NY Style Garlic Achar Bagels

I am what you call a bagel connoisseur…. Every day for almost a decade of my life, I ate a bagel for breakfast and lunch. Mostly because NY/NJ bagels are so damn big that you could have half for each meal. My go-to order was a sesame-seed bagel (untoasted, because a good bagel should not need to be toasted!) with half butter and half cream cheese. But when my cousins moved in with my family, they put us on to a combo that everyone became obsessed with: cream cheese and achar masala + dry garlic chutney. Initially, it starts off as a topping on bhakri, a Gujarati whole wheat flatbread that is typically served for breakfast with an ungodly amount of ghee. Eventually, that combination made it onto my bagels, and I was forever changed. I feel like this combination made its way through the NY/NJ desi crowd and has become a normal way to enjoy a bagel in many tri-state area households! So here are mt Ny style Garlic Achar Bagels!

Onto the bagel making! I decided to swirl in some achar masala and dry garlic chutney into my bagels- I figured it would add one less step to my morning bagel routine. Achar masala, aka pickling spice, is a mixture of chili powder, fenugreek, mustard seeds, coriander, fennel, and other spices. It’s used to make homemade pickles and is often used as a topping/accompaniment for various Gujarati dishes.

In my opinion, a good bagel should:

• require a fight to take a bite. I want a CHEWY bagel!
• have a crispy, bubbly crust so that I don’t have to toast my bagel
• have a mild sweetness to it
• be large enough to be 2 meals

To achieve all of these, I started with Serious Eat’s bagel recipe and made quite a few changes to get the texture and flavor I wanted. Now, this recipe has a few ingredients you’ll have to hunt down, but it’s necessary to get the proper texture bagel that mimics a NY-style bagel! 

Also, please use a scale for this recipe. The ratios are important, and volume measurements aren’t accurate enough to get it right every time.

Important Ingredients in Making NY Style Bagels:

1. Sodium Carbonate– Sodium carbonate plays a critical role in bagel making because it affects the surface of the dough. Specifically, a brief boiling of bagels in a sodium carbonate solution before baking:

1. Enhances Maillard Reaction: The alkaline environment created by sodium carbonate accelerates the Maillard reaction during baking. This reaction produces the bagel crust’s golden-dark brown color and complex flavor.
2. Creates a Shiny, Chewy Crust: The alkaline solution helps form a shiny, thick, chewy crust, one of the hallmarks of a traditional bagel.
3. Reduces Boiling Time: Sodium carbonate allows for a shorter boiling time than plain water, contributing to a quicker crust formation and ensuring the dough retains a soft, chewy interior.

A lot of recipes substitute this ingredient with baking soda. However, sodium carbonate is more basic than baking soda, making it a better option. 

I make my own sodium carbonate by spreading out 100 g of baking soda onto a baking tray and baking it at 350°F for 15-20 minutes or until it’s reduced down to 60 g. I made a large batch in the video since you can store this in a container. You can also use this in pretzel-making!

2. Instant Yeast – I used instant yeast in this recipe. You can find my right up on the difference between instant yeast and active dry yeast here! Essentially, you don’t need to activate instant yeast or use warm water to get it started!

3. Bread Flour – Bread flour contains more protein than regular all-purpose flour, which means you get more gluten! More gluten means a nice chew in your bagel!

4. Vital Wheat Gluten – I like to add a little vital wheat gluten to my dough to help boost that gluten and truly get a chewier bagel! I use Bob’s Red Mill Brand, which you can find online or at your local grocery store.

5. Diastatic Malt Powder – This is a type of malt made from sprouted grains (usually barley) that are dried and ground into a fine powder. What makes it “diastatic” is that it contains active enzymes, particularly amylase, which helps break down starches into sugars during the dough-making process. In baking, diastatic malt powder serves several key functions:

• Fermentation Aid: The enzymes in diastatic malt help break down starches in the flour into simpler sugars. These sugars feed the yeast, promoting better fermentation, which results in a more active rise and better texture in bread or bagel dough. This is particularly helpful in long fermentations in the fridge!
• Improves Crust Color: The broken-down sugars from the malt contribute to the browning of the crust through the Maillard reaction, giving baked goods a rich, golden-brown color.Enhances Flavor and Aroma: Diastatic malt adds a subtle sweetness and depth of flavor to bread and bagels. This adds the subtle sweetness that I love about bagels!
• Improves Dough Texture: By breaking down starches, it can help improve the texture of the final product, making it lighter and more tender while still allowing for a chewy crumb.

It’s a common ingredient in bagel recipes, artisan breads, and pizza dough to achieve that ideal rise, crust, and flavor. You typically want to add about .2% of the flour weight to your dough. Now if you can’t find this or don’t want to spend the money- which is fair, you can skip it, however the bagel just will be slightly less chewy and sweet.

6. Barley Malt Syrup – Many traditional recipes also call for adding barley malt syrup to the water used to boil the bagels before baking. This helps the bagel develop a slightly sweet, shiny crust after baking, making it visually appealing and adding a hint of flavor to the surface.It also helps your toppings stick to the bagel, as the sugars glue them on to the bagel!

Technique

In this recipe, I follow Serious Eat’s instructions for making a Yukone, or tanzhong, a roux made of a liquid and flour mixture that is cooked and cooled before it’s added to the dough. I use this technique in a few of my own bread recipes since it helps form gluten.

I do stray from their kneading technique of using a food processor, as it limits the size of the bagel we can make. I opted to start the dough in a stand mixer, and then hand-knead the dough instead. It takes a lot of muscle power, but it’s worth it! You could also bring the dough together, and then, when you’re tired of kneading, split the dough in half and knead each half of the dough with a stand mixer one at a time, and then knead it all back together.

For the toppings, I did half with shredded cheddar cheese and pickled jalapenos, which, if you like it, spicy- this is the way to go, and the other half with sesame seeds. Feel free to experiment with toppings and make it your own!

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