’d seen on YouTube. It’s fairly simple, straightforward, produces a dozen legit bagels with the requisite shiny, crispy crust and delightfully chewy texture. I wasn’t sure I wanted to make a dozen, so I scaled down the recipe to yield nine. It seemed a reasonable number…until mom started devouring them like a little PAC-Woman. Clearly, one batch wasn’t enough. I made another nine bagels because I didn’t feel like playing refrigerator Tetris and making a dozen would’ve required more than one sheet pan. Then, of course, I gave my neighbor Amanda a few to thank her for the lemons (see the last post) and she was hooked. I’ve been pumping out bagels ever since.

Similar to making rustic sourdough from a starter (or “Barney” bread as I like to call it), a good bagel requires a bit of patience and planning. Active prep time is relatively short, about 20 minutes or so, but you’re looking at about another 12-14 hours for proofing, resting, and baking. I cut down the prep time slightly by using my food processor fitted with a dough blade to make the dough instead of a stand mixer, a method I adopted from Stella Park’s bagel recipe in Serious Eats. Of the two recipes, I prefer Claire’s because Stella’s requires the extra step of cooking a flour roux, which I’ve found to be unnecessary given the speed with which we go through bagels. Bagels aren’t hanging out long enough to get dry and stale. However, I do like Stella’s method of mixing the dough in the food processor which takes only about 2 minutes max.

There are two methods of forming bagels: thumb through the dough or rolling and twisting. I vote for the former. It’s way faster, and honestly, I didn’t notice such a marked difference in texture to necessitate using the more time-consuming method…even if it is “more authentic.” After bench-resting the shaped dough balls for 20 minutes to relax the gluten, I plunked my right thumb down the center to create a hole, then loop both thumbs (pointing towards each other) through the hole, rotating in opposite directions to gently stretch out the hole. Once formed the dough took a nap in the fridge overnight. In the morning, I pulled the sheet pan of dough out to sit at room temperature as my oven preheats to 425F degrees convection (or 450F degrees without).

Now here’s the part that is crucial to the look, texture, and taste of the bagels: a boiling bath in barley malt syrup and baking soda water. All bagels are boiled before baking, but what gives them the quintessential shiny crust and depth of flavor is what’s in the bath itself. Baking soda makes the water alkaline and helps with the browning (think pretzels). Barley malt syrup provides a toasty sweetness both in the dough and in the crust. Some bagel recipes call for an egg wash to give the bagels a shiny coat and help toppings stick to the surface, but I find that to be superfluous. Toppings stick to the wet, boiled bagels just fine.

20 minutes in the oven and viola (cue chorus of angels again)…

Once it’s toasted and topped with cream cheese, sliced cucumber, smoked salmon or smoked trout salad…or butter and scrambled egg…or even just plain, still warm from the oven, who can resist the gravitational pull of a homemade bagel? It’s worth it to buy some bread flour and a jar of barley malt syrup.

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I’m probably not going to stop bagel-making anytime soon…not with mom inhaling them and Amanda excitedly waiting for the next batch (which might be cinnamon raisin). Besides, I’ve already ordered another 3 jars of barley malt syrup.

I fiddled with the ingredients in Claire’s basic bagel recipe to make my version of Pumpernickel Bagels, subbing out some of the bread flour with dark rye flour and adding caraway seeds, a little black cocoa, and a tiny bit of espresso powder. I didn’t want to mess with the proportion of bread flour to rye flour too much since rye flour is slightly lower in protein than bread flour and I wanted to retain good gluten formation. Instead of dry active, I subbed instant yeast, which is my preferred type of dry yeast. I used a food processor instead of a stand mixer to speed up the process, adopting Stella Park’s method.

I find that is best to weigh out the flours.

Pumpernickel Bagels (adapted from Claire Saffitz)

Makes 9 bagels

• 1 3/4 c. lukewarm water
• 1/3 c. barley malt syrup, divided
• 1 3/4 t. instant yeast
• 563 grams bread flour
• 100 grams dark rye flour
• 1 1/2 T. kosher salt (Diamond Crystal)
• 2 t. caraway seeds
• 1 1/2 T. black cocoa
• 1/2 t. espresso powder
• 1 t. baking soda

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1. Whisk together water and 1 1/2 T. barley malt syrup; set aside.
2. Combine flours, yeast, salt, caraway seeds, black cocoa, and espresso powder in the bowl of a food processor, use the dough blade if available.
3. Pulse a few seconds to blend dry ingredients.
4. Add the water and syrup through the feeding tube, simultaneously pulsing every 2-3 seconds until dough begins to forms. Process until dough is silky smooth, and a small piece can be stretched into a sheet without tearing, about 90 seconds. The time will vary depending on the power and capacity of your machine. If you have a small machine, you might have to divide dough in half to process in stages.
5. Once the dough is smooth and elastic, shape it into a tight ball and place it in an oiled bowl, flipping it around to coat all sides. Cover and let it proof in a warm space until doubled in volume.
6. Punch down the dough to release the gases, then flatten and divide it into 9 equal portions (about 120 grams each). Shape each portion into a smooth ball, cover loosely with a dish towel and let the dough rest for about 20 minutes.
7. To form the bagels, poke a hole into the center of each portion with your index finger or thumb, then gently stretch into a 3 1/4-inch ring by looping both thumbs (facing each other) through the hole and rotating them in opposite directions. Arrange on a well-greased, parchment-lined half sheet pan (silicon liner will also work), cover with plastic, and refrigerate for at least 12 hours (or overnight).
8. Let the rested dough sit out at room temperature while the oven preheats to 450F degrees (or 425 convection).
9. Set a large pot or Dutch oven of water to boil. Add the remaining barley malt syrup and baking soda. Carefully lower 3 bagels into boiling water. Boil each side for about 30 seconds. Use a pair of tongs or metal strainer to lift and drain the boiled bagels onto a greased parchment-lined rimmed baking sheet. Repeat the process with the rest of the bagels. Depending on the size of your baking sheet you’ll probably need to divide the bagels between two. *3/4 sheet pan will fit all 9 bagels.
10. Bake the bagels for 20-25 minutes, rotating the sheet pans halfway through.
11. Cool the bagels on a rack.