Making Montreal-style bagels at home

What is it about Montreal-style bagels? I love everything about them, including making them. They're quicker to make than regular bread, require no kneading, and are delicious for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, you name it.

Montreal bagels have some things in common with your classic bagel, but differ in some ways too. The cooking part is similar: After the dough rises and is shaped and rested, the bagels are dropped into simmering water briefly before being baked. The boiling pot for Montreal bagels includes malt powder and honey, which add an extra touch of sweetness and shine to the bagels.

The dough is different too. Montreal bagel dough is slightly sweetened with honey, and also has egg and malt powder. They are coated on both sides with sesame seeds after they come out of the boiling pot and before they go into the oven. Traditionally, they are baked in a wood-fired oven, although you will get good results from baking them on a baking stone in your home oven as well.

Montreal bagels have a slightly less chewy texture than other bagels, making them excellent for sandwiches. Toasting them brings out the slight sweetness of the honey and the nutty flavor of the sesame seeds. I love making sandwiches with these bagels; a simple cheese, onion and tomato combination is delicious, even without condiments. I usually toast the bagel first.

OK, ready to try making these bagels yourself? This recipe makes about 12 good-sized bagels. Don't be afraid to cut the recipe in half or double it; this dough stores well in the refrigerator so you can use a bit at a time if you want. If you do change the proportions, though, stick with the same quantities for the boiling pot.

Montreal-style bagels

Dough

1-1/2 cups lukewarm water

1 tablespoon granulated yeast (1-1/2 packages)

2 teaspoons Kosher salt

5 tablespoons sugar (or less according to your taste)

1 egg, beaten slightly

2 tablespoons honey

3 tablespoons malt powder

4-1/2 cups bread flour

Sesame seeds

Boiling pot

4 quarts water (it doesn't have to be exact, but try not to use a lot less than 4 quarts)

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons malt powder

1. Mix the dough.  Combine all the dough ingredients except for the sesame seeds in a large mixing bowl. Stir with a wooden spoon (or a dough hook on your mixer) until all the flour has been incorporated. The dough will be fairly sticky at this point.

Cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel or plastic wrap. Let dough rest at room temperature for about two hours. The dough will rise and may collapse during this rest.

2. Shape the dough. Preheat oven to 400F. If you're using a baking stone, allow at least 45 minutes of preheating time so the stone is good and hot by the time you want to bake the bagels.

Dust a large cutting board with flour. Turn out the dough on the cutting board, dusting the dough with flour if you need to. Knead it very gently, just for a minute, until the dough less sticky. (If you are going to refrigerate some of the dough, at this point cut off what you want to use now and put the rest in a covered container in the fridge.) Cut the dough into pieces about the size of a small orange. Shape each piece into a smooth ball. This movement is kind of like pulling a cover over a baseball; stretch the dough as you turn the ball about a quarter turn at a time. It doesn't take long, just turn and pull until the surface of the dough is smooth.

Let the shaped dough rest for at least 20 minutes at room temperature. This is very important. I don't usually let it go much more than 30 minutes, but 20 minutes is the minimum.

3. While the dough is resting, prepare your boiling pot. (The oven is preheating, right?) Heat up the 4 quarts of water in a large saucepan. When it is close to boiling, add the honey and malt powder, stirring to dissolve. Turn down the heat a bit; you want the stuff to be simmering, not boiling hard, when you drop in the bagels.

4. Form the bagels and boil. Use your thumb to punch a hole in the middle of a ball of dough. Use both hands to gently stretch the dough to open up the hole a bit, turning as you go. if you rested the dough properly, it will be elastic but will form readily without shrinking back into a ball.

Have a timer ready. Drop the bagels into the simmering water; don't over-crowd them, they will increase in size in the pot. Simmer them for 1 minute on the first side, then turn with a large slotted spoon and cook for 30 seconds on the other side. Lift them out of the water, let drain briefly, then place the bagels on a wooden peel covered with parchment paper (if you're using a baking stone), or a baking sheet covered with parchment paper (if you're not using a stone).

Dust the top of the bagels with sesame seeds. You can then turn them and put more sesame seeds on the other side of you'd like; I tend to put them on one side only.

5. Bake. Slide the peel or baking sheet quickly into the oven. Bake for 20-30 minutes; the bagels will puff up and become golden brown.

Cool on racks and serve either a little warm or completely cooled. While there are still wonderful homegrown tomatoes around, try David's favorite: Cream cheese and tomato on a warm bagel (above). Bagel sandwiches are great in sack lunches; they hold up better than a lot of commercial breads and are a perfect size for just about anyone.

Baking bread in a wood-fired oven, Round Two

This past Sunday I was down at the Alder Wood Bistro again, having fun baking more bread. This time I had four batches going: A naturally leavened multigrain bread, sourdough, onion rye and Montreal-style bagels. The only other time I had tried to make a naturally leavened bread (no yeast added), it didn't turn out well. This time, I had actually planned to make this batch a yeast bread (although I was using a starter left over from the previous week's bread), but (oops) I forgot to add the yeast. I realized it at about 4:00 AM, when I got up to mix the dough from the leaven that had been fermenting since Saturday morning. I decided to just do the best I could with it and see what happened.

Well, surprisingly to me at least, it turned out great! Although it never did look as if it rose much in the proofing baskets, I thought it looked good when I slashed it just before putting it in the oven. When I checked on it 30 minutes later, I was amazed to see how much it had risen, and it was coloring nicely. 10 minutes later it was out of the oven.

 Naturally leavened multigrain hearth bread; oh boy!

As soon as the multigrain  and sourdough loaves were in the proofing baskets, I mixed up a batch of dough for the Montreal bagels, and the rye dough. After working pretty hard for the first 45 minutes or so, I now had at least a couple of hours to kill while things were proofing and rising.

After the bagel dough had risen for 2 hours, I shaped the bagels. Then into the boiling pot they went, a few at a time, for a minute and a half. Then they drained briefly on a clean towel before being dredged on both sides with sesame seeds. Montreal-style bagels are traditionally baked in a wood-fired oven; the Bistro's oven was about 530F when the bagels went in. Naturally, being much smaller than a loaf of bread, I was nervous about over baking them, but I needn't have worried. They actually took about 20 minutes, not much less than what it takes in the gas oven I use at home. This is one bread item for which we're willing to disregard the rule of waiting until it cools to eat it; we were both pretty hungry by that time, too, and David had thoughtfully brought along some butter and cream cheese.

Montreal-style bagels just out of the wood-fired oven.

By the time I was done baking the bagels, it was time to load in the sourdough and multigrain loaves. Next I shaped the onion rye loaves; I had carmelized the onions while the dough was rising. The two loaves went into the oven about 15 minutes after the others, and while I had the oven door open I shifted around some of the other loaves; some seemed to be browning a little faster than others. I'm getting used to figuring out where to put the loaves in the oven, depending on their size.  I'm actually a bit surprised at how easily I'm learning to use this wonderful oven.

It was really hard to wait for over an hour to cut into one of the multigrain loaves, and I was anxious to see what the crumb looked like. I had used the same formula that I had the previous Sunday, but I adjusted the hydration level to 70% (it was 65% last week), as we both felt that in the center of the loaf, the crumb was a little on the dry side. (I've just recently learned a formula called the "baker's percentage," which is a means to calculate how much water and flour you need to get a dough of a particular hydration level; I'm so happy I finally got my mind around this one.) I could see right away that it was a big improvement; the crumb was uniformly moist and tender inside a delicious, crisp crust. Once again, I felt thankful that I have been keeping good records of every batch of bread I've made, so I will be able to duplicate this result.

Interior of naturally leavened multigrain bread.

The really difficult thing with this baking is that I want to make a lot of bread at a time (it's a big oven, and I'm having a lot of fun). What to do with all this bread? Hmmm. I feel a taste-testing party coming on...