Claire Saffitz Makes Homemade Bagels | NYT Cooking

uh what i want to say about bagels sort of a weekend project but not really so bad not as much work as you might think it is okay hey everyone i'm claire saffits i'm very excited today to show you my recipe for homemade bagels i think for anyone that did sourdough baking in the beginning of quarantine and then abandoned that because it was just like a little too much to take on this is a great place to land it's also kind of magical i think when you learn that you can make something at home that you originally thought you could only buy it's a really fun empowering process so the ingredients are not hard to find there is one specialty ingredient that you'll need and it is called barley malt syrup you can find it at well-stocked grocery stores or health food stores in a pinch you can use molasses as a substitute but barley malt syrup imparts a kind of classic malted flavor that you find in traditional bagels it never goes bad you can just keep it in your pantry and then everything else is really standard bread flour kosher salt active dry yeast some oil and then of course ingredients for toppings i prefer an everything bagel because i don't want to have to choose so you're going to want to start really the evening or the afternoon before and then you'll set yourself up to bake them the next morning boil and then bake let's start right start with the dough so okay the first thing i want to do is proof the yeast what does that mean so active dry yeast is these granules and coating the yeast granules is a dehydrated coating basically on the outside and what you want to do to activate the yeast is dissolve that coating so usually recipes with active dry yeast start by dissolving yeast in some warm water often with some kind of sugar source added i like need someone to explain to me what malt means because there's like malted milk powder my understanding is that when something is malted it's like sprouted so this is what is done in with barley for beer making and various other grains for making distilled alcohols and we use the same barley malt syrup for boiling the bagels and that imparts a little bit of malty sweetness to the dough and then also helps create this really burnished crusty outside to the bagel it was very important to me that these bagels are crusty because that's the hallmark of a bagel okay that's that looks pretty good so the yeast dissolves and it starts to feed on the sugars in the barley malt syrup and i'll start to see some active foaming and puffing just let it alone and that's how you're gonna know that your yeast is alive but it's probably fine even if you don't see lots of active bubbling but skirting around the controversy of this recipe and because everyone has i think their own idea about what a bagel is i tend to err on the side of the more traditional new york style bagel so a bagel that is smaller than the ones you'll typically see in like the average bakery is very chewy and is very crusty and if it's fresh doesn't need toasting i'm not using a mixer for this recipe and i'll talk about why whenever i'm making bread i like to weigh at the very least the flour and the water for the most accurate proportions if you don't have a kitchen scale you can just do volume measurements but pay close attention to the texture of the dough because that's going to tell you if you need to add a little more flour or if you add a little more water so i'm using white bread flour you can add a little bit of whole wheat flour it will kind of create a slightly more complex flavor but it also will make your bagels a little less chewy so it's just about kind of the balance that you want i think it's six and a half cups something like that red flour has the highest protein content and it is the certain proteins in flour that when they come into contact with liquid create gluten gluten is what makes bagels chewy so for the chewiest bagel i recommend sourcing red flour if you can find it i know for a fact that my yeast is alive because i just used this jar of yeast to make other batches of bagels so i'm going to go ahead and proceed so again if you're using volume that's fine come on out hold on oh god convert oh thank god okay so you can see there's not a lot of ingredients in this dough it's a little cleaner if you add the wet to the dry so i'm just kind of making a little well in here this will be familiar to anyone who's made pasta dough for example by hand this bowl is too small oh well it'll be fine and i'm just slowly incorporating the flour into the center and all i want to do in this step is bring the dough together i have now this dough that is kind of coming together and so i'm just going to knead it in the bowl a few times until it picks up most of that flour so this is where i switch to my hands now i have this rough dough and i'll turn it out onto my work surface and now we're going to go on to the kneading step be prepared this part is a little bit of a workout as i said i'm doing all this by hand and i'll talk about why but basically it's very hard to overwork bagel dough the more you work it the more you'll achieve that chewy texture so you're gonna be here for a little while kneading it and i'm not doing this in a stand mixer because the dough for bagels is very stiff so it has a lower proportion of water to flour and it doesn't really do a whole lot in a stand mixer and it's probably not going to be great for the motor the stickiness will kind of disappear a little bit as i continue to work it and even out the hydration but if it's really sticky and kind of stubborn you're going to want to add a little bit of additional flour really what you're supposed to do is keep one hand clean for the scraper and one handful of dough sort of didn't do that it's a lot harder to add moisture to dough than it is to add flour so you want to hold back on the flour until you absolutely need it neat kneaded and eed this part is like if you have other people in the household who like need to occupy a little bit of their time just put them in front of the dough and have them do some of the kneading because this step you know you might be here for a good 15-20 minutes i think it's really fun to knead dough my stance for kneading is i have one foot in front of the other so i have this kind of ability to rock and basically what i'm trying to do is work the dough and i'm kind of moving like my whole body forward and what i'm really doing is i'm taking a part of the dough folding it on top of itself and then pressing away from my body and then i give the dough sort of a 90 degree turn and then just keep repeating that motion i mean that's my technique there's different ways to knead dough but the important thing is that we are really working it [Music] and this is a texture that i would describe as tacky but not sticky and i'll tell you so if you like poke your finger into it the dough will cling to my finger but will release cleanly rather than actually stick to it and i'll end up pulling some of the dough off with my finger it's an indication that the dough will stick to itself and that's important when we go to roll out the bagels and i'll show you why it's kind of good to get your whole body into it set a timer like zone out [Music] my dad used to go get bagels on sunday mornings on his bike and bring them home for the family and we'd have bagels so i sort of like a sunday morning bagel was always a tradition in my family there actually was a great bagel shop in st louis growing up called basically bagels which is sadly no more and i still think to this day that like a bagel with the works is the one of the greatest foods you could possibly eat oh so good see now i zoned out thinking about bagels and the dough is pretty much ready so this dough really rises two times dust it with a little flour and i can go back into the bowl that you use for mixing and then i'll cover it and this is going to rise until it's about doubled in size the forming is really fun that's my favorite part i'm going to set up two sheet trays for the second rise of the bagels this is just an insurance policy this dough i set up a little earlier and it's all risen it has a weird like boil here because it has an air bubble i'm just going to pop that very hard to tell when something spherical doubles in size so just estimate it's at this point it's not an exact science um what i want to do is release some of the gases that build up during the first rise so i'm just going to kind of lightly punch it down let me say punch it down but it really just means sort of like you know disturb the dough knock out that gas very satisfying texture okay so now i'm going to portion the dough into 12 equal pieces so i'm making a dozen bagels they're a little more than four ounces each i follow a lot of bread bakers on instagram and i love videos like from the bakery where you see someone portioning out the dough and they're such experts that like they can nail the size on the first try and like i'm doing lots of like cutting off and adding and taking away bread dough is very asmr like there's something about the texture it's neither liquid nor solid it's in this like weird liminal state of matter uh i just like i love it okay now i'm going to do a step called pre-shaping so this step is important because it helps to give the bagels a very smooth even look if i were to just go ahead and start forming the bagels the way the dough is now they would have kind of a bumpy slightly irregular exterior and i want like a nice smooth kind of professional looking bagel take all of the bizarre irregular edges from my dough portion and pinch them all together so i kind of create this like teardrop shape or almost like a garlic bulb sort of and then i put it seam side down so it's kind of domed side up so i kind of make like a claw with my hand or like i'm going to play the piano and i put it over the dough so i'm kind of cupping it and then just give it some rapid rotations on the countertop don't add flour so this step really needs the friction between the dough and the countertop and it doesn't stick and then you have this nice even beautiful little dome and actually if you get good at it you can do two at once so you're really dragging the dough across the surface as you rotate it okay so there's there are my twelve i'm gonna do this i really worked the dough and as you work gluten you increase its elasticity meaning that ability of the dough to contract so if i were to try to roll these out the dough would kind of spring back and not want to hold its shape so these just need to rest for a minute and then i'll come back and shape them like five minutes i waited about five minutes it's kind of hard because i get very excited to move on to the next step there's a couple of different methods i go the more traditional route which i'll show you but i'll also show you the other way in case you i don't know it's like a little easier i guess the more traditional method for forming is to roll the dough into a snake with slightly tapered ends and roll it around your hand and pinch the ends together so you make a loop the thicker part is going to go on the back of my hand and then where the ends meet is going to go where my palm is kind of right in between where my fingers meet my palm and then i'm going to pinch and then go like seam side down on the surface and roll it back and forth a few times and that's going to seal those ends together and that's why i was talking a lot about the hydration of the dough that you want the dough to adhere to itself so that those ends stick together because i have smaller hands i then kind of go back in and like stretch the dough into a slightly bigger ring if you were to make a ring that looked like it had the shape of a bagel before the boiling and baking phase you would get like a dinner roll like the whole thing contracts and that hole really kind of closes up so you end up having to make a much wider ring at this stage than you think you have to so here's the other way to make a bagel basically you just poke the hole in the center and then do that sort of like stretching from from the hole but there's something about the way the bagel looks when you have those two thinner ends that are sealed um and like meat on one side that just gives a much more classic bagel shape and like this one is to me more donut donut-like somehow i lived in montreal and i would like watch the like master bakers forming bagels in the famous montreal bagel shops and they're so good at it and fast i'm not an expert at it it's going to be very controversial i even grew up in st louis i grew up with a new york style bagel and that's my preferred bagel although there is a lot to love about the montreal style bagel mostly what i love about it is every time you go to a montreal bagel shop they're warm and fresh out of the oven ah that's all i'm gonna say about that not even gonna get into cinnamon raisin bagels and like what that what that is i also remember when i was like i don't know probably a teenager i was like sleeping over at a friend's house and we had bagels for breakfast in the morning and she put butter and cream cheese on her bagel and i was like i'd never done that before and then i tried and i was like that is delicious why choose eat the bagel the way you want to eat it but just don't add raisins [Music] okay the whole bagel will puff as it boils and then bakes so i want to just widen the rings a little bit so that i don't end up with something that's like very tall and kind of tight so only after resting will they be able to extend and not shrink back the idea is we're setting this up letting these rest overnight in the refrigerator where they will sort of go through their second very slow rise so i put the plastic on it rather loosely i don't want to like seal them so that the dough itself can't really expand and then just to create a closed environment i go over top with a damp towel so just like that if you wanted to bake them same day i would say let them hang out in the fridge for a minimum of four hours but you can go up to 24. yay i'm so excited okay so through a little tv magic the next day and we're ready to boil the bagels the bagel boiling is sort of like a little bit of a dance or some choreography and it's gonna be a little hard to like pause and you know get something out this is a step where mise emplous is going to be really important i have a wide dutch oven here toppings out on plates so i have just a mix here sesame poppy salt this is dehydrated onion caraway and then i basically mix everything together and i have and everything blend right here and also crucially i have my oven preheating to 450 fahrenheit and i arranged the racks one in the top third one in the bottom third because we're going to bake the bagels do i bake them one at a time i think i baked them one at a time just need a rack in the middle oops okay so i have a rack in the middle of the oven and it's preheating to 450 because we're baking six at a time so i'm just gonna grab one tray from the fridge for now your dough could be at all different stages of rising so we're going to do a little test to make sure there's enough gas in the bagels that they're ready to bake they've puffed up really nicely resting in the fridge they look a lot more like bagels now the dough kind of springs back so that's how i know that there is air in the bagel basically i'm going to transfer one to this bowl of water and it should float if it floats we're ready to go floating bagel we're good to go if for some reason your bagel does not float don't worry all you want to do is take both trays out of the fridge leave them at room temperature they'll warm up a little bit they'll start to rise a little faster and then start doing the float test maybe check every 10 15 minutes and then you'll know when they're ready to go this is where i'm using the barley malt syrup again i'm gonna add about a quarter cup to the water it's not a measured amount of water so what i'm looking for is really like a concentration i want the mixture to look like a strong iced tea and then i'm going to add a little bit of baking soda this helps to create a really burnished kind of crackly crunchy exterior to the bagel so boiling does a number of things it basically like starts to set or gelatinize the starches on the exterior of the dough so that it doesn't rise and puff up in this dramatic way it kind of sets and like holds the interior so that you end up getting this sort of dense chewy bagel rather than something that is more roll-like i suppose that boiling will also give a really burnished shiny exterior also a great hallmark of bagels is that they have little tiny blisters on the exterior passing the float test that's going to help you achieve that super crackly crunchy exterior actually let's go faster all right sorry is the whole watch pod adage it's a thing that sounds it will eventually boil but i really want to look i really went along i think i can feel it damn it okay all right so we're just below a boil as this comes to a boil it's going to create a ton of foam you can skim that off the surface it just kind of gets in the way of boiling the bagels this is the most exciting part and the part that increases my heart rate slightly which is the boiling because at this step it's like once you start you're in it there's not really a great pausing point i think i'm going to put a little bit of oil on my hands to prevent any sticking when i transfer them into the pot i also put oil on my hands as moisturizer when i'm in the kitchen just want to peel one off the parchment into the pot i'm gonna keep going and then when i have three in there i will turn on the timer oh god my timer hold on face id okay i'm going to transfer them there's like a rounded side and i'm just going to transfer them to this rack you can see they've popped up quite a bit they will deflate a little bit after you boil them that's normal they'll puff up again in the oven so don't worry if they look a little flat they've taken on kind of a golden color from from all that barley malt syrup they're still a little bit wet from that boiling which is good because that's how the topping is going to adhere to the bagel just kind of go for like a quick dip on both sides i'm not applying any pressure to the bagels this part is so fun so now these go into the oven and they're gonna bake they're gonna puff up and they're gonna get really dark golden brown and be super delicious [Music] the first tray you put on the oven is done and i'm going by mostly color on that one i wanted to be a very very deep golden brown i'm going to put this tray in and this will go another 18 to 20. okay we're really ready for our bagel extravaganza i'm so excited to open a bagel dress it up and then eat it and this is what i'm looking for this is a sign of a well-proofed bagel because these are truly fresh bagels i don't need to toast them if these were to sit out for an hour or so though or longer i would probably give them a toast but at this stage it's not necessary it's gonna be really chewy i can just feel it like it has a bounce to it this is going to be a delicious chewy bagel topping that broke off [Music] my husband calls me a penguin because i really like fishy fish i don't think about it as being a bad thing okay all right there's no elegant way to eat a bagel i don't think so salty put a lot of salt in that everyday mix but so good a bagel should be salty this is really the only way i'll eat an untoasted bagel super fresh you have those tiny like micro crackles from that blistered exterior i think like i would be hard-pressed to come up with a more perfect dish than a bagel and cream cheese with locks it's perfect i think i'm more into the white fish it's so good my god it's salty sorry do i have everything on my mouth i feel like i have it all over no all right well i'm basically gonna sit here and eat the rest of this bagel and then i'm going to go take a nap because there's a lot of food it's not the lightest meal but it is certainly delicious and i think that this bagel recipe is such a fun project mixing the dough by hand forming them boiling them and then you get to create this huge battle spread with all different varieties of bagels and really customize it to whatever you want to eat on your bagel so i think you'll be surprised to learn that the version of bagels you make at home is as good if not even better than the ones you get from your local grocery store or bakery it's just really fun to learn like i can make this thing at home and it turns out really great again just don't put raisins in them you

Channel: NYT Cooking

Views: 872,931

Rating: 4.9543605 out of 5

Keywords: cooking, cooks, recipes, recipe, how-to, how to, kitchen, new york times, new york times cooking, nyt cooking, nyt, nytimes, claire saffitz, bagel, homemade bagels, how to make bagels at home, can you make bagels at home, how do you make bagels at home, baking, baked, everything bagel, everything seasoning, poppyseed, onion, garlic, sesame, cream cheese, lox, whitefish

Id: 8l8BheCDjeA

Length: 22min 29sec (1349 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/serialragequitter]

some Claire content to tide us over while we wait for season 2 of Dessert Person to drop

[u/breakupbydefault]

That salmon roe bagel.... What luxury!!

[u/Emptymoleskine]

I agree with the 'penguin' description.

[u/[deleted]]

inject claire content right into my veins