The Best Homemade New York Bagels

Chewy New York style bagels fresh from your own oven

Recipe: https://www.joshuaweissman.com/recipes/the-best-homemade-new-york-bagels-recipe

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You know, a lot of people have told me if you don’t live in New York City, you can’t make a good bagel. That’s not true. An owner of one of the greatest bagel shops in New York City called Utopia Bagels, he is making some of the greatest bagels of all time, but so are all of his competitors and the people around him, and they’re all using the exact same water. But for some reason, his bagels are better. It comes down to one thing, and that is technique. And the beauty of a great bagel is the technique can be rather simple. just about giving it the right love and using the right ingredients, which sure, water comes into play with the flavor and the final product of what you’re making. I’m not going to say that that’s not true, but the point is, you can make bagels at home. You can make them just about nearly as good as a New York bagel. With that being said, let’s make this, shall we? We’re going to start by mixing our dough by hand. No stand mixer required. Then, we’ll make our own customized everything bagel seasoning. We’ll then shape the bagels, showing you three different ways to shape a bagel. Boil, bake, cool, slice, and serve however you like. Oh god, I love bagels. Except for when they’re We have 360 ml of water, 360 gram of water, if you will. Around 85 to 90° Fahrenheit. We’re going to add 3 g of instant yeast. Whisk that in until it’s dissolved. Really make sure it’s dissolved. It’s not a lot because it’s going to be proofing for a long long long long long time. And then you’re going to add 2 and 1/2 teaspoons or around 18 g of barley malt syrup. Oh, I don’t have that. Okay, then replace with sugar. But the barley malt syrup is what’s going to help give it that bagley flavor. It’s also going to help it bake a little better. It’s going to give it some burnished brown deliciousness. You know, the GBD, the crispy crackly. Just going to whisk that in till it’s totally dissolved. I want you to smell this. Am I getting like a story of bagel in my nose? Big bowl. Four cups or 600 g of bread flour. A nice bread flour. Okay. If it’s weak, it won’t hold all this water. Then you’re going to add one tablespoon or around 16 grams of kosher salt. Yes, this has a lot of salt in it. And that is for good reason. Whisk that in. Make sure it’s thoroughly incorporated. Then you’re going to add all of your liquid. Now wait, you could do this in a stand mixer. It’s a lot easier. You can just kind of set it in, forget it until it’s done. You don’t have a stand mixer, you got this. And so I’m doing it with my hand just to prove a point. All your liquid will go in. Some of your barley malt syrup will try to lag behind. Don’t allow that. And you’re just going to mix that gently by hand. This is a stiff dough, so it’s going to take a minute for it to come together. Just get your fingers in there. Get it working. Again, this is easier to make in a stand mixer, but it’s not impossible to make it without one. Once that starts to come together, you’re going to knead that. Get all those dry bits of flour incorporated as quickly as you can so you don’t get lumps in here. We do not want lumps. Okay, we have one cohesive dough. Looks beautiful. Now, I want you to knead it a little bit in the bowl till it starts to smooth out a little bit. Get your elbow grease in there. We’re working hard for these bagels. It’s really not that hard, honestly. Like, anybody can do this. It just takes a little bit of practice, a little bit of time. Once you have a cohesive dough, it’s a little easier to knead it out of the bowl. So, take it out of the bowl, place it on a work surface, a clean one, please. We’re going to knead that for about 3 to 5 minutes or until you get a nice smooth tensile and stretchy dough. Okay. It’s soft. It’s stretchy. If you were to pull it like this and stretch it very thin, it doesn’t tear. It actually holds kind of what’s representative of maybe a window pane. The window pane test. Yes. If it passes the window pane test, it’s done. So, we’re going to form that into a lightly tot ball. Not too crazy. And we have a lovely bowl, the same bowl we used before. I cleaned it out slightly. Spray it with a touch cooking spray so it doesn’t stick. Pop that bad boy in there. Like to flatten it out. That’s personal preference. We’re going to cover this with plastic wrap. You’re going to leave this out at room temperature for like 30 to 45 minutes. Not a full hour. It doesn’t matter if it doubles. That’s not what we’re looking for. We’re just looking for a little bit of gas, a little bit of fermentation to happen. And then we’re going to shape. Then you’ll see what happens. Everything bagel seasoning. Super easy to make except you have to have the ingredients. If you don’t have them, go get them. If you don’t want to buy all of them, you could always just do sesame seeded or just do plain bagels. So, 3 tablespoons of sesame seeds, 2 tbsps of poppy seeds, 1 tbsp of onion flakes, half a tablespoon of dried garlic flakes, and 1 tbsp of flaky salt. You don’t usually see that in a lot of everything bagel seasonings, but I like a little salt on there. Now, you can use a whisk. Just stir that up. You can also just use your hands and kind of get in there and toss it together. But that’s it. You have everything bagel seasoning. Literally just mix the ingredients together. Shaping bagels. I’m going to show you three different ways to shape a bagel. Now, first you need bagel dough, which is done. You can see it didn’t rise that much. That’s kind of the whole point. But if it did get any gas, push that out. You’re going to carefully try to get this out in one piece. And I like to sort of roughly shape it into a rectangle. Then we’re just going to split that in half lengthwise. And really, you only need about eight pieces. Each piece needs to weigh around 128 g each. You don’t have to be super exact. Baking sheet tray. Spray with a touch of cooking oil. And you’re going to generously fine cornmeal it. You can always do, I guess, grease, parchment. I like to do this method. Just feels old school and fun. Now, I’m going to show you the hardest way first, which is rolling the bagel. It’s the more traditional way to shape them. I’m not very good at it, but I also kind of roughly get it. I’m going to try for you. You’re going to take this and you’re going to roll it into a log that’s about 7ish in. Then you’re going to bring it around your hand, meet with the other end, and then you’re going to roll that edge till it comes together and forms together into one singular piece. And like I said, I’m not very good at it. So my rolled bagels always look trash. The more you practice it, the better you’ll get at that. An easier version of that would be this. Instead, get your bagel rolled out. Same concept, right? Slightly longer. Maybe more like 8 in roughly. Then you take a rolling pin and to one side, you’re going to flatten that side out like very very very flat. You’re going to take the other side, wrap it around, place it in the middle, and then wrap your flattened dough around your other side of bagel. And then simply pinch and cinch it shut. Turn it over. See, doesn’t that already look better? It’ll look beautiful when it rises. You can stretch it out, make it a little longer if you want the hole a little bigger, and pop that down in there. The final and the easiest way, my favorite way, the way that I usually do it, weigh them all to 128. This eliminates a lot of guesswork. You can also add more dough when you’re weighing it in case you miscalculate the weight. All right. Now, once you have your individual pieces, you’re then going to roll them to light balls. Repeat that with all of your dough pieces. Then just cover that with a damp towel. Let that rest for 10 minutes. And then I’ll show you the top secret Josh method. Now, after your 10-minute rest, really easy. So, you’re going to take one of these balls, thumb and index finger, place your thumb right in the center, your index finger in the center on the other side, and you’re just going to pinch all the way through until there’s a hole. You’re going to work your fingers in there. Then, you’re just going to rotate, roll it around, stretch out each side to make sure that each angle of this bagel is even. You don’t really want one fatter than the other. I guess you could. It wouldn’t end your bagel universe, but, you know, it just looks a little nicer. Once you’ve done that, transfer that over to your tray. You got a bagel. Then you just rinse and repeat with the rest of these bad boys. It’s really quite easy. Honestly, you don’t have to over complicate it. I like this method because it’s something that everybody can do. Skilled, not skilled, it doesn’t really matter. And you can make a beautiful bagel. It’s not the traditional way and purists will yell at you for it, but you know what? You want bagels and I want you to have bagels and this will grant you that power. Give them a light one of those just so your plastic wrap does not stick to it in the event that they touch the bagels. Now you’re just going to tightly wrap these so no air can get into this. Let this proof for like 5 to 10 minutes at room temperature just to get a little bit of fermentation going. And then you’re going to place them in the fridge overnight. It’s time to boil our bagels. We have our beautifully proofed bagels which have been proofed overnight. We have exactly 3 quarts of water in this pot set to medium high. We’re going to get that boiling now. To that you’re going to add a pinch of kosher salt. Around 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of barley malt syrup. Now, this is optional, but I like to add it. It’s also why I’m wearing gloves and why you should wear gloves if you’re doing it. A half teaspoon of food grade lie. Now, you don’t see this in every bagel recipe. I find it gives it a superior exterior crunch while keeping the inside super moist. It also just colors them really beautifully. You see this used in pretzel making all the time. It’s very common. It’s safe to do once you’ve baked the bagels. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to do it. We’re going to add that in very carefully. Yeah, that’s why. And then you’re going to whisk it all together till completely dissolved and evenly dispersed. Now listen, once that lie is in this pan, do not let the water or the lie touch your hands, at least not your bare hands. So wear gloves at all times when handling lie, period. If you don’t know how it works, I would recommend googling it and looking up safety precautions to take when handling lie. We’re going to boil as many as we can fit in here, right? Like the bigger the pot, the better. So, we’re going to grab one of our bagels and I want you to lay them in top side down first and then you’ll do the bottom. So, we’re at a boil top side down and top side down. We’re going to boil those just like that for about 30 seconds. Now, flip and boil on the other side another 30 seconds. And then from there, you’re going to take a spider, pick them up, drain them as much as you can of their water, trans to a parchment lined baking sheet. Four to a sheet. You could probably fit more. I just do four for the sake of precaution. But once they come out, if you are going to coat them, I’m going to coat some of these with everything and some of them I won’t. But you need to coat them immediately so that the coating sticks. Okay? In this case, I got everything bagel seasoning going on this guy. The other two I’m going to keep totally clean. Then just repeat with the rest of your bagels. Simple as that. So, this is going to go into a 450°ree oven for around 15 to 18 minutes. Okay. Bada bing. Bada boom. See you in a minute. 15 to 18 of them. All right. We have our bagels. Look at these bad boys. They look crisp. They look nice. We’re going to let them cool for a few minutes on here and then we’ll transfer them over to a wire rack to cool the rest of the way. Topping a bagel simple, right? You can eat it straight up. You can eat it with butter. Really, the right way is with cream cheese and you can just enjoy it like that. Or you can top it with the most beautiful bagel topping I could possibly think of, which starts with a very thinly sliced tomato. I don’t like my tomato cut super thick. I like it more of like maybe like an eighth of an inch thick. Could you go thicker? I’m not stopping you. Point is, cut it nice, make it delicious. For your red onion, I also want that cut paper thin. You could do that with a knife, no problem. If you have a mandolin, highly recommended. So, cut the top off like that. Peel the first layer. So, take your knife, make a small incision, and just run your knife along to the base and peel off that first layer of onion. I don’t mean the hard crispy exterior. I mean literally the first layer of onion beyond that. So, technically, I guess it would be the second layer. I find that that layer is half waxy skin, half onion. Sometimes it’s not good. Just take it off. Mandolin. I want this set as thinly as you can get it while still maintaining whole slices. I don’t want half slices. So, just give it a few runs. Super scary. Look at these beautiful, luscious rings. You can wash those in ice water. Shock them in ice water. They’ll be a little bit crispier, a little cleaner tasting. Or you can just leave them as is. It’s a red onion, so it’s already pretty subtle as it is. The rest of your stuff is pretty much already prepped. We have capers, we have whipped cream cheese, and we have whole dill. So, let’s cut and assemble our bagel. Slice one of your bagels in half. Spread some cream cheese on both sides. Add a touch of flaky salt on both sides of a tomato slice. Top that with a little bit of Nova locks. Thinly sliced red onion, a few sprigs of dill capers, and crown your king. The labor of love. We have a finished sandwich. Oh, also, you know, we got a plain bagel right here. See how I’m still chewing? I just want you to listen to this. I mean, the chew, the crunch, the flavor. Even the bagel itself is seasoned really nicely with salt. It’s got that malty bagley flavor. It’s got that crispy crust and the lie added this great just sort of burnish wheat flavor which I love. But let’s see it all put together. Cream cheese locks the classic combo on an everything bagel which is my personal favorite. Instant banger instant. And when you put all these ingredients together it somehow becomes something else, something even more special. So for people who don’t live in New York City and don’t have access to these bagels, this comes close. And I’m proud of this recipe. So, uh, love you so much. Subscribe. The link’s in the description for the recipe. Don’t forget to get that. Bye. [Music]