Fresh Homemade Everything Bagels

These aren't your bagel shop's everything bagels! These everything bagels have crunchy, chewy crusts and everything bagel seasoning mixed right into the dough, bringing those delicious garlicky, oniony flavors to life in every bite.

These easy homemade everything bagels are a great project for beginner bakers. Like most of my other bagel recipes, this recipe uses all-purpose flour, and you can make these bagels in just a couple hours.

You can even combine this approach to making everything bagels with my base recipes for chewy egg bagels, roasted garlic bagels, or even mini bagels if you're feeling fancy. They're also so good turned into homemade bagel chips!

Use the downtime when the dough is rising to whip up some easy homemade cream cheese or fresh homemade butter and you can have everything ready in time for brunch!

Jump to:

• About This Everything Bagel Recipe
• Ingredient Notes
• How to Make Everything Bagels
• 🥯 How to Shape a Bagel
• Boiling, Topping, and Baking
• Suggested Equipment
• How to Hand Knead Bagel Dough
• Storage Tips
• A Note on Temperature and Dough Rising
• Recipe FAQ
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

About This Everything Bagel Recipe

Most everything bagel recipes feature a plain bagel base and an everything bagel topping — a mix of garlic, onion, poppy seeds, and sesame seeds.

But if you love everything bagels, you also know the frustration of slicing or biting into an everything bagel and having all those toppings go cascading off the bagel to scatter across your otherwise clean countertop. You'll be finding escaped poppyseeds around the kitchen for weeks! No one wants that!

So for this everything bagel recipe, I've gone ahead and mixed a quarter cup of my favorite homemade everything bagel seasoning blend right into the dough.

This extra step is super worth it, imo. The minced garlic and onion infuse the dough with garlic and onion flavor, and the seeds are nice and crunchy throughout.

I do still encourage you to finish these bagels with an everything bagel topping, but for practical or mess-reducing purposes, you can skip the toppings entirely and still enjoy a bagel with great everything bagel flavor. Think of them as inside-out everything bagels.

Since garlic and onion can slow down yeast activity, I added a bit more yeast to this recipe than you'll see in my other bagel recipes. It doesn't need much extra, but just enough to help the dough knead and rise the way we want it to.

Ingredient Notes

Here are the ingredients you'll need to make these easy everything bagels! See recipe card for quantities.

• Flour - All purpose flour. I use King Arthur Baking Company's all purpose flour which has a higher protein content (closer to bread flour) than other brands of flour. If you're using a grocery store brand of flour, you may get better results using bread flour.
• Water - Lukewarm to the touch. Not hot. If you want to be precise, it should be between 100-110F.
• Sugar - Plain white granulated sugar. You could also use brown sugar if you prefer.
• Salt - I use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt which half as salty as other brands. If measuring by weight, you can use any brand or type of salt. But if you're measuring by volume and using a different brand of salt, even a different brand of kosher salt, cut the amount of salt in half.
• Instant yeast - I swear by SAF Red Instant Yeast. Instant yeast is also sometimes called "rapid rise" yeast. If you only have active dry yeast, use 10 grams of yeast instead.
• Everything Bagel Seasoning Blend - I recommend using my salt-free homemade everything bagel seasoning for best results. The salt in most store bought brands can throw off the salt content in the dough, and sucks moisture out of the finished bagels as a topping.
• Egg - For the egg wash to make the bagels shiny and help the everything bagel seasoning stick. (Omit if you don't like/can't eat eggs.)

How to Make Everything Bagels

We're following standard bagel making process here. Use a kitchen scale to weigh your ingredients. You'll have a hard time getting the bagel dough to the right consistency if you don't use weight measurements.

You can use an electric mixer with a dough hook to mix and knead the bagel dough. You may need to stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl during the mixing stage.

TIP: Hold back about a ¼ cup of water when you add it to the dry ingredients. Let the dough mix for a few minutes. It may not need all of the water, especially if you live somewhere humid. If the dough still seems dry, add water 1 teaspoon at a time directly onto any dry bits in the bowl until the dough comes together in a messy ball.

If your bagel dough seems too wet and sticky, if it is clinging to the sides of the bowl or to your hands — dust in additional flour as you knead.

The dough should be smooth, soft, stretchy, and just slightly tacky to the touch.

Once the dough has been kneaded, tuck the edges under to shape it into a ball. Place it in a lightly greased bowl. (You can use the bowl of your mixer, just wipe it with a lightly oiled paper towel first.)

Cover the dough and let it rise for an hour in a warm (70-27F) spot. It should just about double in size.

🥯 How to Shape a Bagel

Divide the dough into equal portions. If you're combining a few pieces together to make a portion, stack the smaller pieces on top of the bigger pieces.

Tuck the edges up so the dough is smooth against the counter with a seam pinched together on top. Repeat until the dough ball feels fairly tight. Don't tear the dough, just stretch it.

Then, flip the dough over so the seam side is down against the counter. Cup your hand around the dough and slide it toward you. The dough will take on an oval shape. Rotate it 90 degrees and repeat to turn the oval into a round circle.

(Or, cup your hand around the dough with your pinkie-side flush against an unfloured counter and your thumb and forefinger making an O- or C-like shape above the dough. Move your hand in quick circles without picking your pinkie off the counter, and the dough will quickly shape itself into a nice smooth ball of dough.)

Once the dough has been shaped into balls, coat your hands in flour and stick a thumb through the bottom seam of the dough.

Slide your other thumb in and gently squeeze and stretch, rotating the dough through your hands until the bagel hole is at least the twice as wide as the sides of the bagel.

Boiling, Topping, and Baking

Boiling is a crucial step in the bagel making process. The hot water kickstarts yeast activity, allowing the bagels to begin expanding while also gelatinizing the starches in the crust.

This is what gives bagels their characteristic shiny, thin, chewy crusts and is a step that cannot be skipped. If they aren't boiled, they aren't bagels!

You can boil bagels anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes per side. The longer you boil them, the thicker the crust will be and the larger your bagels will be.

I recommend boiling these everything bagels for one minute per side. Use a wire spider to flip the bagels and transfer them out of the boiling water to avoid splashing.

After the bagels have been boiled, arrange them on a lined sheet pan.

Offset them slightly in rows of two — they will expand slightly in the oven and you don't want them bumping into each other.

In a small bowl, whisk together an egg and a teaspoon of water to make an egg wash.

Let the bagels cool slightly (just 5 minutes is fine) before you dip them in the everything bagel seasoning. They're quite hot when they come out of the egg wash, you don't want to burn your fingers.

You have time here, so don't feel rushed. The crusts have been set in place, you don't have to worry so much about them over proofing while you add the toppings.

If you're feeling ambitious, you can even make "everywhere" everything bagels by dipping the bottoms of the bagels in everything bagel seasoning too. (Credit where it's due — this is is a name I've borrowed from Exodus Bagels, one of my favorite local bagel shops here in Boston!)

Don't feel like dipping your everything bagels? Sprinkling the everything bagel seasoning on top is just fine too.

Suggested Equipment

You don't need fancy equipment to make these everything bagels, but here are some tools I recommend that will make it easier!

• Kitchen Scale - You need a kitchen scale to measure your ingredients. Measuring flour by cups can throw the recipe off a lot, as they're very inaccurate depending on how much you pack the flour into the cup when you scoop it. It also helps you divide the dough evenly so your bagels are all the same size.
• Bench Scraper - For dividing the dough. You can also use a knife.
• Wire Spider - Helps support your delicate bagel dough when you lift it in and out of the water without splashing or dripping too much.
• Stand Mixer with Dough Hook - This dough needs a strong mixer. While you absolutely can use a tilt-head KitchenAid mixer, you'll want to keep an eye on the bowl — you may need to hold it in place while kneading. I recommend using a 5-6 quart pro-line bowl-lift KitchenAid mixer or other sturdy mixer with a dough hook for best results. You cannot use a hand mixer with dough hooks to make this dough.

How to Hand Knead Bagel Dough

Don't have a stand mixer with a dough hook? No problem! You can totally knead these homemade everything bagels by hand.

Follow the same instructions for mixing and kneading the dough with the 10 minute resting periods.

For mixing, use a sturdy wooden spoon, a dough whisk, or your hands to mix the dough until it comes together in a shaggy, messy ball in the bowl.

For kneading, turn the dough out onto a clean work surface or counter top and knead by hand for 8-10 minutes until the dough is smooth, tacky, and elastic. Set a timer or play All Too Well (10 Minute Version)(Taylor's Version) start-to-finish while you knead so you don't stop kneading too soon!

There are a lot of different ways to knead dough, but you're basically looking to fold the dough over itself and press it back together, rotate it, and repeat over and over and over again.

To knead dough by hand: Press the heel of your hand down into the middle of the dough and press away from you to rock the dough forward. Fold the top of the dough down, rotate it 90 degrees, then repeat.

Lightly dust in additional flour as needed while you knead — the dough shouldn't be sticking to you or the counter. The key word here is LIGHTLY. If you add too much flour at once, it will prevent the dough from sticking to itself as you knead.

Storage Tips

Bagels stale quickly and are best eaten same day. They can be stored in a paper bag inside a plastic bag or in a large resealable bag along with a paper towel to absorb moisture.

Do not refrigerate bagels. To extend the shelf life of your everything bagels, freeze them within 3 days of baking. Sometimes I like to slice my bagels almost all the way through before freezing to make them easier to defrost later.

A Note on Temperature and Dough Rising

Temperature is the main factor in determining how quickly or slowly your dough rises (proofs). This includes the temperature of ingredients in your dough, as well as the ambient temperature of the room where you are leaving your dough to rise.

Depending on how cool or warm your water was, and how cool or warm your kitchen is, your dough may rise faster or slower.

• Warmer temperatures increase yeast activity. (But temperatures over 110°F can kill it!)
• Cooler temperatures slow yeast activity. (For a longer, slower proof, put the dough in the fridge.)

If your dough is rising slowly and your kitchen is cold, find somewhere warmer to put your dough to finish rising. If your kitchen is very warm, your dough might be ready to divide and shape before an hour is up.

In baking, "room temperature" is generally somewhere around 70-75°F.

Just because the dough isn't ready right at the times given in the recipe doesn't mean it's not working — there might be other factors affecting how quickly or slowly it gets there! You may need to make adjustments on your own.

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