Family Favorite Sourdough Bagel Recipe
Sourdough everything has become tremendously popular in the past few years, especially since 2020 when so many people had time to jump into new hobbies. Sourdough is an ancient method of raising baked goods and provides additional benefits by unlocking nutrients in the grains. We love modern yeast and fast rising breads, but more and more lately I find myself pulling my sourdough starter out instead. The most recent food item we’ve switched over to sourdough is breakfast bagels. Our favorite sourdough bagel recipe comes from FarmhouseOnBoone.com!
I won’t list the sourdough bagel recipe in detail because it’s not mine, but you can find it here. I typically use slightly less flour than it calls for, and I change up the technique just a bit, but enough to call it my own recipe.
What is sourdough?
Sourdough is a term that refers to a fermented mixture of flour and water. Bacteria from the air choose the flour and water mixture as a host and feed off of the carbohydrates from the grain. As the bacteria eat and grow, they breakdown anti-nutrients, unlock nutrients for digestion, and release gas bubbles that cause the mixture to rise. This mixture is referred to as a starter. You can make a sourdough bagel with both an active starter and discard, but I prefer the active starter.
Where to get a starter
Sourdough is so trendy now, you can find an abundance of options for sourdough starter. Many online courses will teach you how to grow your own starter from scratch. We particularly like the School of Traditional Skills by the homesteading family. You can also purchase a dehydrated starter online that comes with directions on activating it, or even find someone local that’s willing to share a bit of their own personal starter.
Keep the sourdough alive!
Once you have an active starter (active means it’s fermenting and getting bubbly when you feed it), you’re ready to start baking. But you have to keep all those tiny little bacteria and microorganisms alive. This is where you run into OPINIONS! Everyone has an opinion about how to maintain your sourdough starter. Just search on YouTube for sourdough tutorials and you’ll be overwhelmed with the differences.
Some people feed theirs daily because they’re constantly using it up and need to replenish. They’ll keep enough starter for one or two recipes, and when they use up the starter, just the leftovers in their har is enough to ferment a whole new batch of flour and water.
Some people keep a strong active starter in the fridge. When they want to bake, they’ll remove a tablespoon or so, add it to a separate jar of flour and water and let that ferment into a separate active starter…this is usually referred to as a levain. None of the levain will be left over or saved-only the main starter in the fridge.
Feeding Ratios
Some people will fight to the death over the correct ratio of flour and water to mix into your starter to make it active or change the flavor, or keep it the healthiest. Some say 1:1:1, or equal parts starter, water and flour. Others might say 1:2:2 or some other ratio that they’ve deemed to be perfect.
In my experience, it’s not really that important if you just want to keep a starter alive and make delicious and nutritious breads for your family. It’s much more forgiving and less scientific than a lot of sourdough influences will teach. Don’t get me wrong-those methods work well too, but I don’t find them to be necessary.
I keep my starter in a quart size jar. I typically use anywhere from 1/2 to 2 cups at a time for a recipe. This sourdough bagel recipe requires 1/2 cup of starter, so prep ahead of time. I leave at least a few teaspoons of starter in the jar. To feed it, I add some filtered water and then add some flour and stir it. If it looks like pancake batter, I’m happy. Sometimes it’s a bit thinner and sometimes a bit thicker. I keep it on a china hutch in my kitchen.
Because of these different opinions, I think a new sourdough baker should try different methods and decide what suits their personality and kitchen. We are all different with our routines, methods, and desires. Your starter will be so forgiving-don’t be scared to just try and see what works best!
Sourdough Technique of raising dough
There are three main methods I have seen online for developing a dough and letting it rise. Each method has pros and cons. I prefer the simplest method that doesn’t require too much thought or too much tracking time. So what are these methods?
- stretch and fold: in this method, you’ll mix up your dough. It’s typically bait shaggy and not quite one cohesive blob yet. You’ll let the dough rest for 20-30 minutes, then perform a set of stretches by pulling one side of the dough up, then laying it over the top of tucking it under the remaining dough. You’ll repeat this process of resting, then stretching until the gluten is developed. Then you can allow the dough to ferment until doubled in size.
- Kneading: instead of using time and stretching to develop gluten in your dough, you can knead it all at once to stretch the gluten. This is most easily done in a mixer and typically takes about 10 minutes on a low speed. I’ve seen professionals knead by hand on the internet, but sourdough is typically a sticky mess and more difficult to knead by hand in my experience. After the kneading process, the dough can ferment to rise.
- Bucket method: The last technique I’ve seen is to mix up a bulk batch of dough and just leave it in the fridge in a sealed container. In theory, you should be able to pull off a portion of dough throughout the week and bake various different sourdough items. I’ve never had this work for me but I’ve heard it’s an excellent lazy method!
Favorite Sourdough Bagel Recipe
Finally, we’re talking about bagels! My family likes a light fluffy bagels with a nice thick crust- but they don’t enjoy wheat he crust is too chewy and hard to bite through. Our favorite is an everything bagels, which makes it easy because you don’t have to alter the recipe. A quick sprinkle of seasoning before you bake is all you need to upgrade from a plain bagel to a an exciting one!
My all time favorite resource for sourdough recipes is Farmhouse on Boone. It’s a blog about simpler living and motherhood and is full of recipes, homemaking tips and more. I don’t actually follow the instructions on most of her recipes because of all the things I said above about finding my own rhythm and what works for me. But her recipes are always perfect and turn out great!
My method for this bagel recipe
In the afternoon or evening, I prepare the recipe in my kitchenmaid mixer. I’m not thrilled with using this mixer for kneading dough, but it’s what I have so I make it work. I have found that this mixer struggles to knead dough for more than a few minutes, and I like to go about 10 minutes.
A trick I’ve discovered is to leave the head unlocked so it’s not in a fixed position. When the dough hook get’s to a point where it’s hard to knead, the head will lift ups to relive some of the tension and the mixer will keep kneading. Since using this little trick, my mixer doesn’t get nearly as hot and it never makes awful gear grinding noises anymore!
Hide your dough, come back tomorrow
So, after kneading the dough with a dough hook for 10 minutes, I remove the entire kitchenmaid bowl from the mixer, cover it with a tea towel, and push it back into the corner of the counter (that’s usually waster space anyway, so it’s a great “hiding spot” for my dough to ferment. I leave it overnight to rise.
The next morning, I dump my dough out, shape it and spread the bagels out of parchment paper on top of the stove. The recipe makes 8 bagels, but I divide mine into 12 because some of my kids won’t eat a full size bagel. I portion out the dough, roll it on the counter under a cupped hand to seal it off, flatten it into a disc, and then poke a hole through the center. I preheat the oven and prep my water bath. With the heat of the oven and the burner going nearby, my dough is usually risen and fluffy enough to cook it within just a few minutes!
Baking Temperature
I gently boil each bagel for about a minute on each side, transfer to a sheet pan and add toppings. Then I bake the bagels until they are golden brown. Here’s another confession of laziness: I put the oven temperature at whatever it needs to be for other items I am cooking. Sometimes I’m also making cookies and need 375 degrees. Other times I’m making bacon and want 400. The recipe calls for 425. I find it doesn’t make a significant difference in my results, only in the baking time.
Another wonderful resource I’ve gained from Lisa is to order groceries from Azure Standard. I’ve discovered that they sell a cream cheese brand that doesn’t have any of the gums or preservatives. It’s a little ry and crumbly, but so delicious. And it actually spreads better on a warm sourdough bagel than the big name brand cream cheese.
We like to enjoy these for breakfast straight from the oven. There’s no need to toast them since they’re already warm. There’s almost nothing better than a warm steaming sourdough bagel with a creamy layer of cream cheese. We also love to spread some butter and jam on a slice and enjoy the combination of sweet fruit and tart sourdough.
