One of the challenges with making bread is that I want to bake more bread than my husband and I can eat. At best, it takes us a week to get through a loaf, slicing, freezing, thawing and toasting our slices one by one. When the sliced bread in the freezer piles up, I make breadcrumbs. Even with that, we still struggle to finish up what’s in the freezer before I want to bake bread again.
My reason for not eating as much bread as I make is that I’m always on a diet. This is not the issue for Mr TBTAM, who can eat as much bread as he wants and still weighs the same as he did the day I married him. But the bread he wants on a daily basis is not my artisan sourdough, though he does enjoy it immensely whenever he makes a sandwich. The bread he wants and eats on a daily basis is his morning bagel.
Not just any bagel, mind you. The right kind of bagel. The perfect bagel. Dense, chewy, flavorful, not too well-done, not too pale, and not too large. With everything bagel topping.
In New York City the perfect bagel is to be found in only one place, and that’s Absolute Bagel on Broadway at 108th street. For almost 30 years, once a week on a weekend morning, Mr TBTAM would arise at 6 am to ride his bike to Absolute before the block-long line started to form out front, returning home with a half dozen everything bagels, still warm in their paper bag. Once, he and our friend Noel undertook a bagel hunt, venturing into far-off Brooklyn is search of a more perfect bagel than the Absolute bagel. It was not to be found, although the bagels at the Bagel Hole came close to their Absolute benchmark.
Now that we’re living back home in Philly, Mr TBTAM has yet to find his perfect Philly bagel. Not that he hasn’t tried, and he’s tried quite a few – Whole Foods (“so-so”), Famous Deli (“up there, one of the best so far”), Bart’s in Powelton (“up there with Famous, but not quite there”), Kismet in Reading Terminal (“pretty good”), Kaplans in Northern Liberty (“in the middle”), Spread on South Street (‘pretty good, I think”). He has high hopes for New York Bagel on Haverford and City Line Ave, based on recommendations from several friends and a distant memory of liking their bagels 30 years ago, but has yet to make the schlep.
The bagels he grew up on were from Rollings Bakery, located at that time on 5th Street in East Oak Lane, now relocated to Elkins Park. Imagine a soft but chewy bagel with a firm but pliant crust. Now sit on it. That was the old Rollings bagel. The current Rollings iteration is no longer misshapen and squashed, and just as delicious as the old Rollings bagel, but for some reason, they don’t satisfy Mr TBTAM anymore. I suspect it’s because Absolute bagel has ruined him for any other bagel.
Quite a long prelude, but necessary so that you might understand why a bagel-making undertaking on my part might be pretty high stakes in this family. But, remembering my oft-recited mantra “How hard could it be?”, I decided it was time to try. So I made a dozen bagels using Claire Saffitz’s recipe in the NY Times, mixing in a bit of home-milled heritage wheat with heritage bread flour from Sunrise Mills.
Imagine my shock and delight when Mr TBTAM declared my very first batch of bagels to be as good as the bagels at Absolute! Though the man has never lied to me, even to make me feel good, I just could not believe it. So I foisted a few bagels onto my daughter and mother-in-law, who loved them as much as did my husband!
I, on the other hand, was not satisfied. The bagels I made using Saffritz’s recipe were delicious, but the crust was just a little too hard for my liking. My recollection of the Absolute bagel crust is that it’s dense and chewy, but pliable and even a tad squishable, though not squishy. The bagels I made did not squish much when pressed, if at all. Something was still not right. So I dove deep into the bagel making rabbit hole, reading about boiling and baking times, and exploring a multitude of bagel recipes.
Turns out that the reason one boils the bagels is to set the crust and keep the bagel from puffing up like a loaf of bread when it hits the oven, allowing it to maintain that bagel shape we know and love. The longer one boils the bagel, the thicker and denser the crust becomes, making it more resistant to the rising bagel innards, leading to a flatter bagel. As for baking times, I found this among other recipes, which recommended a much shorter 15 minute bagel bake. Hmm….
I was looking for a chewy but not too chewy crust that was pliable. Not sure if the small amount of optional whole wheat I was adding in to my flour might be the culprit, I left it out. Then I shortened the bagel boiling time from 1 minute (but probably closer to 1 1/2 minutes given I was floating 4 bagels at a time in the boiling water) to 45 seconds, working with at most one or two bagels at a time, aided by the Timer on my Iphone clock app. I then tweaked my baking time – half my bagels went in at 450 for the 20-25 minutes Saffrtitz recommends, and the other half went in at 450 for 15 minutes. Worried they’d be undercooked, I checked the internal temp after taking the 15 minute bagels out of the oven – 200 degrees. Just right.
Bingo! The combination of a 45 second boiling time and 15 minute baking time got me as close to an Absolute bagel as one can get without schlepping up to 108th and Broadway. Chewy crust with a satisfactory, but not too squishy squish when pressed. Delicious, with a dense but not too dense interior.
I’m now making bagels weekly! The dozen I make barely satisfies my family’s needs once I’ve given my husband his half dozen and the deliver the rest to my daughter, her husband and my mother-in-law. This just makes me SO happy…
I’ve thought about trying sourdough bagels next, but these bagels are much easier to fit into my life than sourdough. I do plan on adding back the home-milled whole wheat flour next week, just because I think I can. And trying out King Arthur Lancelot High Gluten Flour, as the higher the gluten content, the chewier the bagel.
Other than that, I’m not making any changes. Because these are pretty darned near absolutely perfect bagels.
Pretty Darned Near Absolutely Perfect Bagels
Ingredients
Dough
- 2 tbsp Barley Malt Syrup
- 7 grams Active Dry Yeast (1 packet or 2 1/4 tsp)
- 540 ml Lukewarm water (105 – 110 degrees)
- 885 grams High Protein Bread Flour
- 17 grams Kosher salt
Boiling and Topping
- 1 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/4 cup Barley Malt Syrup
- Bagel toppings (Everything, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, salt, dried minced onion)
Instructions
Prepare the Bagel Dough
- Whisk 2 tbsp barley malt syrup into 120 ml lukewarm water into a small bowl. Add the yeast and stir till dissolved. Let sit until the mixture foams, about 5 minutes.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the bread flour and salt and make a well in the center. Pour in the yeast mixture and the remaining 420 ml water. Mix, using your hands and a bowl scraper, until the dough is shaggy. Knead it in the bowl till it's a solid mass, then turn it out onto a clean counter and continue kneading till there are no dry spots and the dough is stiff but very smooth and still slightly sticky (15 mins or so).
- Gather the dough into a ball and place it in a large, clean bowl. Cover with a damp towel and let rise at room temperature until it has doubled in size, 1½ to 2 hours.
Divide, Pre-Shape and Shape the Bagels
- Using your fist, punch down the dough and turn it out onto a clean work surface. Using a bench scraper or sharp knife, cut the dough into 12 equal 120 gram pieces.
- Pre-shape each piece into a tight ball by gently flattening the dough out onto the work surface. Then, working your way around the circle, pull the edges towards the center, pinching them shut to form a tight dumpling-like pouch. Turn it over, seam side down, and cupping your hands around the dough, drag it in a circular motion to form a tight, high dome. (Watch this video from KA for technique) Repeat with all the pieces, then cover them with a damp towel and let rest for 5 minutes.
- Line two large rimmed baking sheets with lightly oiled parchment paper. Working one piece at a time, roll your hand in the center a few times to create a bulb at each end. Then, switch to two hands and roll outward to about 12 inches of even thickness throughout. Now, wrap the rope around your open hand, overlapping the ends over your palm, then flipping your hand over to roll the ends together to seal and form the bagel. (Watch this video from Maurizio of the Perfect Loaf for technique.)
- As you form each bagel, place it on the parchment-lined baking sheet, evenly spacing six bagels to a sheet. When you’ve formed all the bagels, cover each baking sheet with a piece of plastic, followed by a damp towel and transfer the baking sheets to the refrigerator. Chill at least 4 hours but preferably overnight.
Boiling the Bagels
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit with a rack in the center. Fill a large, wide pot or Dutch oven oven halfway with water and bring to a boil. Set a wire rack next to the Dutch oven. Set your various bagel toppings on small plates next to the wire rack. Set the timer on your phone to 45 seconds.
- Add 1/4 cup barley malt syrup and 1 tsp baking soda to the boiling water in the pot, skimming excess foam as it forms. Remove one sheet pan of bagels from the fridge and place it on the counter near the stove as possible. Working quickly, drop 1 to 2 bagels gently into the boiling water, then immediately start the timer. At around 20 seconds, gently flip the bagels using a large slotted spoon, and at the 45 second mark, gently remove the bagels from the pot and place them on the wire rack. Repeat until you've boiled 6 bagels, waiting if need be between batches to maintain a steady boil.
Topping & Baking the Bagels
- Discard the parchment sheet from the baking pan you used to store the bagels in the fridge. Gently dip each bagel into its chosen topping, and arrange them spaced equally back on the now bare baking sheet. Place the sheet into the preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes, turning the pan 180 degrees after 8 minutes to assure even baking. Remove to a rack to cool.
- Repeat the boiling, coating and baking process with the second sheet of bagels from the fridge. Let the bagels cool completely on a wire rack before eating.
‘I’m the mother-in-law and will attest to these bagels being of the highest quality for taste, texture and appearance. Just got my latest batch and am looking forward to my morning coffee with her delicious bagel and a smear of cream cheese while I watch the snow come down.