Homemade Bagels with Ricotta Horseradish Dill Spread

A bagel with cream cheese is one of my go-to comfort foods. When I was in college in DC, I used to smuggle bagels back to my dorm from home on Long Island. It was well worth having my duffle bag and its contents smell like everything spice for a few days. With the chill of fall in the air this month, I find myself returning to old favorites. I’m living in New York again and have a plethora of great bagel shops nearby,  but when The New York Times Cooking site recently shared a recipe for bagels, I wanted to see if I could satisfy the craving myself.

The recipe seemed simple enough and called for ingredients that I have in my kitchen all of the time. The only thing I needed to buy was yeast. By using the bread machine variety, the process went pretty quickly. As I said in my last post, I’ve never really made bread from scratch before, but since making these bagels went so smoothly, I’ve definitely overcome my hesitations. The only challenging step was shaping the bagels into rings and sealing the ends. Eventually, Jeff figured out a trick to twist the ends after overlapping them and then folding the bagel into itself.

After the bagel shapes were formed, the final steps were boiling, dipping, and baking. For boiling, I didn’t have a dutch oven that was large enough to hold 3 quarts of water, but I still used the full amount of honey/malt syrup. This made the bagels have a sweeter taste, which I liked, but next time I may cut the honey by a third. For toppings, I dipped the bagels in poppy, sesame, everything, and salt. The recipe says to bake the bagels for 25 minutes at 450 degrees, but I took them out after about 12 minutes and they were golden brown.

Shaping the dough

Boiling the bagels

About to go in the oven

Everything spice: poppy, sesame, black sesame, onion flakes, garlic flakes, kosher salt, fennel seeds

We ate a few of the bagels for brunch today and are freezing the rest of them (there were about 18 total). In keeping with my new monthly series, I prepared a spread of ricotta with horseradish and dill as well. You can follow the same recipe with cream cheese, but I prefer the lighter quality of ricotta. I served the bagel and smear with smoked salmon and watermelon radishes. The combination was inspired by Black Seed Bagels, a Montreal-style bagel shop that is making a lot of New Yorkers fall in love with bagels again. Their sandwich has beet-cured salmon, which may be my next cooking challenge to take on.

Ricotta Horseradish Dill Spread

Everything bagel with ricotta horseradish dill spread, smoked salmon, and watermelon radish

Montreal Bagels
The New York Times Cooking recipe

Ricotta Horseradish Dill Spread serves 4
1/4 lb ricotta cheese (or cream cheese)
2 tsp horseradish, chopped (fresh or jarred)
1 tbsp fresh dill, chopped
1/2 tsp celery salt (more to taste)

Combine ingredients in a bowl and fold into the ricotta. Serve immediately.