When I worked at a bakery in Somerville, New Jersey, we made bagels. We made them big, 6 ounces, and they sure did smell good in the morning. This is a modified version of that recipe and I scale them to 4 ounces. Bagels really do benefit from sitting in the cooler overnight. There’s something to getting them to stay together which practice can fix. Key to success is to not overwork the dough as you are scaling it into portions. The more work you give the dough, the more challenging the dough will be when rolling to shape. Gentle is the key.
If you can’t find malt syrup at your store, you can buy some on-line or use molasses. The malt, a product of barley, does enhance the flavor, but not so much that you must get it. The more important element is sugaring the water with syrup and boiling them. Don’t let malt stand in the way of you making bagels.
Cinnamon Raisin Bagels
563 g Bread Flour
11 g Honey
13 g Salt
2+ g Instant yeast
330g Water
5 g Malt Syrup
55 g Hydrated Raisins
29 g Light Brown Sugar
3 g Cinnamon
Pour hot tap or boiling water over the raisins and let them stand 20 minutes. If you plan well, do this the night before. Normally we would use the weight of raisins which have been soaked but I’ve found my audience loves raisins so I add a lot.
Place the water into the bowl. Add the scaled ingredients to the water. Weigh the honey and malt syrup directly into the flour. Add the dry ingredients to the water and place the mixing bowl on the machine. With the dough hook, mix the bagel dough for three minutes. You want to see the dough start to come together. Raise the speed to medium and mix three more minutes. Add the drained soaked raisins, mix. This may take longer than you expect. No worries. When the dough has come back together and is cleaning the bowl, remove the dough to a lightly buttered clean bowl, cover with plastic and rest 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, pick up the dough, pull it a couple of times to stretch it, reshape it into a ball and back in the bowl, covered, for another 30 minutes.
Scale the dough to 4 oz portions. They are folded like little loaves. That dough is then rolled into a long loaf, but is sealed on itself. The gift of YouTube makes this easier to understand.
At this point, I place them on a sheet pan lined with baking paper or a silicone baking mat which has been lightly dusted with cornmeal. Cover the pan with plastic and let the start to proof. When they have doubled in size, cover the pan and place it in the cooler overnight.
In the morning, remove the bagels from the cooler and place the pan on the counter. Allow them to start getting to room temperature as you bring a gallon of water to a boil with 2 ounces of malt syrup or molasses.
When the water boils, carefully place the bagels into the water. If you have a normal household pan, 4 at a time is good. The bagels should boil about 45 seconds. Remove them with a strainer the handle of a wooden spoon in the hole. Place them in a bowl then transfer them back to the sheetpan they came from. Here’s a short video to help.
I don’t have a hearth at home so I bake then on the sheet pan with cornmeal underneath. It is in part to help them come off the paper when they are dough, but also, I like the crunch.
Bake 20-25 minutes or until they are nicely golden brown. Remove, cool, slice and enjoy.
