Asher's Perfect New York-style Bagels
907 g all-purpose or unbleached flour (include a half-cup of wheat gluten), or just use all bread flour
2 1/4 cups hot water
2 T barley malt syrup
1.5 tsp instant yeast
1.5 T sea salt
Option toppings: sesame seeds, poppy seeds, caraway seeds, onion and garlic flakes...
Step 1: Sponge
In a large bowl, mix hot water with barley malt syrup. Let it cool to a comfortable bath temperature (you can put your finger in and it doesn’t hurt) so it won’t kill the yeast. Add yeast, and about a quarter to a third of the flour, and mix to make a sponge (should be the consistency of thick pancake batter). Cover bowl with plastic and let this proof for 1 hour.
Step 2: Dough
Add most of the rest of the flour (reserve just enough for countertop kneading), and the salt, mixing it into the sponge, till you have a shaggy dough that may initially seem a bit too dry. You’re aiming for a stiff but slightly elastic dough. Knead the dough forcefully for 10 full minutes, till it becomes smooth and workable, and all the dry bits have been well incorporated. If it still remains too dry as you knead it, you can add a little water, a teaspoon at a time. Clean out the mixing bowl, lightly oil it, put the dough ball back in the bowl and cover it with plastic. Let it proof for an hour. Do not add any flour after this point or you won’t be able to shape the bagels properly (the ends won’t seal together).
Step 3: Shaping the bagels
Punch the dough down and turn it out of the bowl. Weigh the ball of dough (should come to about 1440 g) and divide by 12 to calculate the target bagel weight. Cut the dough into 12 roughly equal pieces. Weigh each piece, pinching off or adding smidgens till it’s close to the target weight (or just eyeball it, if you’re not worried about evenness of size). Flatten each piece into a disc about 6” diameter, squeezing out any air bubbles. Fold the sides in and roll into a cylinder as shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udnj19AfA54. Put the cylinder on a covered plate. Once all 12 are rolled, let them rest for 5 minutes. Take a cylinder and roll it out into a snake, about 10” long, with your palms, on an unfloured counter top. Wrap the dough snake around your hand, with an inch or two of overlap, and roll this overlapped bit out between your palm and the countertop (as shown in the clip above), so the ends seal together (a few drops of water may help). Place on a baking sheet lined with a silicone mat. Cover. When all 12 bagels have been shaped, let them proof for an hour on the baking sheet, covered. Or if you’re not in a hurry you can put them into the fridge and let them retard (slow-proof) overnight.
Step 4: Boiling and baking
Preheat oven to 400°. Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil (resist temptation to add salt or other additives to the water as suggested by some online recipes). Boil 2 or 3 bagels at a time (they will float, unless you’ve done something very wrong), depending on size of pot, 30 seconds on each side, and return to silicone mat. Put toppings on bagels at this point, just after boiling (minced onion, poppy and sesame seeds are good), either by dipping one side, or sprinkling on top. Bake for 20 minutes. Cool on wire rack.
A note on eating bagels: Supposedly, bagels should be eaten warm, 15 minutes or so from the oven, cut in half lengthwise. If they’re not fresh from the oven, you can toast them (I actually prefer them this way). Bagels can be frozen to keep them fresh. The bagel should be eaten open-face. The proper way to eat a bagel is with a little unsalted butter, then a generous slathering of cream cheese. The addition of lox will transform your bagel from merely a simple pleasure to a sublime religious experience. Furthermore, a very thin slice of onion and a not-so-thin slice of tomato on top, and a sprinkling of capers, will cause angels to burst forth in songs of praise. Conversely, trying to turn bagels into a sort of sweet bun, by adding raisins, blueberries, chocolate chips, etc., is a category error of the gravest sort. Just don’t, OK?
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