MONTREAL STYLE BAGELS

Hello friends and food lovers!!

This has been a pretty crazy week, between making cakes, and trying to prepare for my parents to arrive and stay with me for a few days, I feel like I haven't had a ton of spare time kicking around. Being the extreme carb lover that I am, I had to carve out a little bit of time to whip up another batch of bagels, and have the ultimate head to head bagel showdown!

Last week I made New York style bagels, which were very simple, but delicious. This week it's Montreal style bagels. These have a slightly more complex dough, but take less time overall to make - you can maybe watch one episode of The Office, but you'll have to keep pausing it and getting up.

Check out the recipe below to see how they're made!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups warm water

5 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp canola oil

8 grams yeast

2 large eggs (divided - one for dough, one for egg wash)

4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1/3 cup honey

Directions:

Combine yeast and 1/2 cup warm water - set aside until doubled in size.

Whisk together warm water, sugar, canola oil, yeast, and one egg. Combine until yeast is fully dissolved.

Add in one cup of the flour, and salt, combine until smooth. Slowly add in the rest of the flour (three cups) until a soft dough forms. Turn your dough out on lightly floured counter, and knead for 10ish minutes.

Return your dough to a bowl, cover, and let rest, for 10 minutes! Seriously - only 10 minutes - I told you there would be no time for The Office today.

After the 10 minutes have passed, turn your dough back out on to the counter, and divide in to 12 equal parts. Full disclosure - I was VERY tired when I made my bagels, and accidentally divided my dough in to 16 equal parts, and I still managed to get 16 respectable sized bagels. So if you make these when you're very tired; everything is still going to be okay.

Next I had to decide if I wanted to go with the bun and hole poke bagel forming method, that I used when making the New York style bagels, or the rope method. Since this is a bagel showdown, I wanted to keep everything as consistent as I could, so I did the bun and hole poke method again.

Let your formed bagels rise covered for 30 minutes. Okay maybe you could sneak in an episode of The Office here - but I would maybe recommend prepping your bagel toppings now - for consistency I did Italian salt, onion, and garlic again.

While your bagels are rising, fill up a large pot with water, add in your 1/3 cup honey, and bring the water to a boil. Now would also be a good time to pre-heat your oven to 425.

Boil each bagel for 45 seconds per side. Remove your bagels from the water using a large spider, and try to remove as much water as possible on a piece of paper towel. Place your bagels evenly spaced on a baking sheet lined with parchment.

Second egg, it's your time to shine! Beat your egg to create an egg wash, and use a pastry brush to generously coat all your bagels, then add your toppings!

Once you have all your bagels laid out, dressed, and ready, go ahead and pop them in the oven.

I baked my first batch of bagels for 12 minutes on the bake setting. For my second and third batches, I changed my oven to convection bake, and I was able to cut the bake time down to 9 minutes. They did get a little bit more brown and crispy on top when I switched to convection bake, but I made sure to sample bagels from both bake methods, and I can confirm that they were both fantastic.

Compared to the New York bagels, the Montreal bagels are more light, and ever so slightly sweet (thank you honey water), and I really preferred them. I'll be making another batch of these on Friday before my parents arrive, and I'll ask my dad - who is a bagel connoisseur, his opinion.

I hope you try this recipe and let me know what you think too!

Stay hungry! xo