Montreal bagels
Smaller, denser and sweeter than New York bagels: they’re boiled in honey water and baked in a wood-fired oven. Montreal’s Jewish bakers have been making them day and night since 1919.
Ingredients
- 500 g strong bread flour
- 7 g dried yeast
- 250 ml warm water
- 1 egg
- 60 g honey
- 2 tablespoons oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Water with 4 tablespoons of honey, for boiling
- Sesame or poppy seeds
How to make it at home
- Knead the flour with the yeast, water, egg, honey, oil and salt into a firm dough. Leave to rest for 30 minutes.
- Divide into 12 pieces, roll into 25 cm ropes and join them into rings, overlapping and pressing the ends together.
- Bring the honey water to the boil and cook the bagels for 1 minute on each side.
- Drain them and coat them in sesame seeds.
- Bake at 250 °C for about 15 minutes, until deep golden.
The trick: The hotter the oven, the closer they get to the wood-fired ones.