Rosemary Olive Oil Bagels (Bruegger's Copycat)

These rosemary olive oil bagels are a near-perfect copycat for the ones you can get at Bruegger's Bagels. They're golden brown, chewy and tender, with nice herbal flavor from the olive oil and fresh minced rosemary.

This rosemary bagel dough would be so good made into cream cheese stuffed mini bagels too, btw!

My go-to bagel order for years when I lived in near a Bruegger's Bagels, was a rosemary olive oil bagel, toasted, with cream cheese. Preferably scallion cream cheese if they had it (and oh, it was a tragedy when they didn't). But honestly, any cream cheese would do.

I tested so many ways to add rosemary and olive oil to bagel dough

When I first started making bagels many years ago, I tried making a "rosemary bagel" by putting fresh rosemary on top of my go-to easy plain bagel recipe. I was sorely disappointed when the rosemary dried and shriveled unpleasantly in the oven.

It took me a few tries to get this copycat recipe for Breugger's rosemary olive oil bagels just right. If you use even a little too much oil, the bagels end up a little fluffier and lighter, not dense and chewy the way a bagel should be.

I tested using an olive oil wash on the outside of the bagels instead of an egg wash, but that just led to dusty, cracked bagel crusts. And if you're shy with the rosemary, you might as well not use it at all.

The trick is to be heavy-handed with the fresh rosemary and use a lighter touch with the olive oil — but choose a high-quality olive oil with an assertive flavor. The end result is a chewy, dense bagel with lots of fresh, savory rosemary and olive oil flavor.

Rosemary bagels are best with cream cheese

The funny thing about these rosemary olive oil bagels is that, on their own, they're just not living up to their full potential. As I was developing this recipe, I quickly realized that tasting the bagels on their own wasn't going to tell me when I had achieved a dupe of the Breugger's version.

It was only once I added cream cheese to my taste tests that they truly began to shine. So yeah, plain rosemary olive oil bagels are... just fine. I feel this way about the Breugger's version, too. They're good. I like them. But pairing them with cream cheese is just *chefs kiss* perfection.

I knew I had nailed this recipe when the bagels on their own inspired a satisfied shrug, but the bagels with cream cheese sent me wooshing Ratatouille-style back to afternoons waiting for the bus outside the Breugger's in downtown Pittsburgh after school, bagels in hand.

Ingredient Notes

You don't need a lot of fancy ingredients to make rosemary olive oil bagels. It's basically your standard bagel ingredients plus some olive oil and rosemary!

• All-purpose or bread flour - Either one will work for these. Bread flour is more traditional for bagel making because it's better at gluten development and creates chewier bagels. But all-purpose flour is what I usually use and works just fine, too.
• Brown sugar - I like the extra flavor the brown sugar adds to these bagels, but if you're out of it, just sub in the same amount of plain white sugar.
• Extra virgin olive oil - You will taste the olive oil in these bagels, so pick a quality olive oil with a flavor you like.

Make a rosemary infused olive oil for the dough

The first step of making rosemary olive oil bagels is to make a rosemary-infused olive oil. It's what it sounds like: a mixture of olive oil and minced rosemary. The longer the rosemary sits in the olive oil before you use it, the stronger the flavor will be and the softer the rosemary pieces will be.

While the rosemary infuses in the olive oil, mix the dry ingredients together in the bowl of your mixer. Break up any lumps of brown sugar with your hands or a whisk. Pour the water into the center of the flour mixture along with the rosemary and olive oil infusion.

If you live somewhere very humid, hold back a few tablespoons of water and only add them if the dough really needs it. If you live somewhere very dry, you may need to add a few extra teaspoons of water (but only do this if absolutely necessary!).

Mixing vs. Kneading:

• Mixing the dough is the step where you want all the ingredients to just come together. There shouldn't be any dry bits of flour in the bottom of the bowl and it should mostly be one messy looking lump on the dough hook. It can take a few minutes before the dough is completely mixed, and you can use this time to add more water or more flour if the dough needs it.
• Kneading is the step after mixing, where you're developing gluten in the dough. Gluten provides strength and structure and you'll see your messy, lumpy dough become smooth and fully hydrated by the end of the kneading process.

Once the dough is kneaded, you'll put it in a bowl or bucket coated with a bit of olive oil and let it rise until just about doubled in size.

Dough rises faster in warm environments (ideally 72°-75°F), so if you live somewhere cold, you'll want to put it somewhere warm, like your OFF oven with the oven light on. If you live somewhere very warm, just check on it a bit earlier than an hour — it might be ready sooner!

If "doubled in size" is a hard target for you, please know it's just a rough way of explaining what to look for before moving on to the next step.

Another way to tell if your dough has finished proofing (that's baker for "rising") is to press a lightly floured fingertip into the dough. The indent should fill back in a little, but not completely. If the indent fills in immediately, you can let it rise a little bit longer. But if you press in and the dough deflates quickly, it has over-proofed. If this happens, give the dough a quick knead on the counter and then let it rest for 10 minutes. It will be okay.

How to Shape Bagels

The addition of olive oil in this dough makes it even more silky smooth and elastic than plain bagel dough, but otherwise the shaping process is exactly the same. Because the olive oil makes the dough a little more elastic, you'll probably want to stretch the holes out again right before you boil them or they'll close up in the oven.

Divide the dough into equal portions on an unfloured surface. 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 same width as the sides of the bagel if not bigger.

You may want to repeat the stretching process again before boiling to keep the hole from closing up in the oven.

Once the bagels are shaped, you'll boil them for about a minute per side. Boiling gelatinizes the starches in the crust and gives you that classic shiny, smooth, chewy bagel exterior. If you skip this step you'll end up with bagel-shaped bread. It might look like a bagel, but it will be missing that thing that makes bagels uniquely... bagely.

Once they've been boiled, all they need is a quick egg wash to make them shiny and golden brown. Then you bake them!

Practical Tips and Recipe Notes

• If you want to intensify the flavors you can let the shaped bagels (before boiling) sit overnight (8-10 hours) in the fridge. This gives the rosemary more time to infuse in the dough, and slows the bagels' rise.
• A totally optional step for getting a nice crunchy bagel bottom is to lightly sprinkle your parchment paper or silicone mat with cornmeal or semolina flour before putting the boiled bagels down on them.
• Take these to the next level by making homemade cream cheese to go with them.
• Bagel dough is a low hydration dough. Resist adding any more liquid to it than you need to. If you live somewhere very dry, you may need to add just a touch extra. If so, add about 1 teaspoon of olive oil and let the mixer run another 20-30 seconds before adding more, 1 teaspoon at a time. If the dough is very sticky that's a sign you added too much liquid; dust in more flour until it pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

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This post was originally published on 7/27/2020. Last updated 8/4/2021.