Why Bagels Are Boiled | The Bagel Bakery (2024)

FAQs

Why Bagels Are Boiled | The Bagel Bakery? ›

By boiling a bagel you quickly inactivate (some of) the yeast in the dough. This prevents the bagel from expanding as much in the oven, making for a firmer, tighter product. It stops the proofing process. Boiling also gelatinizes the starch in the flour.

The reason we boil the dough first is so that the outside crust sets before it goes in the oven. We generally let the dough boil for 30 to 60 seconds on each side, but the longer you let it boil, the thicker and chewier the crust. The amount of time the bagel is boiling also affects its interior texture.

One of the most important steps in making bagels. is boiling before baking. Baking the dough right away gives a bagel with a matte. finish and an open interior structure. Boiling the bagel pre gelatinizes the crust.

Add honey and baking soda to the boiling water in a large pot. This will help give the bagels a nice sheen and golden brown color when out of the oven.

Malt contributes a mild sweetness as well as important ingredients such as mineral salts, soluble proteins, dough conditioning enzymes, flavor, color, and nutritive materials.

According to Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster and the Oxford dictionaries, that is a factual statement. To hom*ogenize and paraphrase their definitions, they state that a bagel is a ring or donut-shaped roll that is first boiled and then baked.

Why are bagels first boiled or steamed? Because either method of applying heat pregelatinizes the starch on the crust; this is why bagels are so shiny after they bake. The trade-off for steaming instead of boil- ing is that when you steam bagels on a sheet pan, the base of the bagel is not pregelatinized.

The water bath is a crucial step when making bagels. The formed bagels need to be gently dropped into a pot of boiling water that has sugar and baking soda for about 1 minute per side. We do this for a couple reasons; Boiling bagels gives the finished bagel their signature shine.

The boiling also thickens the crust — Coppedge says it "is essential to produce a more 'chewy' bagel."

Over proofed dough will lose its strength too early and cause the bagels to deflate either during the second rise or while cooking.

Are New York bagels boiled? ›

Traditional New York style bagels are submerged in boiling water for a couple of minutes before they're baked. Sometimes called "water bagels," boiling the dough sets the outside to give them a crispy exterior and chewy texture.

Sometimes lye (sodium hydroxide) is added to raise the pH of the crust, which promotes browning and caramelization during the bake (this is identical to how pretzels are given their signature flavor and appearance, though in the case of bagels the concentration of lye used is much lower).

The longer the boiling time, the harder the crust and the denser the bagels become. However, Panera went a different route with its bagels, opting to steam them with a steam-injection oven rather than boil them. Steaming is an easier option in Panera's kitchen.

Overview. A chewy yeast roll bearing similarity to the bagel, the bialy has a diameter of up to 15 centimetres (6 in). Unlike a bagel, which is boiled before baking, a bialy is simply baked, and instead of a hole in the middle it has a depression. It is also usually covered with onion flakes.

Supermarket bagels are distinctly not bagel shop bagels, and comparing the two will only leave you distraught. For one, the crust on a bagel shop bagel, created by boiling before baking, is much more substantial than that of the supermarket bagel, which is often merely steamed before the baking process.

You will also need some brown sugar to add to the water for boiling the bagels. This helps give these bagels their characteristic crust and flavor. Honey or barley malt syrup may be substituted in equal amounts.

Either way, toasting transforms a bagel past its prime. It makes tough starches pliable again, and takes it in a different direction—crispy. Mass-produced (think grocery store) bagels benefit from this process a lot.