How To Make Smooth Bagels

One of the struggles with making homemade bagels is getting the surface of the bagel to be smooth. Today I made smooth bagels so I wanted to sit down and take a few notes on what I did while it’s all fresh in my memory.

1. Use weight measurements Until this morning I’d been using a bagel recipe that was measured in cups and teaspoons. Before I started baking this morning I sat down and converted the recipe to grams based on some of my previous notes about how much the flour should weigh. I used the new weight measurements in the bagels that I made this morning and the dough was great to work with – very smooth. The recipes in this class have been updated to the gram measurements.

2. Get your hands dirty The bagel dough has to be very stiff. I use my hands to mix the dough together because it won’t come together with a mixer. Your hands will get very doughy! Once all of the flour is mixed in you can scrape the dough off your hands as best you can. From the point just knead the dough until is is very smooth.

This dough is sticky and will make a mess of your hands. If you find that it’s too sticky for you to deal with, then work some additional flour into the dough and use the method below to form the shape of your bagel.

3. Start with a ball of dough Once you’ve separated the dough into equal portions (see instructions in recipe), roll each piece of dough between your hands so that it forms a smooth ball. The more you roll, the smoother the surface of the ball will become. Once you have a smooth ball, flatten in slightly and then use the forefinger and thumb of each hand to pinch a hold into the center of the dough. You can gently spread the hold open as you move the dough around 360 degrees, or you can twirl the bagel around your index finger. That’s more fun =)

At this point, the bagel should look like these. These bagels stayed smooth as they rested, and as they boiled. When the bagels came out of the oven, they were beautiful.