Noticing that our bagel supply was running low and with two kids who’d happily fight to the death for the last one if it came down to it, I decided this weekend to dust off an old recipe and restock using the ingredients in our cupboard. For a festive spin, I opted to make cranberry and cinnamon bagels, and served a few at my family’s regular Sunday brunch. Little did I know that they would turn out to be such a hit that not one from the resupply would survive to the end of the day, and I’ve been pressed into making them again in time for breakfast on Christmas Day (or, as Ruth suggested as she and Robin fought for the last one in a manner more-childish than the children ever would, I could “make them any time I feel like it; every week maybe?”).
If you’d like to make your own, and you totally should, the recipe’s below. I prefer volumetric measurements to weight for bread-making: if you’re not used to doing so, be sure to give your dry ingredients a stir/shake to help them settle when measuring.
Festive Cranberry & Cinnamon Bagels
Yield: 8 bagels
Duration:
Ingredients
- 360ml warm water
- 5ml (1tsp) vanilla extract
- 60ml clear honey
- white of 1 egg
- sunflower/vegetable oil for greasing
- 10g instant yeast
- 950ml strong white bread flour
- extra flour for kneading
- 40ml golden caster sugar
- generous pinch salt
- 240ml dried fruit, half cranberries (sweetened), half raisins
- heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
Directions
- Whisk the yeast into the water and set aside for a few minutes to activate.
- Combine the flour, one quarter of the sugar, and salt.
- Make a well, and gradually introduce the water/yeast, mixing thoroughly to integrate all the flour into a sticky wet dough.
- Add the vanilla extract and mix through.
- Knead thoroughly: I used a mixer with a dough hook, but you could do it by hand if you prefer. After 5-10 minutes, when the dough becomes stretchy, introduce the dried fruit and continue to knead until well integrated. The dough will be very wet.
- Mix the cinnamon into the remaining sugar and scatter over a clean surface. Using well-floured fingers, form the dough into a ball and press into the sugar/cinnamon mixture. Fold and knead against the mixture until it’s all picked-up by the dough: this approach forms attractive pockets and rivulets of cinnamon throughout the dough.
- Rub a large bowl with oil. Ball the dough and put it into the bowl, cover tightly, and leave at room temperature for up to two hours until doubled in size.
- When it’s ready, fill a large pan about 6cm deep with water, add the honey, and bring to a simmer. Pre-heat a hot oven (gas mark 7, 220°)
- On a lightly-floured surface and with well-floured fingertips, extract the ball of dough and divide into eight (halve, halve, halve again). Shape each ball into a bagel by pushing-through the middle with your thumb and stretching out the hole as you rotate it.
- Submerge each bagel into the hot water for about a minute on each side, then transfer to baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper.
- Thin the egg white with a few drops of water, stir, then brush each bagel with the egg mix.
- Bake for about 25 minutes until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.
Mostly this recipe’s here for my own reference, but if you make some then let me know how they turn out for you. (Oh, and for those of you who prefer when my blog posts are technical, this page is marked up in h-recipe.)
