Dough Products
Bagels (Boiled and Baked)
Proper chewy bagels: a stiff dough of strong flour, yeast, salt and barley malt, shaped into rings, left in the fridge overnight, boiled for a minute in malted water and baked hot until shiny and deep golden. Variations (everything, cinnamon-raisin and same-day bagels), a bread machine note and a short history below.
- Serves 8
- Makes 8
- Hands-on 45 min
- Rise 1 hr + 12–24 hrs chilled
- Bake 20–25 min
- Freeze for up to 2 months
- Jewish / American (New York)
Method
Weigh the flour into a large bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer) and stir in the 5 g of fast-action dried yeast on one side and the 10 g of salt on the other. Stir the 15 g of malt extract into the 300 ml of lukewarm water until it dissolves, then pour it into the flour and mix to a stiff, rough dough.
Knead for 12–15 minutes by hand, or 8–10 minutes with a dough hook on low speed. This is a stiff dough (about 58% water, against 70% for a crusty roll) and it takes work, but it becomes smooth, firm and silky and passes the windowpane test. Do not add flour; if your mixer struggles, rest the dough for 5 minutes and carry on.
Cover and leave at room temperature for about 1 hour, until puffy but not necessarily doubled.
Line two baking trays with baking paper and oil the paper lightly. Divide the dough into 8 pieces of about 100 g (3½ oz) and roll each into a tight ball. Cover and rest for 10 minutes.
Shape the rings: push a floured thumb through the middle of each ball, then twirl it on two fingers to stretch the hole to about 4 cm (1½ in) across; it shrinks as it proves. (Or roll each piece into a 25 cm / 10 in rope, wrap it round your hand, overlap the ends by 4 cm and roll the join on the worktop to seal it.) Set 4 on each tray.
Cover the trays tightly with oiled cling film and refrigerate for 12–24 hours. The long, cold rise gives bagels their chewy texture, shiny blistered crust and fuller flavour.
Next day, heat the oven to 220°C (200°C fan), gas mark 7, 425°F, with a shelf in the middle. Bring a wide pan of water to the boil and stir in the 30 g of malt extract (and the bicarbonate of soda, if using). Take the bagels straight from the fridge.
Boil the bagels 2 or 3 at a time for 1 minute, then turn them over with a slotted spoon and boil for 1 minute more (30 seconds a side gives a thinner, less chewy crust). Lift them out, let them drain for a few seconds and put them back on the trays.
If topping them, brush with the egg-white glaze and scatter generously with sesame or poppy seeds while they are wet.
Bake for 20–25 minutes, until deep golden brown and shiny; turn the trays round halfway through so they colour evenly. Bagels are done by colour: a pale bagel is a soft bagel.
Cool on a wire rack for at least 20 minutes before cutting; the crumb finishes setting as they cool. Slice horizontally with a serrated knife.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
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Tips for perfect rolls
- Weigh, don’t scoop. King Arthur Baking counts a cup of all-purpose flour as 120 g, but a cup scooped straight from the bag holds noticeably more, so the grams are the real recipe. Use digital scales for flour, yeast, salt and liquids (1 ml of water or milk weighs about 1 g). The US cup amounts in the US view are a guide.
- American flour, British flour. American all-purpose flour sits between British plain flour and strong bread flour in protein, so we mix the two. Bread flour (strong flour) is right for bagels, which need a strong, chewy dough.
- Yeast. Fast-action dried yeast is the same thing as American instant yeast: stir it straight into the flour. One 7 g sachet equals one US ¼ oz packet (2¼ tsp). With active dry yeast, dissolve it in the lukewarm liquid first; with fresh yeast, use about 17–20 g, crumbled into the liquid.
- Lukewarm, never hot. Liquid at about 30°C (86°F) feels just warm on your wrist. Hot liquid kills yeast; a cool dough simply takes longer.
- Knead until it passes the windowpane test. Stretch a small piece of kneaded dough gently between your fingers. If it thins to a translucent sheet without tearing, the gluten is ready; if it tears, knead for 2 minutes more and test again.
- Sweet doughs are slow. Sugar, butter and eggs slow the yeast, so soft dinner rolls and Hawaiian rolls take longer to rise than plain bread. Judge each rise by the look and feel of the dough, not the clock: a floured fingertip dent should fill back slowly.
- Pack them close for soft sides. Rolls baked touching in one tin steam each other and stay soft and pale where they join; rolls baked apart get a crust all round.
- Is it done?. Soft, enriched rolls are done at 88–90°C (190–195°F) in the centre of the middle roll; King Arthur Baking found they dry out if taken further. Bagels are judged by a deep golden-brown colour.
Variations
4 ways to change the main recipe. Each uses the same method unless it says otherwise.
Everything bagels
Mix 1 tbsp each of sesame seeds, poppy seeds, dried minced onion and dried minced garlic with 2 tsp flaky sea salt. Press the wet, boiled bagels into the mix (or scatter it over the egg white) before baking.
Cinnamon and raisin bagels
Knead 100 g (⅔ cup) raisins and 2 tsp ground cinnamon into the dough in the last 2 minutes of kneading, and use 20 g (1½ tbsp) sugar in the dough instead of the malt. Skip the seeds.
Same-day bagels
Use 7 g (a whole sachet) of yeast. After shaping, prove the bagels at room temperature for 20–30 minutes, until slightly puffy, instead of chilling them overnight, then boil and bake as above. They are softer and less chewy, more like a bread roll with a hole.
Make it in a bread machine (dough cycle)
Put everything in the pan in the order your manual gives: Panasonic machines want the yeast first, then the flour and other dry ingredients, with the liquid last; most other makes want the liquid first and the yeast last, on top of the flour. Dissolve the malt in the water first. Bagel dough is very stiff, so it works the motor hard: make half the recipe in a 1.5 lb or compact machine, and add 1 tbsp more water only if the paddle stalls. Choose the Dough programme; when it ends, divide, shape and chill the rings overnight, then boil and bake as above. The dough cycle saves the hard kneading.
Bread machines: the dough cycle for rolls → · Kneading and proving techniques →
See also
- American Dinner Rolls — soft pull-apart yeast rolls
- Hawaiian Sweet Rolls — soft, sweet pineapple rolls
- Parker House Rolls — Boston’s folded butter rolls
- Bread Rolls (Crusty) — lean, crusty white rolls baked with steam
- Bread Rolls Brown (Wholemeal) — light wholemeal rolls
- Brioche Buns — rich, buttery burger buns
- Bread Rolls White (Soft Rolls and Baps) — British soft white rolls and floury baps
- Kneading and proving techniques — by hand, mixer, bread machine or no-knead; the windowpane and poke tests
- Bread machines — choosing one, settings, and the dough cycle for rolls
Chef’s notes
- Barley malt extract gives the classic malty aroma and a chewy, crisp (not hard) crust; Serious Eats prefers it to bicarbonate of soda, which gives a pretzel-like taste. You will find it in health-food shops (in the US, as barley malt syrup). Honey is the easiest substitute.
- The dough is meant to be stiff: Wikipedia’s bagel article puts bagel doughs at about 50–57% water, among the stiffest of all bread doughs. Ours is 58%, which is easier to knead by hand.
- Bagels go stale quickly. Keep them in a paper bag for a day, or halve and freeze them for up to 2 months and toast straight from the freezer.
A little history
The bagel comes from the Jewish communities of Poland. Its earliest known mention is in the 1610 regulations of the Jewish community of Kraków, which limited what could be sent to a family celebrating a circumcision: the mother and the godfather’s wife could not send for “cakes or bagel or [twisted] challah”. The often-repeated idea that bagels were a gift to women in childbirth is, the Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz writes, an oversimplification of that rule.
The name comes from the Yiddish beygl, from a German dialect word for a ring or bracelet. Boiling before baking was not unique to the bagel: Polish royal accounts from 1394 already record the obwarzanek, a boiled-then-baked ring of bread from Kraków. In Britain the word is also spelled “beigel” (sic).
Jewish immigrants from Poland brought bagels to New York, where for decades they were made by hand by members of the Bagel Bakers Local 338 union. They came into general use across North America in the last quarter of the 20th century, helped by automation: in the 1960s the Lender family’s bakery pioneered machine-made frozen bagels.
Sources for these notes
For the history above and the tips for perfect rolls.
- Dovid Katz, “One bagel, two bagel, three bagel” (2008): translation of the 1610 Kraków community regulation; Rosten’s childbirth story an oversimplification
- Wikipedia: Bagel (Jewish communities of Poland; Kraków 1610; Yiddish beygl from German beugel; obwarzanek; spelled “beigel”; Bagel Bakers Local 338; Lender’s frozen bagels in the 1960s; 50–57% hydration)
- Serious Eats (Stella Parks): Homemade Bagels (barley malt in the boiling water rather than baking soda or lye; 425°F)
- King Arthur Baking: Ingredient weight chart (1 cup all-purpose flour = 120 g)
- King Arthur Baking: What is the windowpane test for bread dough? (2022)
- King Arthur Baking (PJ Hamel): Using a thermometer with yeast bread (2017)
How this recipe was developed
We compared the recipes below, from a quick same-day bagel to a slow, cold-proved New York style, and wrote our own.
- A stiff dough. King Arthur Baking uses 63% water and BBC Good Food 60%; Wikipedia puts traditional bagel dough at 50–57%. We use 58% with strong flour, still kneadable by hand.
- Overnight in the fridge. Serious Eats refrigerates the shaped bagels for 24–36 hours; Wikipedia’s traditional method uses at least 12 hours at 4–10°C. We chill for 12–24 hours, with a same-day variation like BBC Good Food’s.
- Malt in the boil. Serious Eats and King Arthur put barley malt in the boiling water; BBC Good Food uses bicarbonate of soda. We use malt, with soda as an option, and boil for 1 minute a side, between Serious Eats’ 30 seconds and King Arthur’s 2 + 1 minutes.
- A hot oven. King Arthur and Serious Eats bake at 425°F (220°C) for 20–25 minutes; we do the same and judge doneness by colour.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):
- King Arthur Baking (PJ Hamel): Bagels
- Serious Eats (Stella Parks): Homemade Bagels
- BBC Good Food (Edd Kimber): Homemade bagels
- Allrecipes: Real Homemade Bagels (4.4/5 from 361 ratings)
- King Arthur Baking: What is the windowpane test for bread dough? (2022)
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.
Useful kit
- Digital kitchen scales: weighs flour, liquids, yeast and salt to the gram, and lets you divide the dough into even rolls. Amazon UK · Amazon US
- Rectangular baking tin, 23 × 33 cm (9 × 13 in): the standard tin for a tray of 16 pull-apart rolls. Amazon UK · Amazon US
- Instant-read thermometer: the sure way to tell when soft rolls are done. Amazon UK · Amazon US
- Plastic dough scraper: for sticky doughs, dividing and keeping the worktop clean. Amazon UK · Amazon US
- Spider skimmer: lifts bagels out of the boiling water without tearing them. Amazon UK · Amazon US
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