The Secret to Authentic New York Style Bagels at Home

Hey, what's up? Today, I'm going to show you exactly how to make an authentic New York bagel at home conveniently without a stand mixer. In this video, I'm going to show you how to build the dough for maximum chewiness and how to ferment it like a professional baker to get that signature blistered New York bagel crust that the bagels in your town wish they had. And if you're questioning how authentic a New York bagel made by a Chicago guy who lives in St. Louis could be, let me just say that I went to some extreme lengths to develop this recipe, and I even enlisted the help of a bagel professional to help me uncover some of the truths at the core of this bagel. Now, to make these New York bagels, we need to start with the dough. For that, into a medium bowl, I'll measure 530 grams of 86F tap water. Later in this video, I'm going to be testing the tap water from New York City to see if it really makes as much of a difference in the final bagel as the people from New York claim it does. Next, in goes three grams of instant yeast, then I'll stir that yeast into the water. Bagel dough is notoriously dry, and if you don't dissolve the yeast first, it won't get fully activated. Next, I'll add in 940 grams of bread flour, then 10 grams of diastatic malt powder. Malt powder helps us get more vigorous fermentation, and as a result, we'll get deeper browns and a thinner, crispier crust during the bake. I get my malt powder on Amazon, and I'll link to that down below if you're interested. If you have no malt powder, I'd say sub in 10 grams of sugar. It's not the same, but it's a step in the right direction. Lastly, I'll add in 20 grams of salt, then grab a sturdy spoon and stir the dry into the wet, or until the dough starts to come together into a shaggy mess. Once I can't stir no more, I'm going to switch over to a soaking wet hand, then I'll jump back into the bowl and squeeze and fold this mixture until it's well combined. If you're wondering, hey Bri, can I use a stand mixer for this instead, well, yes, but just know that this dough is super dry, and that makes it really taxing on the low powered motor in your home stand mixer. I don't like using a mixer because at the scale of home bagel making, it doesn't increase bagel quality, it just makes the process physically a little bit easier. Commercial bagel shops in New York use big mixers because it's physically impossible to knead the 300 pounds of bagel dough they're making by hand. Speaking of kneading, once this is relatively well combined like this, it's time to knead it. Next, I need to take this clod of dough and knead it for a little while to actually develop the gluten. So to do that, I'm going to flip it out onto my cutting board, and then just start to put some effort into it. My preferred method for kneading is just pushing the dough out with my palm, and switching to my other hand and pushing out with my palm. It's that simple. Now I'm just going to repeat that for about 8-10 minutes until I've got something that has a decent amount of strength built in. Now when I say dough strength, I'm referring to the amount of gluten that's linked up inside of the dough, and it's important for bagels for two main reasons. Number one is, we need a certain amount of gluten development so that the dough can actually be workable. Remember, we're going to be twisting this into a ring shape later on, so the dough needs some baseline level of strength so that it doesn't fall apart. And then number two, and probably more importantly, chewiness is directly correlated with dough strength. So the stronger our dough, the chewier the bagel, and when it comes to bagels, chewiness is the whole game. Once my hands are tired and this dough is starting to feel quite strong, I'm going to give it a quick tug to see if the gluten is as linked up as I think it is, and yeah, that looks pretty good. No tearing or shearing, and the dough feels almost like a rubber band. It snaps right back. Another method that people like to use to determine how developed the gluten in a dough is is called the windowpane test. Basically, you just grab a grip of the dough and spread it out with your fingers until it's thin enough that you can see some light through it. That's not my favorite because I think it's kind of tricky to get right and it might give people some mixed feedback. So for me, I always prefer the simpler method of just tugging the dough to see if it tears, and if it doesn't, it's good to go. Once my dough is kneaded, I'm going to move it over to a medium bowl, cover with a lid, and bulk ferment for one hour while I thank Trade Coffee for sponsoring this video. Trade is a coffee marketplace that matches customers with great coffee from local roasters all across the country. Basically, if you drink coffee, trade is for you. It's the best way that I've found to try a lot of different small batch specialty coffees without having to source them myself. Plus, Trade's coffee is always roasted to order and it ships to you within 48 hours. I love Trade because they have a huge variety of options, including a ton of decaf options, which is usually what I order, but they also just launched a selection of iced and cold brew coffee that includes ready-to-drink cans, a monthly plan of rotating coffees that are great over ice, and all-in-one kits like this Ovalware cold brew kit. Lauren really loved this cold brew roast that we got from Alma Coffee last time, so we ordered that again, but you can choose your roast, including decaf, and your grind type. So to unlock the freshest coffee experience this summer, head to drinktrade.com slash Brian to shop their full cold coffee selection. Plus, you can subscribe today and save 30% on your first order at drinktrade.com slash Brian. I drink Trade Coffee's pretty much every morning and it's a pure delight. Give it a try. One hour later, when I check back, you can see this dough has risen by about 50% and it's looking sturdy. So now I'm going to shape it into bagels. For that, I'll cut the dough down into 12 pieces that are about 120 grams each. Now to shape these bagels, I'm going to grab a piece of dough, degas it a little bit and press it out into a rectangle. Then I'm going to roll it back towards myself two or three times until it's in a four or five inch cigar shape. Then I'm going to take both hands and just roll it out until it's about 10 inches. By the way, I don't want the ends to be too tapered here because that'll lead to a thin spot in the bagel. So once I've got this rolled out to about 10 inches, I'm going to wrap it around my hand and then overlap it about three inches. Then I'm going to give it a good squeeze to seal those two ends together. And once it's wrapped around my hand, I'm just going to put it on my cutting board and roll back and forth to really press down on that seam and get the two sides sealed together. Then I'll just kind of give it a little bit of a steering wheel roundabout maneuver to seal in all the juices. And there we go. Perfectly shaped bagel. From here, I'll shape the other 11 bagels and then lay them out on two parchment lined sheet trays that I've lightly sprayed with pan spray. Now to keep these things from drying out during their long cold fermentation, I'll cover. That could be with plastic wrap if that's what you've got, but I prefer these little half sheet tray covers. They allow you to stack the sheet trays in the fridge and they allow plenty of room for the dough to proof. Now I'm going to move both trays over to my fridge and cold ferment for as little as four hours, but preferably 24. Time to finally pay homage to Good Eats on this channel. At this point, I should mention that in my opinion, cold fermentation is the biggest factor when it comes to recreating the aesthetics of the New York bagel at home. Cold fermentation allows the yeast to convert the sugars in the flour into much more complicated flavors without producing excessive gas. That part is really important. An overly gassed up bagel is going to deflate when we boil it and then we'll be left with a dry roll type thing that isn't a bagel. Also, cold fermentation really dramatically improves the aesthetics of the bagel's crust. Here's a side-by-side of a bagel that I boiled and baked after 60 minutes of fermentation and one with 24 hours of cold fermentation. You can see with the same dough but different fermentation time, we have very, very different outcomes. The same day bagel is dull and has a monotone golden color and flavor, and the overnight fermented bagel has about a thousand different shades of brown, blonde, red, and orange and it's got a beautiful shine to it that you only see in a proper New York bagel. 24 hours later, I'll pull my bagels out of the fridge and you can see they have risen slightly but not much. Again, too much gas is suboptimal. Next I'll drop about 4 quarts of water and bring it up to a boil on the stove. Then I'll add in 50 grams of molasses. Most bagel shops will boil with barley malt syrup, but that's expensive and much harder to come by than molasses, which is available at all grocery stores. Now I'm going to preheat my oven to 475F, then I'm going to prep my bagel boards. If you haven't heard of them before, a bagel board is just a plank of cedar with burlap stapled to it. Bagel boards allow us to bake the bagels without developing too much of a crust on either side. And probably more importantly, a bagel board keeps the seeds on the bagel from burning during the bake. I got my bagel boards on Amazon for a pretty reasonable price, but they're also super easy to make yourself. Just buy two 12-inch planks of cedar and staple on this very specific bagel burlap. Link to the burlap and the pre-made bagel boards in the description. If you wanted to skip the bagel boards, you could use a sheet tray, but you'll need to lower your bagel expectations. With a boardless bagel, you end up getting too much color on top and the bagels end up being super crusty, but not in the way we're looking for. Now to prep these for baking, I'm going to soak them with water until the burlap is saturated and the cedar has absorbed a decent amount of water. From here, I'm going to head over to my bagel tray and cut my parchment paper into six pieces. This will allow me to drop the bagels into the water without degassing them, and it's going to help me keep track of which side is the top, which is pretty important, and you'll see why in just a second. Over at my pot, I'm going to carefully drop three of these bagels in the water, with the top side, or the side that was facing up in the fridge overnight, being the first side that goes into the water. In goes the other two, then I'll cook all three on the first side for 30 seconds. After 30 seconds, I'll come back and flip these things over and boil them on what I'm calling the bottom side, or the side that was touching the sheet tray in the fridge all night, and I'll cook these for another 30 seconds. After 30 seconds on each side, I'm going to scoot these bagels over to a sheet tray, making sure to keep them oriented the same way, meaning the bottom is facing the tray and the top is facing up. Next, I'll drop in three more bagels, then cook for 30 seconds per side, then I'll move them over to my tray with bagels one, two, and three. Once all six bagels are boiled, I'm going to orient them top side facing down on my wet burlap, then I'm going to move all six bagels over to a preheated 475F oven, onto a pizza steel or stone, and bake them for five minutes. Again, the bagel boards create steam, which allows a much higher rise, and more importantly, they keep the bagels from getting too crusty on either side. After five minutes, I'll come back and flip these over so the burlap side is facing up, then I'll close the oven door and bake for 12 to 15 more minutes. And after about 20 minutes of bake time, it's time to pull these out and assess their quality. Mmm, it's got a super thin veneer of crispy crust on the outside, and then it's chewy bread all the way through. It's not super dense though, it's open and fluffy and works your jaw the perfect amount. What about seeds though, Brian? Well, to cover these things in seeds, we'll need to repeat the boiling process exactly the same as before. Then, I'll lift them out of the water and drop them directly onto a plate or sheet tray full of the seeds of your choice, importantly, with the top side facing down. Once the bagels are coated all over, I'll carefully move them over to soaked bagel boards and drop them back in the oven and bake for five minutes, seed side down. Halfway through, I'll carefully flip them over and bake for another 12 to 15. And that's how you make a world-class New York style bagel anywhere in the world. But wait, I know thousands of people on the East Coast are in the comments right now saying New York water is actually the thing that makes New York bagels so special. First of all, the idea that tap water in New York City is somehow magical for bagels or pizza seems really dumb to me, but I felt that I couldn't make a claim that this bagel is authentic unless I tried it for myself. So just to be sure, I decided to fly to New York, get tap water straight from the taps at one of the best bagel shops in the city, Apollo Bagels, then I packed the water in my suitcase and flew back to St. Louis and mixed two identical doughs, one with my Missouri River tap water and one with the smuggled New York tap straight from the bagel shop. Then I arranged a blind tasting. I brought in my longtime friend and owner of Union Bagel in St. Louis and former New York liver, Ted Wilson. Bagel A. Bagel B? You can't tell the difference. You can't tell the difference because it doesn't f***ing matter. It's the... It's... Sorry! Now that we've cleared that up, we can move on to eating these bagels. But before I build one of these, I'm going to need to throw 450 grams or one pound of cream cheese into my stand mixer, then drizzle in 50 grams of milk and a pinch of salt. Then I'm going to whip it hard for two minutes to get cheese that has that classic schmear texture. Thinning out the cream cheese is essential here. If you don't, it's too thick and it just tears up the bagel and is overall too sticky. You guys, the New York bagel is one of America's truly great foods, and it stands as a kind of obvious metaphor for the place itself. It's dynamic and full of contrasts. It has a thin veneer of crust on the outside that you got to get through before you uncover the chewiness at the core. This bagel makes you work for it, just like New York. But if you don't want to wait 24 hours for a good bagel, then check out this video for my one-hour bagel. I'll link to that right here. Now, let's eat this thing!