Homemade Blueberry Bagels

At least once, I have mentioned that I would like to try to make my own bagels. David takes a bagel for breakfast every day and I enjoy the occasional one myself. They aren't overly expensive (we get them for 30 cents a bagel) but I wondered if I could make them cheaper, healthier, or just plain better! It turns out, you can do all of the above!

We like blueberry best and don't usually top them with anything so I knew I had to find a good recipe if I wanted these to replace our store bought bagels. I thought about using our bread maker to make the dough but it turns out that it didn't really save me any time so this is without the maker.

This recipe is what I found. It's really rather simple with few ingredients, all of which you probably already have on hand! It is kind of time consuming, mostly because of the time it takes for the yeast to rise. I also did this with an infant on my hip (she was having a crabby day and would scream bloody murder if I put her down even for a second, let alone the 15 minutes of prep work) so my kneading was not the greatest. I also ran out of flour. I am still not sure how this happened because I usually keep plenty of it around but it happened anyway. I had enough for the recipe but was left a little skimpy for the kneading, making it that much harder.

I had a difficult time shaping the dough into bagel form because it was so sticky (probably my lack of flour's fault. Oh I will also mention I didn't toss the blueberries in flour first either but DEFINITELY will next time). It turns out it didn't really matter though. They just don't look like bagels. 

I wasn't sure what the boiling step was for. The recipe says it takes 3-4 minutes but they're done when they float. My bagels floated almost instantly so I took them out and it worked out great. This makes them not as stuck to the pan and much easier to handle. Don't even think about skipping this step! 

My batch made 10 bagels instead of 8 but they are a little bit smaller than the store bought size. Next time, I will try to make them a little bigger. I will also have more flour on hand and knead without a baby in my arms. Also, I want to try using at least half wheat flour (we usually do half wheat, half white in recipes but I try to follow the original recipe first). After that, they're perfect! They're brown on the outside and chewy on the inside. Mine are kind of lumpy but you could try to cut them in half to spread them with cream cheese or something. I will definitely be making this again, but more than one batch at a time since it's like a 3 hour process. Then I can just freeze the excess!