Table of Contents
Here are the step-by-step instructions for making Rose Levy Berenbaum’s bagels from her The Bread Bible
The night before you want to cook them
The sponge
Put these in the bowl of a stand mixer. Whisk for about two minutes, until very smooth, then scrape down the sides. Cover with plastic wrap.
| Ingredient | Volume | Ounces | Grams |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instant yeast | 1 teaspoon | — | 3.2 grams |
| Room temperature water (70°–90°) | 2.25 liquid cups | 18.7 ounces | 531 grams |
| Bread flour | 3 cups | 16.5 ounces | 468 grams |
There are different kinds of yeast, and Levy Berenbaum has a whole section about it in her book. The instant yeast in this recipe refers to one of these kinds of yeast:
I bought the SAF stuff from Amazon, and I got the bread machine stuff from Kroger. It says it’s for bread machines, but that’s a lie—that really just means that it’s instant yeast like the SAF stuff. The recipe will probably work with non-bread machine yeast too, though you’ll need to let the yeast and water sit for a while before adding the flour to make the sponge.
The flour mixture
Whisk all of this together in a separate bowl:
| Ingredient | Volume | Ounces | Grams |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bread flour | 2 cups | 11 ounces | 312 grams |
| Instant yeast | 1 teaspoon | — | 3.2 grams |
| Non-diastatic malt powder | 1 tablespoon | 0.3 ounce | 9.3 grams |
| Sugar | 1 tablespoon | 0.5 ounce | 12.5 grams |
| Kosher salt | 1 tablespoon | 0.75 ounce | 21 grams |
| Black pepper (optional) | 1 teaspoon | — | — |
She uses pepper. I used pepper once and didn’t like it, so I skip that now.
The secret ingredient here is the non-diastatic malt powder, which I bought on Amazon. You can also get diastatic malt powder, but it’s different for some chemistry reason—you apparently add the diastatic version to flour that you grind from wheat berries, while the non-diastatic kind is for adding fancy flavor to stuff like bagels and pretzels.
You can also use 1 tablespoon/0.7 ounce/21 grams of barley malt syrup instead of the malt powder.
After you’ve whisked all that together, sprinkle it on top of the sponge and don’t stir it in, Let it sit for an hour at room temperature, then put it in the fridge overnight.
The day you want to cook them
When you take the sponge/flour combination out of the fridge in the morning, it’ll probably look something like this:
Hooray!
Here’s what you do next.
Mix and knead
Leave the sponge/flour combination out for 30 minutes to warm up a little. Add 50g of bread flour (I have no idea why the recipe called for 50g to wait and not be part of the rest of the dough, but whatever), then attach the bowl to the stand mixer with a dough hook attached. Mix on low speed (#2) for a minute to get everything wet, then raise the speed to medium (#4) and let it knead and mix for 5 to 7 minutes (10 minutes if using high gluten flour).
It should look like this near the end:
Rise
Once the dough is “very elastic and smooth and … jump[s] back when pressed with a fingertip,” put it in a lightly greased bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise for 1–2 hours until it’s doubled. Levy Berenbaum says to put a piece of tape on the side of the bowl so you can see when it’s doubled, but that’s not necessary.
Here’s what it looks like before…