I rarely eat bagels but on a few recent occasions I've found myself popping inside Bread Furst for a sesame seed bagel. Sometimes I just can't resist if I happen to be walking by the bakery on a weekend morning on an empty stomach. I love the bagels at Bread Furst. They are relatively expensive (if memory serves, they cost $1.85 each -- and you don't get a discount when you buy a dozen, which will set you back more than $22!), and they are small. But I think the dense, crusty, super chewy bagels are worth every penny.
The local press routinely refers to Mark Furstenberg's bagels as "Montreal style," meaning that they are smaller than the poofy, doughy bagels that are common fare today. I had never heard the term "Montreal style" before seeing it associated with Bread Furst. But then I came across a recipe for Montreal Bagels from The New York Times. The accompanying article describes them as chewy bagels baked in wood ovens and sweetened with honey. The bagels at Bread Furst are certainly very chewy and they are baked on a hearth -- but I have never thought of them as sweet. I had to give the recipe a try.
I have made bagels once before (I tried this recipe from King Arthur Flour), and it didn't go well. This recipe seemed like it should be easier. I made the dough in my stand mixer by combining room temperature water, yeast (I used SAF gold instant), sugar, and salt; adding an egg, egg yolk, oil, and honey; incorporating bread flour; and mixing until I got a smooth dough. My dough was very soft and sticky and I kept adding extra flour; I ended up using a total of 770 grams of King Arthur bread flour. I put the dough in an oiled bowl and let it rest for 20 minutes.
The recipe says you should punch down the down after it's rested, but in the mere 20 minutes that had passed the dough hadn't risen much and there was nothing to punch down. I divided the dough into 18 equal portions and formed them into bagel shapes. Even though I had added so much extra flour, the dough was still incredibly sticky and I had to lightly oil my hands and work surface to combat sticking.
I tried the shaping method prescribed in the recipe, which is to roll each piece of dough into a rope, connect the ends, and seal the seam together. I found this to be challenging, so instead I just formed each piece of dough into a taut ball, poked a hole in the middle, and then stretched the dough by twirling it around my fingers to enlarge the hole and form the bagel shape.
I thought these bagels looked terrific, both whole and sliced. They were small put poofy, so they didn't look as much like a Montreal bagel as they did a mainstream poofy bagel that had been hit with a shrink ray. While they had a golden and shiny crust, I was disappointed that the crust was not super chewy like the Bread Furst bagels I adore. Still, I loved these bagels and thought they tasted fantastic. They were not doughy at all, had a firm crust (which actually was slightly chewier and improved on day two), and delivered a lovely lightly sweet flavor that didn't require any cream cheese, butter, or jam (although adding any of those accompaniments didn't hurt, of course). And the bagels froze beautifully, so I've been popping them in the toaster and continuing to enjoy them long after they were baked.
Bread Furst doesn't have to worry about losing my business, because this recipe doesn't allow me to replicate its bagels at home. But I've discovered a whole new type of bagel that I'm going to enjoy making and eating again and again.
Recipe: "Montreal Bagels" from The New York Times, May 13, 1987.
The local press routinely refers to Mark Furstenberg's bagels as "Montreal style," meaning that they are smaller than the poofy, doughy bagels that are common fare today. I had never heard the term "Montreal style" before seeing it associated with Bread Furst. But then I came across a recipe for Montreal Bagels from The New York Times. The accompanying article describes them as chewy bagels baked in wood ovens and sweetened with honey. The bagels at Bread Furst are certainly very chewy and they are baked on a hearth -- but I have never thought of them as sweet. I had to give the recipe a try.
I have made bagels once before (I tried this recipe from King Arthur Flour), and it didn't go well. This recipe seemed like it should be easier. I made the dough in my stand mixer by combining room temperature water, yeast (I used SAF gold instant), sugar, and salt; adding an egg, egg yolk, oil, and honey; incorporating bread flour; and mixing until I got a smooth dough. My dough was very soft and sticky and I kept adding extra flour; I ended up using a total of 770 grams of King Arthur bread flour. I put the dough in an oiled bowl and let it rest for 20 minutes.
The recipe says you should punch down the down after it's rested, but in the mere 20 minutes that had passed the dough hadn't risen much and there was nothing to punch down. I divided the dough into 18 equal portions and formed them into bagel shapes. Even though I had added so much extra flour, the dough was still incredibly sticky and I had to lightly oil my hands and work surface to combat sticking.
I tried the shaping method prescribed in the recipe, which is to roll each piece of dough into a rope, connect the ends, and seal the seam together. I found this to be challenging, so instead I just formed each piece of dough into a taut ball, poked a hole in the middle, and then stretched the dough by twirling it around my fingers to enlarge the hole and form the bagel shape.
I let the shaped bagels rest for a few minutes and then boiled them briefly in water with barley malt syrup added. After boiling, I left some bagels plain and coated others with poppy seeds or sesame seeds before baking them.
Bread Furst doesn't have to worry about losing my business, because this recipe doesn't allow me to replicate its bagels at home. But I've discovered a whole new type of bagel that I'm going to enjoy making and eating again and again.
Recipe: "Montreal Bagels" from The New York Times, May 13, 1987.
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