Homemade Mini Bagels

Learn how to make adorable little mini bagels at home with this step-by-step guide.

Mini bagels are perfect for making homemade bagel bites, brunch platters, picnic spreads, school lunches, and more! And once you get comfortable making these easy mini bagels, soon you'll be making homemade cream cheese stuffed mini bagel bombs too!

About These Mini Bagels

This easy mini bagel recipe is a smaller version of my regular plain bagel recipe. The small size of these mini bagels require enough changes to the base recipe that I wanted to give them their own own home on the site.

They need less time to boil and less time to bake, for one. And since I hate using more than one sheet pan if I don't need to, I've shrunk the recipe so that all the mini bagels can fit on one pan for baking. You're welcome.

And while the bagels themselves are smaller, this mini bagel recipe isn't quite a small batch bake, though it is smaller than my full sized bagel recipes.

You can use this same mini bagel process for making mini versions of any of my unique bagel recipes. Those recipes are slightly larger and will make 16 mini bagels instead of 12.

Go ahead, try making mini egg bagels, mini rosemary olive oil bagels, or even mini jalapeño cheddar bagels! Those recipes will make 16 bagels instead of 12, or you can shrink them by 25% to make 12 mini bagels.

I like using these mini bagels to make DIY bagel bites, but they were also a hit served up plain at my family's annual lake trip. We put them out on a platter with a bunch of of deli salads (tuna salad, egg salad, guacamole, etc.), cream cheeses, hummuses, etc.

Unlike full size bagels where you feel obligated to commit to one sandwich filling, people liked being able to enjoy a variety of mini bagel sandwiches in one sitting.

Mini bagels are also great for kid-sized hands and appetites — these mini bagels will be a huge hit in school lunches and after school snack time!

Ingredient Notes

Here are the ingredients you'll need to make these mini bagels. It's everything you need to make regular sized bagels, just in slightly smaller quantities.

• All-Purpose Flour - Bagels are traditionally made with a higher protein bread flour, but I use King Arthur Baking's all-purpose flour which has a relatively high protein content for an all-purpose flour. If you're using another brand of flour you may have better results with bread flour.
• Instant Yeast - Sometimes called "rapid rise" yeast. This yeast does not need to be bloomed in water and can be added directly to the dry ingredients.
• Salt - I use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt which half as salty as other brands of salt. If measuring salt by weight, it doesn't matter what brand of salt you use. 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.
• Sugar - Plain granulated sugar is all you need here. You can also use brown sugar if you prefer.
• Water - Lukewarm to the touch. Not hot. If you want to be precise, it should be between 100-110F.
• Egg - For the egg wash! The egg wash gives bagels their shiny browned crusts. If you're adding any toppings to your homemade mini bagels, the egg wash will also help them stick.

How to Make Mini Bagels

We're following standard bread dough making procedure for these mini bagels. First, combine the dry ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer. Then, pour the lukewarm water into the center of the bowl.

Hold back about ⅛ cup of water to start, and add it gradually if the dough seems dry. If you live somewhere humid, you may not need all of the water. If you live somewhere dry, you likely will!

Mix the dough until it comes together in a messy ball in the bowl. This can take a few minutes, and you may need to pause to scrape down the sides a few times to get it to come together.

Once the dough has come together, increase the speed to medium and knead for 3-5 minutes until the dough is smooth, elastic, and slightly tacky to the touch.

The mini bagel dough should pull cleanly away from the sides of the bowl. If it's sticking to the walls or bottom of the bowl, dust in more flour one teaspoon at a time.

No matter what size bagel you're making, bagel dough is a low hydration dough. It has a relatively small amount of water compared to the amount of flour.

You'll know the bagel dough needs water if it looks like it's tearing, it's not smoothing out after a few minutes of kneading, or if you can still see dry bits in the bowl that aren't incorporating.

If your mini bagel dough does need more water, the best way to add it is by dipping your fingers in water and flicking droplets onto the dough. This will help keep you from adding too much water.

Let the Dough Rise

Shape the mini bagel dough into a ball, place it in a greased bowl, cover it, and let it rise for one hour.

The temperature of the water and the temperature of the room the dough is rising in will affect how quickly it rises. Cool temperatures slow yeast activity, warm temperatures speed it up.

The ideal room temperature for dough rising is somewhere around 70-75F.

🥯 How to Shape a Mini Bagel

Shaping mini bagels is just like shaping regular sized bagels. The bagels are smaller so you have to be a little gentler on the dough, but otherwise you're following the same process.

First, divide the dough into equal portions. For mini bagels, each dough ball should weigh around 50-55 grams.

If you're combining a few pieces of dough together, stack the smaller pieces on top of the bigger pieces.

Gently flatten the stack against the counter, then fold the edges up over the center so the dough is smooth against the counter with a seam pinched together on top.

Then, flip the dough over so the pinched seam 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.

Repeat as needed to create tension on the top of the dough and tighten the seam underneath.

If the seams aren't closing up as you create tension in the dough, let the dough balls rest for 5 minutes before you poke the holes.

To poke the holes in your mini bagels, dust your hands with flour and carefully stick a thumb through the bottom seam of the dough and out the other side.

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

TIP: Quickly repeat the stretching process before boiling the mini bagels to keep the hole from closing up in the oven.

Boiling and Baking Mini Bagels

If you've heard me say it once, you've heard me say it a million times: If they're not boiled, they're not bagels!

Boiling is a crucial step in the bagel making process. It gelatinizes the starches in the outer crust of the bagel, giving them their characteristic chewiness.

Because these mini bagels are so small, they only need to be boiled for about 20-30 seconds per side.

You can work in batches for this step — depending on how wide your pot is you should be able to do two batches of six bagels each.

Use a wire spider to flip the bagels and remove them from the boiling water with minimal splashing. That said, mini bagels are small enough that a regular slotted spoon can also work just fine here.

Remove the boiled mini bagels to a lined sheet pan and brush with egg wash.

EGG WASH: 1 large egg + 1 teaspoon water, whisked together until well combined.

You can add any toppings you like to your mini bagels. These are great with my homemade everything bagel seasoning!

Mini bagels bake for 17-19 minutes at 425F. You're looking for a light golden brown color here. The tops of the mini bagels will brown before the sides do so, at 17 minutes, if the sides are still looking pale, give them the extra two minutes.

Substituting Active Dry Yeast for Instant Yeast

Active Dry and Instant yeast are technically the same thing — meaning, they are both saccharomyces cerevisiae, a single-celled living organism used for leavening bread and doughs.

The only difference between the two types of yeast is that Active Dry yeast granules have a little coating around them which needs to be dissolved to reveal the yeast inside.

Because of this extra little shell around the Active Dry yeast granules, you'll need to use slightly more Active Dry yeast to get the same effect as using Instant.

To calculate how much Active Dry yeast to use, increase the amount of Instant yeast by 25%. So for this recipe, you'd be using 5 grams of active dry yeast.

Storage Notes

Mini bagels are best stored in a paper bag inside a zip-top bag, or in a zip-top bag with a paper towel to absorb any excess moisture.

These mini bagels are best eaten within 2-3 days of baking, but can be stored in the freezer for up to 3 months. Do not refrigerate bagels.

Practical Tips and Recipe Notes

• To make a mini bagel version of my everything bagels that have everything bagel seasoning in the dough, add 3 tablespoons everything bagel seasoning to the dry ingredients and increase the amount of yeast by 1 gram.
• The only reason to bloom yeast in warm water before adding it to your dough is to check that it's still alive. Store your yeast in the freezer and you'll never have to worry about this step.
• If you need to let the bagel dough rest or relax at all during the shaping process, cover it with a damp paper towel to prevent it from drying out.

📖 Recipe