This easy sourdough bagels recipe will yield chewy and soft bagels with a crispy and shiny crust. Topped with homemade everything bagel seasoning, these bagels are so flavorful and delicious that you will make them again and again.
After the sourdough baguettes, Sourdough Breadsticks, and ciabatta bread let us make a very simple sourdough recipe using the ripe sourdough starter.
🍞 Why will you love this sourdough bagels recipe:
- These are traditional-style bagels that are shiny and crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside.
- Easy sourdough bagels recipe you will ever make.
- Super delicious sourdough flavor in every bite.
- Approachable. All the ingredients that we need for making these sourdough bagels must be already sitting in your pantry.
- This recipe is detailed in easy-to-follow instructions will further simplify the process of making bagels at home. This bagel recipe is inspired by the New York-style bagel.
- Can be easily made into a Vegan sourdough bagels recipe by substituting honey with maple syrup and milk with plant-based milk.
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🍶 Ingredients for making Sourdough Bagels Recipe
1. Bread flour
To make great bagels you need high-gluten flour. So, stick to bread flour, I would not recommend using anything else. If you have high-gluten flour, this is your recipe. You can also add some malted barley flour. As it helps with the color and flavor of the bagels. But I wanted to keep the recipe approachable, so just stuck to bread flour.
2. Sourdough starter
The sourdough starter should be active and ripe. It simply means that the sourdough starter should have peaked its activity. Every active sourdough starter’s peak looks different. Some just double up in volume whereas some might bubble up beyond three times. I have tested this recipe with a mature sourdough starter, and this is a no-yeast sourdough bagel recipe. So, if your starter is just new, try adding some commercial yeast.
3. Water
Use normal room temperature water. You might want to increase the temperature of the water a little bit in winter to expedite fermentation. Also, use chlorine-free water while working with sourdough.
Keep the hydration at 65 -68 percent depending upon the gluten content of your flour. If you are using high-gluten flour with around 14 percent gluten, go for 68 percent hydration. But if you are using regular bread flour, stick around 65 to 66 percent hydration in the sourdough bagels recipe.
4. Vegetable oil/ olive oil
We need to add some oil to make our bagels soft and prevent them from getting hard. Though the desired texture of the bagel is the crispy crust, it still must be soft and chewy from the inside. Oil act as a tenderizer.
You can use olive oil, avocado oil, or any other vegetable oil of your choice.
5. Honey or Maple syrup
You can use the sweetener of your choice. You can use sugar, honey, barley malt syrup, or brown sugar. If you are looking to create a vegan version of a sourdough bagel, you should use maple syrup.
I am using honey in this recipe. Divide it into two parts. Use half of it in the dough and retain the remaining half for adding to the boiling water.
6. Baking soda
Baking soda gives some pretzel-like characteristics to the bagels. To be specific, it makes bagels chewier on the inside and shiny brown on the outside. You could even add about a tablespoon baking soda if you like its flavor on your bagels.
7. Salt
As far as salt is concerned, I used fine sea salt in this recipe. It is easier to incorporate than coarse salt. Avoid iodized salt, if possible, as it imparts an unpleasant flavor sometimes.
8. Seasoning
Use whichever type of seasoning is available to you. You can go with standard store-bought everything bagel seasoning. I have made my seasoning at home by combining the following ingredients
1. Black sesame seeds
2. White or polished sesame seeds
3. Poppy seeds
4. Dry garlic (Minced)
5. Sea salt
🔪 Instructions: How to make sourdough bagels?
Step 1 Kneading the sourdough bagel dough
Before starting to knead the dough, fro the sourdough bagels recipe make sure that the sourdough starter has reaches its peak. It is good to feed the starter the night before so that you have the active sourdough starter ready for use in the morning.
I am going to knead the dough for these sourdough bagels in a stand mixer.
First, combine all the wet ingredients in a bowl or a jar. Measure the water in a jar. Then add sourdough starter to it. Use a spoon or whisk to mix the starter in the water. Now add honey and oil to the sourdough water. Give them a mix.
Please note that we are going to use only half of the honey in the dough. (Retain the half for adding to the milk while making milk wash for the bagels.)
Take the bowl of the stand mixer and add bread flour and salt. Combine by whisking them all together.
Now add the wet ingredient mixture and hook the stand mixer bowl in the stand mixer. Start kneading using a dough hook attachment at low speed. The dough will appear very sticky initially but will come together in no time.
You can add a tablespoon of flour more or less to make up for the altitude and humidity differences. My dough took 7 minutes at speed 1 and then I bumped it to 4 and kneaded for 4 more minutes. The dough looked smooth and did not stick at all to my fingers after 12 minutes of kneading in a stand mixer.
Kneading with hands
For kneading with hands combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Then combine all the wet ingredients in another bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine everything well using the back of a wooden ladle.
Leave no patch of dry flour behind. Cover the dough mass and let it rest for 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes, dust a work surface and transfer the dough mass onto the work surface. Now start kneading with your hands. Use the heel of your hands to stretch the dough away from you. Then, bring it back and collect it.
Keep repeating this motion to knead the dough until it becomes smooth and stops sticking to the hands and the surface.
Step 2 Bulk Fermentation/ First Rise
Bulk fermentation helps with flavor and gluten development.
The dough will take 4-6 hours to bulk ferment. The actual time will depend on the vigor of the sourdough starter and the ambient kitchen temperature. It may take as long as 8 hours if it is a peak winter month, and your starter is relatively young. Look for the rise in the dough, it would appear to double up in volume.
Step 3: Shaping the sourdough bagels
Once the dough has doubled up, it is time to shape it into bagels. First, you need to decide on what size of bagels are you looking at. This recipe will make 8 standard bagels. These are slightly bigger than the supermarket bagels, more like the bakery ones. If you want to make small bagels, this recipe could make 10 of them.
Remove the dough onto a floured surface. Now we need to weigh the dough and divide it by the number of bagels we aim to make. I divided the dough into 8 equal portions.
Then I take one portion and flatten it using my fingers. I collect all the edges and gather them at the center to form a rough round ball. Then I flipped it and used the edges of the palms of my hand to lift and twist it. This builds tension on the surface and makes perfectly round dough balls with a smooth top.
Repeat with the rest of the dough pieces and do not forget to cover the shaped rounds while you work on the rest.
Now for making sourdough bagels take one round and poke a finger into the center to make a hole. Then put another finger on the other hand. Stretch the dough outward while rolling the fingers in a wheel-like circular motion around the hole. Stop when you feel that the size is right.
Please note that the dough with shrink back a bit, so make a larger hole than desired.
Use a full-size baking sheet (26x18 inches) and line it with 8 small parchment paper pieces. Place the shaped bagels on these individual pieces of parchment paper. Also, do not forget to cover them.
Step 4 Proofing or second rise
You can sprinkle the parchment paper with some flour so that the bagels do not stick to the parchment paper on proofing and could be easily lifted for dropping into the boiling water.
Alternatively, you can put them on 8 small parchment papers. If you are the first time making bagels, please note that this tip is particularly helpful for dropping the bagels into boiling water. On proofing, the bagels become puffed up and while attempting to lift them and drop them in the boiling water we end up deflating them.
To prevent this, we place each bagel on a piece of parchment paper and drop them in boiling water with the parchment paper intact, which comes off on its own in the water. Then we use a tong to take out the parchment from the boiling water.
Leave enough room among the bagels to rise. Please note that we do not want the bagels to be proving too much. Keep an eye on the bagels, they should appear slightly proofed. This step can take anywhere between 1 ½ to 3 hours.
Step 5 Water bath or boil the sourdough bagels
When the bagels appear fuller, boil water in a large pan. Add baking soda to it. Once it boils, gently lift a bagel with the parchment paper and drop it into the boiling water. The paper will easily separate itself from the bagel in boiling water. Use tongs to pull out the paper.
Add 1-2 bagels at a time. You can add more if the pot allows. Have a wire cooling rack placed on a sheet pan or a tray to take out the boiled bagels.
Boil the bagels for 15-20 seconds on each side while gently flipping them once or twice. Remove onto a cooling rack. Repeat with all the bagels.
Step 6 Seasoning the bagels
In a small bowl combine milk and honey. When all the bagels are boiled, brush them with the prepared milk wash using a pastry brush. Quickly sprinkle the seasoning mix on the bagels.
To get a better covering, take the seasoning on a wide plate and flip the bagels in it to coat them nicely.
Step 7 Baking the Bagels
While you are still boiling the bagels, preheat the oven to 425oF. By the time you finish boiling the bagels, the oven would have preheated.
Carefully lift the bagels from the cooling rack and place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Bake them at 425o F for 22-25 minutes or until the crust turns golden brown. Make sure to rotate the baking tray halfway through the baking process.
And there you have it. The most delicious homemade sourdough bagels. Super soft and chewy on the inside and crusty and shiny on the outside. Give them a schmear and enjoy!
Variations of sourdough bagels
Though plain bagels are nice, why have plain when you can something extra on them? Try these variations of seasonings to jazz up the sourdough bagels recipe.
- Garlic sesame bagels: Add garlic flakes with the sesame seasoning.
- Everything bagel seasoning
- Poppy seed bagels
- Salt bagels
- Cinnamon raisin bagels
Servings suggestions
A few serving suggestions to enjoy this sourdough bagels recipe for breakfast.
- A schmear of herbed cream cheese, and top with the fresh fruits of your choice. For breakfast, you can take the traditional approach and spread some cream cheese on toasted bagels! Also, add some green onions, olives, and chives with some toasted nuts.
- Spread some peanut butter and top with caramelized apples and nuts.
- Smear the toasted bagels with some good butter, garlic butter, or herb butter (chive butter)
- Make a thick bed of almond butter on an air fryer bagel, and top it with caramelized bananas, and everything bagel seasoning.
- Put some strawberry jam or jelly of your choice and top them with some crunch-toasted sunflower seeds.
- You can also prepare a delectable breakfast sandwich with air-fried tofu or scrambled tofu.
- Sliced avocadoes, nutritional yeast, and sauteed mushrooms on a buttered and air fryer toasted bagel.
To whip up a quick vegetarian lunch using the bagels try the following suggestions:
- Slice the new York style bagels and spread some marinara sauce on them. Top with shredded cheese and olives. Then, toast in the air fryer at 370 0F for 5 minutes or so until the cheese melts. A quick bagel pizza is ready!
- A vegetarian bagel sandwich filled with scrambled tofu and leek sabzi and green veggies.
- Spread hummus, olives, cucumber, and toasted sourdough.
- Feta and some roasted mushroom and spinach.
🫙How to store sourdough bagels?
Before storing the sourdough bagels, ensure that they are fully cooled down. You can put them in a linen bag and close them tightly. They will keep well on your kitchen counter for 2-3 days. If you have a bread box, you can store them in it for 2-3 days.
You can freeze the left-over bagels by placing them in a zip lock bag and squeezing out any excess air. Then seal the bag and cover it with foil. I like to put a date and description on the foil, so I do not lose track.
♨️Reheating Instructions
To reheat the home made bagels, you can toast them on a buttered skillet, electric toaster, oven, or even in air fryers. Preheat oven to 400oF and toast the bagels for 5-6 minutes
To toast bagels in the air fryer, set the air fryer temperature to 370 0F and let the bagels toast for 3-4 minutes or until they turn golden.
💭Pro Tips
- The shaped bagels do not need to be proofed too much, they just need to puff up a little bit. The crust of the over-proofed bagels is super soft and airy. It can easily dissolve in boiling water, depriving you of the smooth and shiny crust.
- Sprinkle the parchment paper with some flour so that the bagels do not stick to the parchment paper on proofing and could be easily lifted for dropping into the boiling water.
- Alternately place the bagels on small pieces of parchment paper for proofing and put them for boiling with the paper intact. The parchment will separate itself from hitting the water.
- Adding baking powder and baking soda to the is optional, it helps with the color, flavor, and texture.
- To get a better covering, spread the seasoning on a wide plate and flip the bagels on it.
❓Frequently Asked Questions
There could be so many reasons for a dense bagel. But in 80 percent of cases, it will be due to the under-proofing. You must allow the sourdough starter to do its job. Sometimes it may take longer than expected. Look for the physical cues than the timelines. Do not proceed to shape until the dough doubles up in volume. Read the detailed article to understand why the bread turns out dense.
Just like sourdough starter bagels, you can make sourdough discard bagels also. Discard recipes take longer to ferment, and we need to increase the amount of discard in them. Somewhere between 30-40 percent, discard should be used for making discard bagels. Though I am yet to test a recipe for it.
You might want to try other sourdough starter discard recipes like sourdough discard naan, sourdough discard focaccia, sourdough discard pizza dough, and sourdough discard cinnamon rolls.
🍞 More sourdough recipes
In addition to this sourdough bagels recipe, you might wanna check out these recipes:
- Rustic sourdough bread with a perfect crust and open crumb
- Same Day Sourdough Bread Recipe
- The best garlic sourdough bread recipe
- Jalapeño Cheddar sourdough: A spicy cheese sourdough bread!
- Sourdough Rolls | No-yeast quick dinner rolls using sourdough starter
- The best Sourdough doughnuts recipe with Cinnamon sugar
- How to make sourdough hot dog buns from scratch?
- How to make the basic sourdough batard?
- Sourdough breadsticks
- Same day sourdough baguette
- Sourdough Ciabatta
More Sourdough discard recipes
- Quick and Fluffy Sourdough vegan pancakes using the discard
- How to make Eggless Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls from Discard
- How to make Naan using the Sourdough Discard
- Fried sourdough starter to make your life easy: 5 recipes!
- Sourdough discard foccacia
- Sourdough Discard Bread
- Sourdough discard Pizza
I hope you will love this easy sourdough bagels recipe made with an active sourdough starter. Share your results and opinions in the comment section below. Also, subscribe to never miss a recipe.
Till then
Bake it Delicious!
📝 Recipe card
Sourdough Bagels recipe
Ingredients
- 480 g Bread flour 3 ½ cups
- 312 g Water 1 ½ cup
- 96 g Active Sourdough Starter
- 15 g salt 2 tsp
- 2 tablespoon Honey divided
- 2 tablespoon Vegetable Oil
- 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1 tablespoon Milk
- ¼ cup seasoning of your choice White sourdough+ poppy seeds+ Black sourdough+ sea salt+ dried garlic
Instructions
Step 1 Kneading the bagel dough
- Before starting to knead the dough, make sure that the sourdough starter reaches its peak. It is good to feed the starter the night before so that you have the sourdough starter ready for use in the morning.
- Measure the water in a jar. Then add sourdough starter to it. Use a spoon or whisk to mix the starter in the water.
- Now add honey and oil to the sourdough water. Give them a mix. Please note that we are going to use only half of the honey in the dough. Retain the half for adding to the milk while making milk wash for the bagels.
- Take the bowl of the stand mixer and add bread flour and salt. Combine by whisking them all together.
- Now add the wet ingredient mixture and hook the stand mixer bowl in the stand mixer. Start kneading using a dough hook attachment at low speed. The dough will appear very sticky initially but will come together in no time.
- Knead it for 7 minutes at low speed (1 on KitchenAid) and then bump it to high (5 on KitchenAid) and knead for 4 more minutes.
- The dough will look smooth and not be sticky at all. (Read recipe notes for Kneading with hands)
Step 2 Bulk Fermentation/ First Rise
- Bulk fermentation helps with flavor and gluten development.
- The dough will take 4-6 hours to bulk ferment. Look for the rise in the dough, it would appear to double up in volume.
Step 3: Shaping the sesame bagels
- Remove the dough onto a floured surface. Now we need to weigh the dough and divide it by the number of bagels we aim to make. I divided the dough into 8 equal portions.
- Then I take one portion and flatten it using my fingers. I collect all the edges and gather them at the center to form a rough round ball.
- Then I flipped it and used the edges of the palms of my hand to lift and twist it. This builds tension on the surface and makes perfectly round dough balls with a smooth top.
- Repeat with the rest of the dough pieces.
- Do not forget to cover the shaped rounds while you work on the rest.
- Now for making bagels take one round on a clean work surface and poke a finger into the center to make a hole. Then put another finger on the other hand. Stretch the dough outward while rolling the fingers in a wheel-like circular motion around the hole. Stop when you feel that the size is right.
- Please note that the dough with shrink back a bit, so make a larger hole than desired.
- Use a full-size baking sheet (26x18 inches) and line it with 8 small parchment paper pieces. Place the shaped bagels on these individual pieces of parchment paper.
- Also, do not forget to cover them.
Step 4 Proofing or second rise
- Leave enough room among the bagels to rise. Please note that we do not want the bagels to be proofing too much. Keep an eye on the bagels, they should appear slightly proofed. This step can take anywhere between 1 ½ to 3 hours.
Step 5 Water bath or boil the sourdough bagels
- When the bagels appear fuller, put water for boiling in a large pan.
- Add baking soda to it.
- Once it boils, gently lift a bagel with the parchment paper and drop it into the boiling water. The paper will easily separate itself from the bagel in boiling water. Use tongs to remove the parchment paper from the water.
- Add 1-2 bagels at a time. You can add more if the pot allows. Have a wire cooling rack placed on a sheet pan to take out the boiled bagels.
- Boil the bagels for 15-20 seconds on each side while gently flipping them once or twice. Remove onto a cooling rack.
- Repeat with all the bagels.
Step 6 seasoning the bagels
- In a small bowl combine milk and honey.
- When all the bagels are boiled, brush them with the prepared milk wash using a pastry brush. Quickly sprinkle the seasoning mix on the bagels.
- To get a better covering, take the seasoning on a wide plate and flip the bagels in it to coat them nicely.
Step 7 Baking the Bagels
- While you are still boiling the bagels, preheat the oven to 425oF. By the time you finish boiling the bagels, the oven would have preheated.
- Carefully lift the bagels from the cooling rack and place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Bake them at 425o F for 22-25 minutes or until the crust turns golden brown. Make sure to rotate the baking tray halfway through the baking process.
- And there you have it. The most delicious homemade sourdough bagels. Give them a schmear and enjoy!
Notes
- You can add a tablespoon of flour more or less to make up for the altitude and humidity differences.
- Kneading with hands: For kneading with hands combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Then combine all the wet ingredients in another bowl. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and combine everything well using the back of a wooden ladle. Leave no patch of dry flour behind. Cover the dough mass and let it rest for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, dust a work surface and transfer the dough mass onto the work surface. Now start kneading with your hands. Use the heel of your hands to stretch the dough away from you. Then, bring it back and collect it. Keep repeating this motion to knead the dough until it becomes smooth and stops sticking to the hands and the surface.
- The actual time for bulk fermentation will depend on the vigor of the sourdough starter and the ambient kitchen temperature. It may take as long as 8 hours if it is a peak winter month, and your starter is relatively young.
- You need to decide on what size of bagels are you looking at. This recipe will make 8 standard bagels. These are slightly bigger than the supermarket bagels, more like the bakery ones. If you want to make small bagels, this recipe could make 10 of them.
- The shaped bagels do not need to be proofed too much, they just need to puff up a little bit. The crust of the over-proofed bagels is super soft and airy. It can easily dissolve in boiling water, depriving you of the smooth and shiny crust.
- Sprinkle the parchment paper with some flour so that the bagels do not stick to the parchment paper on proofing and could be easily lifted for dropping into the boiling water.
- Alternately place the bagels on small pieces of parchment paper for proofing and put them for boiling with the paper intact. The parchment will separate itself from hitting the water.
- Adding baking powder and baking soda to the is optional, it helps with the color, flavor, and texture.
- To get a better covering, spread the seasoning on a wide plate and flip the bagels on it.
Nutrition Facts
Anderson
I always felt intimidated by the steps involved in making bagels at home. But these looked so good that I had to try them. And I am so pleased with these bagels. Highly recommend.