How To Make Everything Bagels

A real New York bagel is boiled before it's baked, and that makes a huge difference. To make our dough, we'll start in the bowl of a stand mixer with some high-gluten flour, salt, sugar, and instant yeast. Now, add on your dough hook attachment and let your mixer run for just a few seconds to fully mix everything together, scraping down the sides as needed to make sure everything is well combined, and then add in your water and barley malt syrup. This is sort of like honey, but less sweet and more earthy. It's one of the ingredients that Start mixing over low speed, and once you can, turn the mixer up to medium low and let this go for 12 to 15 minutes. The dough we're making right now is supposed to be quite stiff, and if it looks too easy for your mixer, it's probably too wet. Keep on mixing until it looks like this, and you can pinch off a small piece and stretch it nice and thin. This is called the windowpane test, because if we can see light through it without it tearing, it means that gluten is fully developed. I do want to mention that this dough can be so tough that it can be really hard on your stand mixer, so just keep a close eye and make sure it doesn't sound or look like your mixer is working too hard to the point that it's going to break. That's the main reason we're not mixing over slightly higher speeds here. When your dough is ready, remove it from the mixing bowl, then place it down on a clean work surface and shape it into a ball. By now, it should be soft and smooth and actually really fun to work with. Now, place this in a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place this in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours. While our dough develops all kinds of flavor in the fridge, we're going to make our own cream cheese. Simply by adding some milk to a pot, along with some heavy cream, and then heating over medium until it reaches 185 Fahrenheit. Right as we hit that temperature, we'll turn off the heat, then pour in some fresh lemon juice, give it a gentle stir just to combine, and then let this sit for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, it should split into curds and whey. You can see if I lift this up here that it's all chunky, and those are the cheese curds, or what will eventually become our cream cheese. Strain this through cheesecloth and a strainer to separate out just the cheese curds, and then once fully cooled, discard the whey, and cover your cheese with plastic wrap, and rest this in the fridge until cold. Luckily, with the power of movie magic, we can keep on moving. Add your cheese to the bowl of a stand mixer, and then fit it with a whisk attachment. Then, close it down, and over medium-high speed, we'll mix until the cheese is whipped and has that smooth, spreadable consistency of classic cream cheese. Once in a while, scrape down the sides of your bowl just to make sure you're mixing everything. Once it's got that perfect consistency, season with salt and nothing else. It's like cream cheese, but so much creamier, and it really tastes fresh. I'm just going to add this to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place it in the fridge while we finish our bagels. Our bagel dough has risen and developed in the fridge, so now it's time to cut it into portions. Use your hands or a plastic bench scraper to remove the dough from the bowl. It's going to be sticky, but we'll do the best we can to get it all out in one, and then use whatever method you want to separate it into 12 even portions. If you want to be ultra precise, you should probably use a scale for this part, but you know I never like to pull out the scale unless I absolutely have to, and I feel like right now I can get away without it. Whatever method you end up using though, just make sure they end up looking like triangles like these ones. I think these all look even enough, but tell me in the comments down below if you disagree. Now, pay attention because this next part is very important. You see this area right here on the top of our dough where we've already developed this skin? Much different from this stickier, doughier area on the side. To form them into balls, we want to flip them skin side down, then fold in from all the corners until it starts to take the shape of a ball, and we get this sticky seam here on the bottom, and then flip this over and sort of cradle it in your hand while you go in a swirling circular motion, which will ultimately form it into a ball and create that tension. This is what's going to hold the clean shape of that bagel during boiling, but if the seam on the bottom isn't tight enough, the bagel will open up in the water. If your cutting board is too smooth and slippery, find a different surface in your kitchen that your dough will stick to, and that can make things much easier. You can also add a couple drops of water to your cutting board, and that works really well too. Once you've created each ball, drop them into some flour to coat the bottom. Lightly flour a few parchment lined baking sheets, and spread them all out evenly. As you can see, I'm making a lot because I love bagels. Then cover them with plastic wrap and proof in a warm, dry place for one and a half hours, or until the dough is 50% larger. As you can see, I didn't exactly cut the bagels into perfect portions, but don't worry, it's going to work out fine. Last step before cooking, these are going to refrigerate for one hour just to firm up. Once refrigerated, it's time to boil. For a true perfect bagel, you boil first, then bake. But first, we got to make the hole, simply by poking two fingers straight through the center of each dough ball, and then stretch until the hole is two to three inches in diameter. And I know this may look like a lot, but that hole is going to close up a lot during the boiling and baking process. You can see those holes have already shrunk back down even by just resting there for a few moments, so before I drop each one into the water, I am going to stretch them one last time. To boil, we'll add some barley malt syrup to our water, and then with the nice side facing down, drop your bagels in. They're going to boil for 30 to 60 seconds on each side. And I'm sure you're wondering what's going on, so let me explain in the easiest way possible. The malt is what's going to give us the shiny and slightly chewy crust, and gives us this kind of sticky outside to the bagel. It's actually really similar to how pretzels are made. Boiling in plain water wouldn't do any of this. Once we've boiled, and then eventually seasoned every bagel, these are going to go into the oven for 12 to 14 minutes at 425 Fahrenheit to bake. Pull them from the oven once they've reached golden brown perfection. I don't know if you've ever seen one of those videos online where someone crunches open a bagel and all that steam comes out, but I've always wanted to try. We'll let these cool off while I grab the rest of the ingredients to make my favorite bagel sandwich. To assemble, I'll cut my bagel in half using a serrated knife. As a rule of thumb, you should use a serrated knife for anything that's hard on the exterior and soft on the interior, and that's why it works so well on breads. Spread on an even layer of cream cheese. I'm actually going to do it on both sides because of how delicious that is. And then I'll layer down some smoked salmon, some thinly sliced red onion, then a few capers just for some saltiness, a little sprinkle of green onion, and then just on this side so I don't turn my salmon into ceviche, a little bit of lemon juice. And that is how you turn a fresh bagel into something even better. That was too much cream cheese, but delicious. I really don't like when people call it a bagel. It's a bagel.