Cherry bagels with a hint of almond and citrus

I love bagels. Until the past few years though, I didn’t have them frequently. the store-bought bagels just couldn’t compare to the freshly ones I would get at bakeries. And then, I decided to try making them. Not only were they delicious, but they were fun to make too! Now I love creating new flavors of bagels that you can’t find anywhere else. This month I worked on a cherry bagel.

You can find cherry bagels some places, but most of those are artificially flavored and don’t have real fruit, which is just not the same as the delicious taste of tart cherries. Others are strongly flavored with almond. Don’t get me wrong, almond and cherry go well together, but I again wanted cherry to be the shining star – not almond.

After working with different ways to bring out the cherry flavor in this recipe, I landed on three cherry ingredients to add to my basic bagel recipe: tart cherry juice, cherry jam, and dried tart cherries. The cherry juice adds both color and flavor, the jam a bit of extra sweetness and a bit of fruit distributed throughout the dough, the dried cherries add bursts of cherry when you bite into them. I added two accent flavors – clementine zest and almond extract to enhance the cherry flavor, while not overpowering it. The result? A slightly tart, slightly sweet bagel chock full of cherry flavor. I will note here that cherry jam is not always readily available. Personally, I highly recommend making your own and having a stock because it is truly wonderful, but if you don’t have any on hand or can’t find any, you can substitute strawberry jam for the cherry in this recipe.

If you haven’t made bagels before, it involves making a basic dough, rising, shaping, rising again, final shaping, boiling, and then baking. If you worked with doughs before, the biggest difference you will note is that the dough is firmer than most breads and doesn’t poof as much during rising.

To begin with, mix the dough and knead the ingredients together for 15 minutes until the dough becomes elastic and smooth. This is a fairly stiff dough, but if your dough doesn’t quite seem to be forming a solid mass or is incredibly difficult to knead, you can add a little extra tart cherry juice to the dough. Likewise, if your dough is too soft, add a bit of extra flour. Please note that this recipe calls for bread flour. This is important. The extra protein in bread flour helps with the amazing chewiness of the bagel. You can make the recipe with an all-purpose flour but you will likely need to reduce the liquid amount you add and the end texture will not be quite as good.

Allow the dough to rise covered with a damp towel in a warm oven for 1 hour. If you don’t have an oven and your room is colder, you may need to let the dough rise an extra half hour. The dough will look puffy but will not be double in size. Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces and roll into balls. Cover the dough balls with the damp towel and allow to rise for an additional 30 minutes – the dough again will puff up slightly.

While the bagels are rising, I prep the water for boiling them, the baking trays which I spray with a nonstick spray, and the oven which I preheat about halfway through the second rise.

Now comes the fun part – shaping the bagels. All you have to do is stick your finger in the middle of the dough ball and spin it to form the hole in the center. Then once your water is boiling, boil the bagels 2 minutes on the first side, and one minute on the second. This works best in a shallow flat pot if you have one. I can boil four bagels at a time in mine. To flip the bagels, I recommend using a pair of chopsticks. Be gentle with your flipping at this point as the dough is still soft and you can deform the bagels (but even if you do they will still taste great!)

Bake the bagels until they are golden brown, 8 per pan. Once done, remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack, then store in an airtight container. To serve, slice and toast and serve with butter – a whipped honey butter goes excellently with this, but regular butter is delicious as well. I love making these and other bagels at the beginning of the week and eating them for breakfasts with a cup of English breakfast tea – a wonderful way to start the day.

– The Recipe –