1 HOUR BAGELS

Hey, what's up? I'm sure some of you guys have decided that you're gonna make bagels. So you go online, you type into Google there, how to bagel, and oh, what's this? It takes like 24 hours or more to make? I'm not gonna do that, you say. Instead, I guess I'll just eat oatmeal, again. So to solve for this problem, I designed a recipe for people that want to enjoy the profound pleasures of a fresh boiled bagel, but want it as soon as possible. This recipe is crispy, it's chewy, and comes together in less than an hour. To get started, I'll crack a flavorful hoppy beer and pour 265 grams of it into a small saucepan. Since beer is basically grain tea fermented with yeast, it helps us to mimic the taste of a long-fermented bread dough. That means a lot more flavorful bagel with much less fermentation time. Next, I'll drop this pan on the stove and warm up this beer. Most beers live in the fridge where it's cold, and cold beer will dramatically slow the fermentation time of our bagel dough. And once this beer is somewhere between 100 and 105 F, I'll kill the heat and then grab my food processor. Into the jar of that, I'll combine 475 grams of bread flour, 12 grams of salt, and 10 grams of sugar. Next, I'll take all 265 grams of my warm hoppy beer and then add in six grams of instant yeast. I'll give that a quick stir to dissolve it because if I didn't, the yeast wouldn't hydrate properly and the fermentation would be kind of unpredictable. Cut to what the dough looks like if you don't mix the yeast with the beer ahead of time. That isn't gonna work. Next, with the food processor running, I'm gonna stream in all of my beer slash yeast mixture. By the way, this recipe makes six bagels, and that's just about the amount of dough that this food processor can handle. But if you wanna make a dozen bagels, I've got a process for that coming up in just a second. And once all the beer is in, I'm gonna spin this for another 30 seconds or so. Bagel dough is super dry, so we need extra mixing to make sure things are getting evenly hydrated and properly combined. And there we go. For reference, pizza dough is usually about 62 to 68% water and this bagel dough is about 53%. That's dry. Now to finish this dough, I'm gonna flip it out onto my cutting board and knead it for about two to three minutes. The dough at this point is combined, but not strong. Kneading it links up more of the gluten proteins and that not only helps it hold itself together without tearing or shearing, but more importantly, it helps make the dough more chewy, which is very important for a good bagel. And once I've given this dough about two to three minutes of folding and rolling, I'll stop, give it a tug, and see how developed the gluten looks. As you can see, it looks almost like bubble gum. It's strong, it's a little bit tacky, and doesn't rip, so I'll call it good. Next, I'll drop the dough into a bowl to briefly ferment it and then I'll set a timer for 25 minutes. In the meantime, I'll quickly show you how to make this dough by hand if you don't have a food processor. Into a medium bowl, I'll add the same amount of yeast and beer and then the same amount of dry ingredients. Next, I'll grab a sturdy spoon and then jump in and stir until everything has come together into a dry mass that's no longer sticky. From there, I'll come back with an SWH, or soaking wet hand, and then jump in and knead the dough right in the bowl for about five minutes. If you wanted 12 or 18 bagels instead of six, this hand mixing technique would be the way to go over trying to fit it all in your food processor and maybe burning out the motor. And after four to five minutes of kneading, I've got this dough brought together. And from this point forward, the process of this dough is gonna be exactly the same as for the food chopper dough. Speaking of that, it's been 25 minutes, so let's check back. As you can see, we've got a little bit of gas development, but not a lot, and that's ideal. Overly gassy bagel dough makes something closer to crusty bread than chewy bagel. Next, I'll flip this dough onto my cutting board and then divide it into six pieces that are about 125 grams each. Then, to shape this dough into a bagel, I'll push the gas out of it, give it one fold over, and then roll it out into the shape of a cigar. I'm looking for a length of about 10 inches with a little bit of a taper on the ends. Next, I'll grab the dough and wrap it around my palm, making sure to overlap the tapered ends by about three inches. Then, I'll give it a firm squeeze to seal it all up, and then I'll drop the bagel onto my cutting board and roll it maybe a dozen times to round things off and to seal up that seam that we just made. And there we go, a round bagel. I'll move all six of these over to a parchment paper lined sheet tray, and then I'll cover that with another sheet tray to do a little proofing while I get my bagel water up to a boil. And I'll also preheat my oven to 475F. Both the water and the oven are gonna need about 15 minutes to come up to temp, way less time than it takes for me to make a nice cup of joe from the sponsor of this video, Trade Coffee. Trade is a coffee subscription service that partners with some of the nation's top independent roasters. Trade chooses roasters who have high ethical and sustainable sourcing standards, and every bag you order supports those roasters directly. So when you choose Trade, you can feel good about supporting local businesses and their communities. For example, Blueprint Coffee based right here in St. Louis. They're a Trade roaster and the place that Lauren and I go to drink delicious coffee and have our weekly creative YouTube meeting and eat their banana bread because it's sick. Today though, I'm brewing a pot of the Mexico decaf from Bean & Bean. It's one of the smoother and sweeter coffees that I've tried from Trade, which makes it a really nice all day sipper. Very sessionable. Trade roasts every bag of coffee on demand and delivers it on your schedule. You can even see the next roast date of your coffee on their website. And right now, if you head to drinktrade.com slash Brian, you can get a free bag of coffee with any subscription. So to upgrade your morning routine, just head to drinktrade.com slash Brian and get a free bag of coffee with any subscription purchase. Back at the stove, my water is up to a ripping simmer and my oven is preheated. So I'll check back on my bagels. It's been about 15 to 20 minutes and these have grown just enough to bring some additional rise in the water and in the oven. Next, I'll drizzle about three tablespoons worth of molasses into my bagel water. This gives the outside just a kiss of sweetness that I find really pleasant and it helps them take on some additional browning. Fast fermented doughs like this one have a hard time taking on color. Next, I'll drop in three of my six bagels and boil them for 30 seconds on each side. As these simmer, the yeast inside will produce a ton of gas and that gas will get trapped inside the little air pockets we created during the short fermentation time. However, too much boil time leads to an over-risen bagel that will deflate once we pull it out of the water. That bagel is tough and extremely chewy in a bad way. And after 60 seconds of boil time, these are puffed up and the water has gelatinized the starch on the outside. So I'll pull them out and rest them on a wire rack. That tough gelatinized exterior combined with the drier high gluten dough is what makes for a pleasantly chewy bagel. In goes the next three bagels and after about 30 seconds on each side, I'll lift them out and move them over to the wire rack with the first three. Next, to make these into a proper bagel, we'll need some topping. So I'll grab a bowl and into it, add about a cup's worth of untoasted sesame seeds. Of course, feel free to sub in everything bagel seasoning or whatever else you like. Next, while these bagels are still hot and still wet, I'll drop them into the seed mix and swirl to get as much stuck as I can. Inevitably, a bunch of these seeds are gonna fall off when we bake the bagels or when we go to cut them in half. So really get them stuck on there. And once I've got all six of these bagels clad with a layer of untoasted sesame, it's time to bake. So I'll load this sheet into my 475F oven to bake it for 15 to 17 minutes. Even though these bagels rose quite a bit in the water, they're still pretty raw on the inside and they're gonna continue to gas up and rise in the oven. And after 15 and a half minutes of bake time, these bagels have taken on some beautiful golden brown color and the seeds are nice and toasty looking. You guys, a fresh out of the oven bagel is something that few people who eat bagels have had the pleasure of experiencing. Dynamic, I think, is the best way to describe it. It's chewy, but also crispy and light in a way that is almost contradictory. These remind me of how I feel when I make fresh English muffins. They're so far above the version that's available to me at the grocery store that it almost feels like it should be called something different. To serve these, if you wanna go savory, the clear option is to pair your cream cheese with some nice smoked fish. That's classic. Or lately, I've been a sucker for a sweeter variation with cream cheese and a long drizzle of raw honey. Honey, cream cheese, and toasted sesame is a god-tier combination and it needs to be recognized. Anyways, bagels in one hour. What a world. I hope you guys try these soon and let me know in the comments how you think these stack up against my longer fermented ones that I did last year. Let's eat these things.