BAGELS. I made bagels, and it was actually... easy.

One of the fun things about the holidays is that I have the opportunity to tackle some cooking projects that seem a little more intimidating or time intensive... I was cleaning out my Pinterest (another good use of a morning off!) and saw that I had a couple bagel recipes pinned. I thought, what better time to try it out than right now!

The ingredients are basic--I just popped to the corner store for some cream cheese and onion flakes. It was more time waiting for the dough to rise than anything else!

I adapted this from a couple different resources... 

Everything Bagels

1 1/4 cup warm water
1 1/2 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons (one package) active dry yeast
3 1/2 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (or more... I eyeballed all of the below so these are rough)
2 tablespoons sesame seeds (I used both black and white)
2 teaspoons poppy seeds
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
2 tablespoons garlic flakes
2 tablespoons onion flakes
1 teaspoon coarse grain sea salt (I used Maldon)
1 egg

In a cereal bowl sized bowl, combine the water and sugar and stir to dissolve. Sprinkle in the yeast. Let it bloom for 6-8 minutes. 

In a larger bowl (I used my Kitchenaid bowl), whisk together the flour and 1 1/2 teaspoon salt (I used a real whisk for this part b.c I thought the KA whisk would just create a flour bomb). 

Once the yeast mixture has had time to activate/foam, pour it in to the flour mixture and stir until a crumbly dough forms. Then, pop it into your mixer and use the dough hook to knead it for 5-7 minutes (OR put dough onto a floured surface and knead for 6-7 minutes) until the dough begins to become elastic-like. 

Remove the dough from the bowl and oil the bowl. Put the dough back in, cover it with a dish cloth. Leave it alone to raise in a warm place for 1 hour. I went and bought cream cheese in the interim ;)

Set your oven to 425 and put parchment paper on a baking sheet.

Pull the dough out of the bowl, should be bigger but not too sticky, place onto a floured counter. My dough was round, so I cut it like a pie into 8 pieces (middle top to bottom, middle left to right, and each of those in half.) Form each piece into a ball and use your fingers to poke a hole in the middle of each. Let the bagels sit out for 10 mins.

Bring a pot of water to boil (the bigger the surface area the more you can do at once).

Pop a few bagels into the boiling water (make sure it keeps boiling when you add the bagels). Let them cook for 45 secs to 1 min then flip them and cook for another 45 secs-1 min. Take the bagels out of the water, let them drip off, and put them on the baking sheet. Boil the remaining bagels in the same way.

Mix together the topping ingredients. 

Scramble the egg and water. Use a brush to brush the bagels with the egg. Sprinkle with the topping. (I did both sides b/c I like the toppings, but do whatever you want!).

 

Spread the bagels out, they can be pretty close, but .5-1" apart should do the trick.

Pop them in the oven for 20 mins. 

Remove them from the oven. 

I put them on a cooling rack to dry and cool for 5 mins, then couldn't handle it a cracked one open with cream cheese. No need to toast. They're way too good as is for that. :) Apparently they'll last for 4-5 days in air tight baggies. 

ENJOY!

In case you're interested... this has some great info about everything bagels! Not invented until the 80s, can you believe it?

http://www.grubstreet.com/2013/04/best-everything-bagels.html

UPDATE: The salt is perhaps not the best addition if you're not going to eat these all at once... I'd leave the salt out of the mix if you're saving some for later. For a party, definitely include the salt b/c, let's face it, a salt-less everything bagel is sub-par. But the salt doesn't hold up well overnight and makes wet spots on your bagels. Ick.