Easy NO KNEAD Bagel Recipe | The Easiest Homemade NY Bagels

Easy No Knead Homemade Bagel Recipe – The Easiest Bagels Recipe!
This video is sponsored by Made In. Use my link to check out the Carbon Steel Collection and my other favorite cookware from Made In – https://madein.cc/1025-emma

ORDER MY COOKBOOK ❤ : https://www.emmafontanella.com/cookbook

Detailed Easy No Knead Bagel Recipe: https://www.emmafontanella.com/homemade-no-knead-bagels

Easy Bagel Recipe:

2 cups (480g) Warm Water
3 tablespoons Sugar
2 tsp Salt
2 tsp Yeast
2 tablespoons Oil
5 1/4 cups (750g All Purpose Flour)

Enjoy!

♥

Copyright © 2025 Emma Fontanella. All rights reserved.
No part of this video (including thumbnail images or written recipe) may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro
00:57 Make the Bagel Dough
02:00 Perform the Stretches and Folds
03:54 Shape the Bagels
05:36 Boil the Bagels
06:50 Bake the Bagels

Let’s make the best no knead bagels you’ll ever 
have. These ones are extra soft and chewy with that signature golden shiny crust. They’re 
so easy to make. And once you’ve tried these, you might never go back to store bought bagels. 
There’s nothing like homemade bagels. They are delicious. Make a big batch. Store these in the 
freezer. They make the best breakfast sandwiches. All you need to make these bagels is a big 
mixing bowl, a tray, and a pan. The pan I’m using today is made by today’s sponsor, Made In. 
These fantastic pans are used in thousands of top rated restaurants across America with over 100,000 
five-star reviews. They’re also used in two three Michelin star restaurants, Alinia in Chicago and 
Le Bernardin in New York. If these pans are good enough for their food, I promise you they’re good 
enough for anyone. I’ll tell you more about why this pan is so useful later, but for now, let’s 
get on to making the bagel dough. To a large bowl, add the warm water, sugar, salt, oil, and yeast. 
We’re going to give these ingredients a good whisk and add the flour in one go. You want to mix 
everything together with a fork. If your dough seems dry, don’t be afraid to add an extra 1 to 
2 tablespoon of water. Even if you’re using the same flour as I am, every flour absorbs liquids 
differently, so you might need a little extra water. Now, eventually you’ll have to switch to 
using your hand or your fork will bend. You want to wet your hand with water and continue mixing, 
making sure there’s no dry patches of flour and dough. Using a wet hand really allows you to 
hydrate any dry patches of dough. Now, this recipe is a no- needed variant of the bagel recipe in 
my cookbook, Simple Pleasures. I’ll leave a link below. The water amount is different for this 
recipe. However, if you do want to use a stand mixer, use the ratios in my cookbook. Cover the 
dough and let it rest for 30 minutes to allow the flour to properly hydrate. After 30 minutes, we’re 
going to do what we do with no need bread making, a round of stretches and folds. You mostly see 
this for high hydration doughs, but did you know you can use the same method for lower hydration 
doughs? We just do it a little bit differently. Weigh your hand and perform your first series 
of stretches and folds, turning the bowl as we go. Take one side of the dough, stretch, and fold 
the dough onto the opposite side. Do about four to five folds. Then take your wet hand and push 
the dough under itself, creating a rounded ball. This method along with the stretches and folds 
allows you to start to develop gluten network. As you can see, we went from a shaggy dough to a nice 
plump dough. Cover the no need dough and set aside for 30 minutes to allow the gluten to relax. Then 
come back and do a second series of stretches and folds. You want to do about four to five folds per 
every session. You’ll know when to stop because the dough won’t be elastic anymore. You’ll try to 
stretch it and it will feel tense. At that point, using a wet hand, you’re going to again ball up 
the dough as we did before and come back in 30 minutes and perform your third series of stretches 
and folds. You want to repeat this process another two times. So, you’ve done four rounds of 
stretches and folds in total. After every series, you do want to ball up the dough, pushing 
the dough under itself and creating a smooth, plump dough. After the last series of stretches 
and folds, cover the dough and allow to rise for about 30 minutes to an hour, depending on what 
time of the year you’re making bagels. We want the dough to double in size. Transfer your dough 
onto your clean work surface, and we’re going to make bagels. You’re going to divide the dough in 
12 equal portions. Each portion should be about 100 g. I like to weigh the dough, but it’s not 
necessary. Just try to make the bagels as even as possible. We want these to bake evenly, of course. 
Now, normally what you do is you roll out each portion of dough into a bowl. And usually using 
your fingers, you punch out a hole through the middle. I personally use a different method, which 
is much faster in my opinion, and also gives you a more precise bagel as you’ll see. This is how I do 
it. Roll the doughs into balls, but don’t puncture the hole just yet. Set the balls of dough onto 
some parchment paper. Cover and set aside for 40 minutes. In the meantime, bring a large saucepan 
of water to a simmer. This step is what gives the bagels that characteristic chewy texture. There 
is no going around this step. Now, as mentioned, there are different ways to shape bagels, but I’m 
going to show you the easiest way to get a great result. Fast forward 40 minutes later, just 
before dipping each bagel into the hot water, we now punch a hole out. You can use a small 
cookie cutter, anything that’s small and sharp. I like to use the back of a piping tip. The reason 
I like to cut the hole now instead of earlier, is so the bagel maintains the hole. If you 
were to make the hole in the beginning, as the bagels rise, they will lose their hole. 
Lower each bagel with its parchment paper into the hot water bath for about 30 seconds to a minute. 
The bagel should float. If they do not float, that means the dough hasn’t risen enough. Now, how 
does putting the bagels into hot water make the interior so deliciously dense and chewy? Well, 
it’s all about starch. When we put the bagels in very hot water that’s above 180° F, starch 
granules at the surface of the dough burst, releasing starch molecules that then link together 
to make a wrinkly skin around the bagel. The skin is tough enough to stop the bagels expanding as 
they bake. And because the bagels can’t expand, the interior is kept deliciously chewy. This 
step is what really makes a bagel a bagel. I call this the prune stage. If you’ve never made 
bagels before, you might think you ruined them, but fear not. I hope you can now see that 
it’s exactly what we want. As they bake, the skin on the bagels smooths out and loses its 
wrinkles. If only this method of wrinkle removal worked for skin care. Place the bagels on your 
lined baking sheets using a slotted spoon. And you want to leave enough space between each bagel. 
Brush each bagel with a beaten egg white and add your toppings. Everything bagel seasoning is 
a classic, but even just a mixture of sesame seeds or poppy seeds or even pumpkin seeds, it is 
fall after all, is delicious. Bake the bagels in a preheated oven at 430° F, that’s 220° C, for about 
16 to 20 minutes or until golden. You’re going to allow the bagels to sit for 5 minutes on the 
pan and then place them on a rack to cool. Now, homemade bagels are delicious as they are. They’re 
so good. There’s no need to toast these. However, this bagel recipe does make a big batch. And if 
you’re not going to eat your bagels super fresh, toasting them is the way to go. Of course, I’m 
using this maiden carbon steel pan to toast them. Now look, I know many people use non-stick pans 
for everything, but I want to encourage you to think about using the right pan for the right 
application. In this case, when you want to get your pan super hot, please do not use a non-stick 
pan. High heat will eventually ruin the coating on the non-stick pan. But with carbon steel, there’s 
no problem. It’s the perfect cross between a cast iron pan and a stainless steel frying pan. It 
heats up quickly. It’s light enough to handle and gives you incredible heat control. As you 
use and season your carbon steel pan, it will develop a naturally non-stick surface. These pans 
can really handle high heat and go from stove top to oven to even an open fire up to 1,200°. 
You can check out the carbon steel collection and my other favorite cookware from Maiden by 
using the link in the description box below.