I first started making bagels over 13 years ago. I still make them very regularly. Home made bagels are not difficult, completely different to shop bought versions and whilst I won’t say they are ‘healthy’ they are very much better if you make them yourself.

The original recipe still stands but I’ve tweaked it ever so slightly and this is what I do now, making it in a stand mixer.

Ingredients:

450g strong white bread flour

1.5 tablespoons of caster sugar

1.5 teaspoons of salt

230-240 ml of water, at body temperature preferably (but just not ice cold).

1.5 teaspoons of dried yeast

egg wash for later and seeds if you want them.

Method

If you want to eat these the next day, start making them about 5pm. They overprove easily, even at 4C in the fridge, so you don’t want them hanging round too long. If you want to eat them that day, start making these about 3 hours before you want to eat them.

Put everything in a stand mixer with a dough hook. Mix steadily for ten minutes. Take out the dough hook (on very lazy days I don’t even do that, I drape a tea towel over the mixer) and cover.

Leave for one hour at a room temperature. After an hour the mixture should have risen. Obviously if you live somewhere very hot or very cold adjust accordingly. The dough should be puffed up and a bit yielding to the touch.

Now cut the dough up, using a bread knife, into eight pieces (more if you want to make smaller bagels). You can now either roll each piece into a long sausage and then join the ends (overlap slightly, as per pic below, although in that they are already baked) or gently knead into a ball (put dough in palm of your hand, cup your other hand over and gently make circles, it’ll ball-up), then make a hole with your finger, or a wooden spoon and make the hole a bit bigger. Place on a baking parchment lined tray. Cover with a clean tea towel.

Now either put in the fridge at 4C if you want to bake these the next day – in which case you can go straight to the boiling of them once you’ve taken them out of the fridge. Or rest for about an hour til they’ve puffed up.

Whenever you are ready to cook:

Preheat oven to 220C.

Bring a wide-mouthed pan of water to the boil. I boil two at a time. Slide in two bagels, upside down to begin with (it doesn’t really matter but this is the way I do them), boil for 45s, tip over with a slotted spoon, boil for another 45s. Take out with the slotted spoon and place them to drain for a few minutes on the tea towel, whilst you do the others.

Once ready to bake put them back on the parchment lined tray you had them on, brush with beaten egg (can be a whole egg or just a yolk if that’s what you have), sprinkle with seeds if you want.

Bake for about 12 minutes (depending on your oven of course).

Voila. They also freeze (once baked) beautifully – better than letting them go stale and then toasted them – and you can defrost them gently in a microwave and they seem like freshly baked.