How to Bake Gluten Free Bagels

Let’s start with a brief overview of bagel making. First you mix your dough. Then you form the dough into the bagel shape. After that, the bagels rest and rise. The fourth step is to boil the bagels, and then we let them air dry and put them in the oven to bake.

This is definitely not a quick recipe for a hurried morning! However, it is a fun recipe to make and you’ll may want to include a few family members in the bagel forming step. Definitely gather the entire household to watch the boiling process!

What’s In A Bagel?

The must have ingredients in a bagel are water, yeast, flour, salt, and of course xanthan gum since we’re making these GF.   Eggs, oil and sugar may be added in some recipes, but are not essential to a bagel.

The flour mix that I use in the recipe is my all-purpose flour mix: brown rice flour, cornstarch, garfava or sorghum flour, and masa harina.  If you are allergic to corn, substitute tapioca starch for the cornstarch, and coconut flour for the masa harina.   To the flour I add xanthan gum – 1 teaspoon for each cup of flour in the recipe.  If you decide to convert a bagel recipe that you find elsewhere, just replace the flour with my flour mix and add a teaspoon of xanthan gum for each cup of flour.

The recipe that I’m using for this lesson does contain eggs, oil and sugar.  The sugar helps feed the yeast and contributes to a darker crust. If you are avoiding added sugar, you can leave this out.  To compensate, let the bagels rest (and rise) for a longer period after you form them.  Bagels that have risen enough will quickly float to the top of the boiling water. If your bagels don’t, let them rest longer next time. It will take some experimentation, but if you take good notes each time you should be able to figure out the appropriate time within a few batches.

If you leave the eggs and oil out of the recipe, you will need to add water to compensate. Watch the video to see the texture of the dough, so that you can add water (1 Tablespoon at a time) until you get the right texture. You may also cut the amount of salt in half if you are watching your sodium.

The dough for bagels should be tacky, but easy to knead and work with.  When you knead the dough and roll it out into strips you should not have to use any flour on your board.  In fact, if you do flour your board then you won’t be able to join the dough into a circle.

How To Get the Hole Into A Bagel

There are two basic methods of forming a bagel. The first, and the one that I prefer and demonstrate in the video, is to roll the dough out into a long round cylinder and then form it into a circle.  I’m sure that most of you have done this with play-dough at some point in your life. The key to this method is to make sure that the ends of the dough are well connected. If they are not, then they may come apart in the boiling water. If that happens it’s not the end of the world. The taste  of the bagel is not affected, just the appearance.

The second method for forming the bagel is to form the dough pieces into balls and then use your hands to form a hold in the middle. Many of my students have found this method to be the easiest method. I hold the dough in both hands and use the thumb and forefinger of both hands to pinch a hold through the middle. Keeping my hands in the same position, I then work the dough around clockwise, spreading the hole larger as the dough turns. My RV kitchen has very limited counter space for rolling dough out, so this is the method that I used the last time I made bagels.

One interesting alteration of this technique that I found in Cook’s Illustrated showed the hole being formed with the end of a wooden spoon.  The bagel rested on a flat surface, with the end of the wood spoon stuck through the center of the bagel, perpendicular to the bagel. The spoon was then moved in a circular motion, causing the bagel to spin around the spoon and form a larger and larger circle.

After the bagels are formed, lay a barely damp kitchen towel over them and leave them to rest for 20 minutes. Many of the recipes that I read said that you should let the bagels rise overnight in the refrigerator. I have not tested this.  The bagels that I’ve made have just had the 20 minute rest and they turned out extremely well. I think that the additional rising time would allow a stonger yeasty taste to develop.  This is a recipe variation that is worth testing, especially if you plan well enough to make the dough the night before you’re going to want bagels.

Boiling and Baking the Bagel:

The key to making a good bagel is to boil the bagels and then bake them in a hot oven.  The bagels are boiled in water. Many recipes add salt, sugar, malt, honey, and or baking soda to the water.  The purpose of these additions is to increase the chewiness and shininess of the crust.  The amount of these ingredients, and the amount of water for boiling, is incredibly variable between the different recipes that I’ve studied – which leads me to believe that you can add them, or leave them out as you wish.  I did not note a significant difference when I added salt and sugar to the water and when I left the water plain. I have not tried malt (obviously – it’s not GF) or honey. Baking soda, however, makes a huge difference. The baking soda increases the pH of the water and the result is a much, much darker crust.

The amount of time that the bagels boil varies greatly between recipes too. Many recipes call for 1 minute of boiling on each side, but other recipes that seemed just as authoritative (e.g. recipes from former bagel shop owners) called for a longer boil of 3 minutes on each side. I averaged it out and have been doing a 3 minute boil on the first side and 1.5 minutes on the second side.

Once the bagels have boiled, they should be removed from the water and allowed to dry. I set them on a wire rack so that the water can drip off easily. If you are planning to add toppings to your bagel, add them while the bagel is still wet so that they will stick. If you sprinkle the toppings from a height of 12 inches you will get a much more even coating than if you sprinkle from a lesser height.  

The bagels should then be put into a pre-heated oven.  Oven temperatures vary in recipes, but after reading many, it seems that a hot oven is better. The lowest temperature that I’ve used is 350 degrees and it took the bagels 25-35 minutes to get a completely brown crust.  The highest temperature that I saw in a recipe was 500 degrees.  Some recipes said to bake the bagels on a baking sheet; others suggested a hot pizza stone.  I tested the accompanying recipes on a baking sheet at 350 degrees. If you use a higher temperature or a baking stone, then I would start checking the bagels at 15 minutes.  You’re looking for a completely browned crust.

Bagel Storage:

I’ll admit, we usually eat all of the bagels within 30 minutes of them coming out of the oven. However, I have managed to test refrigerator and freezer storage for leftover bagels and freezer storage won out.  Toasting the leftover bagels helps a great deal, whether they’ve been stored in the refrigerator or freezer.