Small-Batch Bagel Recipe (Makes Just 2 Bagels!)

I'm so excited to be sharing my exclusive recipe for small-batch bagels from my cookbook Small Batch Breads: 50 Recipes for Loaves, Buns, and Flatbreads Made with One Cup of Flour. This is such a good beginner-friendly bagel recipe because it's quick, uses easy-to-find ingredients like all-purpose flour and instant yeast, and makes just two bagels.

When I started working on my book proposal for Small Batch Breads, I knew bagels had to be part of it. This bagel recipe actually appeared in the writing sample of the proposal I submitted to publishers when I was pitching it. Bagels were my personal gateway into making bread from scratch and remain one of my all-time favorite things to bake. There had to be room for them in the book.

People are so scared to try making bagels from scratch, but once you give my easy small-batch bagel recipe a try, I just know you'll be feeling confident enough to try my other full-size easy homemade bagel recipes, too!

If you want to scale this recipe up to make more bagels, I recommend using one of my regular bagel recipes, which I have already done the math on to scale up the amount of yeast to an appropriate proportion for the larger amount of flour!

While bagels are traditionally made from a high gluten/high protein flour like bread flour, I find all-purpose flour works just fine for this simple recipe, especially if you're new to making bagels.

Since my small-batch bagel recipe only uses one cup (120g) of flour, I don't think it's worth buying a bag of specialty flour unless you have other uses for it.

Kneading Bagel Dough by Hand

This small batch bagel dough is one of the easiest doughs to make by hand, imo. Bagel dough is not too sticky or wet, it's very fun to handle. I usually start by mixing the dough with a dough whisk until the water is absorbed and it starts to form some large clumps in the bowl.

Then I switch to a bowl scraper to fold the dough over itself in the bowl to get all the dry bits incorporated into one mass of dough before I turn it out onto the counter to knead.

The dough will seem quite dry at first, but as you knead, the flour will continue absorbing water.

You can check out my video at the end of the recipe card to see how I knead the dough by hand, but it's basically rocking and folding the dough over itself until it's smooth and slightly tacky to the touch. If the dough seems sticky or is clinging to you/your hands/the counter, dust in flour as you work.

Shaping Small Batch Bagels

When it comes to shaping these two bagels, divide the dough in half and tuck each half into a tight ball with a seam on the bottom and a smooth top. If you need to combine a few pieces of dough to make two equal portions, stack the smaller pieces on top of the biggest piece so they end up tucked inside.

Always do this step on an unfloured surface so the dough can stick to itself! The only time to add flour when you're shaping bagels is when you're poking the hole through the bottom. That's when you don't want the dough to stick to itself.

I quickly repeat the stretching process right before boiling the bagels to keep the hole from closing up in the oven.

If They're Not Boiled, They're Not Bagels!

Since this small batch recipe makes just two bagels, you can boil them one at a time in a smaller pot or both at once in a wider pot. I usually use a 3-qt high-sided sauté pan and boil both bagels at the same time. But pretty much any pot you can fill with at least 2-3" of water so the bagels float without touching the bottom is just fine.

Boiling is a crucial step in the bagel-making process. The hot water gelatinizes the starches in the crust, setting them in place. It also gets the yeast moving, so the bagels begin expanding. The combination of the two—the yeast activity and the gelatinized crust—prevents the bagels from expanding too much in the oven.

📖 Recipe