Fall Bagel Mania
Three great flavors to stress bake this season
Bagels are a top tier, pre-lunch meal. If you put a gun to my head and ask me to choose between bagels or donuts, I wouldn’t hesitate, I wouldn’t stutter, I would simply inhale a bagel. For most of the year, I prefer a savory bagel. I love a good everything, sesame seed, or onion bagel smeared with hummus or nondairy cream cheese, topped with thinly sliced tomatoes, onions, and a little fresh dill. That’s my standard whether I’m making them at home or grabbing one when I’m out and about. But for most of the time I’ve lived in LA, the bagels here have been subpar. It was hard to find a spot with a good chew and a nice crust that wouldn’t immediately turn to stone if you wanted to bring a few bagels home for the next day. That’s changed in the last 8 years and now the city is covered in all kinds of bagel spots that are actually worth eating at. I started making bagels at home years ago during the great LA bagel drought, and then somewhere along the way I stopped. Well, I have reignited my love of homemade bagels and have been working on some seasonal flavors for all us here at Stir the Pot.
When autumn rolls in, I hang up my savory bagels since tomatoes are out of season and I reach for something slightly sweet and filled with lots of warming spices. But it’s hard to find good, unique flavors in my local shops so I had to dream them up on my own. This week, I’ve got three bagel flavors for you to choose from: Pumpkin, Cinnamon Apple, and Carrot Cake. Each recipe calls for bread flour which has a higher protein content than your standard all-purpose. This gives the bagels a better chew and texture. It’s non negotiable. I know bread flour is more expensive than all-purpose, coming in around $8 a bag, but I think you get your money’s worth. One 5-pound bag of bread flour will give you at least 36 bagels. Einstein’s Bros Bagels, a chain that’s definitely cheaper than these artisanal bakeries I always find myself in, charges $15.99 for 13 bagels. That means you’d spend $44 to get 36 bagels. That $8 bag of flour isn’t looking too expensive now huh?
If you are easily intimidated by baking, bagels are a great project for you. The ingredients are minimal, the process is pretty straightforward, and the dough is very forgiving. You knead everything together until you get a smooth dough, let it rise, shape the bagels, boil them, and bake them. Altogether, this is probably about 35 minutes of active cooking, and the payoff is 8 homemade bagels that keep well for a couple days or for a few months in the freezer. I like to have the pumpkin flavor stored away in the freezer to defrost the morning of Thanksgiving. It’s the best of both worlds: everyone can start the day with something delicious and homemade, AND I don’t have to do anything. Same goes for Christmas. Work smarter, not harder, ok?
