Montreal Bagels Recipe

Every Friday, Luke and I like to do something special, family-related, after we come back from our jobs. Normally, Luke and Pat will pick me up from the university, and together will go for a nice walk in the forest close by. Pat loves to be outside all the time, so we take advantage of the nice weather and explore the nature around us as much as possible. This Friday, however, it was raining and we had to find another activity, indoors this time, and we decided to go for one of our favorite hobbies: cooking. I came with the idea of baking, Luke came with the idea of Montreal style bagels, while Pat came with the idea of … trying as much as possible to mess with our work 🙂

In the next photo you can see the ingredients we used for our recipe. I have consulted the almighty internet for a good recipe, however, as always, I had to do some changes. Why do I always have the need to never follow a recipe completely? For this particular recipe I had some valid points, such as reducing the amount of sugar added, since I am on a diet, or using the whole egg instead of one tablespoon, cause, honestly, why should I throw away the rest of the egg?

Time: 2h

Preparing: 30 min Rising: 30 min Baking: 1h

Makes: 12 bagels

Ingredients

1 medium sized egg

1 ounce fresh yeast

1.5 cup of warm water

5 cups of white flour, extra flour if needed

2 ounces malt syrup

1/4 cup of oil

3-5 tablespoons of sugar

For the syrop: 1 tablespoon of honey + boiling water, and

Sesame or poppy seeds

Instructions

Mix the dry ingredients together with the wet ingredients, in a stand alone mixer, for 10 minutes.

Add extra flour if the dough is not coming off the walls of the pot. When the dough is nicely formed, cut it into 12 pieces.

Each dough portion can now be shaped into bagels. First, you elongate the dough into a 10 inch coil and fold the ends in order to get the bagel shape. Make sure that the ends stick well to each other by adding one or two drops of water.

Now you let the bagels take a 30 minutes nap. Meanwhile, you can prepare a pot with water and let it get to the boiling point. Add a tablespoon of honey, and let it simmer, until the bagels wake up from their nap.

After the 30 minutes have past, put each bagel in the simmering water for 45 seconds on each side, then transfer it to a clean kitchen towel to dry.

Sprinkle sesame or poppy seeds on top and put it in the oven for 15-20 minutes to 350 F degrees. I like to always use baking paper to make sure that the breads do not stick to the pan. Another option would be to add some oil, however, that has never worked for me.

I like the bagels to have a brownish color on both sides, so after 10 minutes or so, I turn the bagels on the other side to get a little bit of a color too.

We went for a trip in the weekend, so we saved some bagels for the next day as well. Luke and I, both agreed that the bagels tasted better the day we baked them. The crunchiness of the crust that we loved on Friday disappeared on Saturday, however, the delicious sweet taste was still there, so not too many complaints in the end 🙂