Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

VIDEO: For National Bagels and Lox Day, make your own bagels!

Unlike fluden, chremslach or many of the delicacies featured on the Yiddish cooking show “Est Gezunterheyt,”, you’ve undoubtedly had a bagel before. We’re willing to bet, though, that you’ve never tasted one this good!

In this episode of “Est Gezunterheyt,” Rukhl Schaechter and Eve Jochnowitz show you how to make bagels from scratch in your own kitchen. Hint: the secret is steam.

Instructions:

Adapted from George Greenstein Secrets of a Jewish Baker
The Crossing Press 1993

2 cups water

1 1/2 teaspoon yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon oil

6-8 cups bread flour

1 tablespoon salt

Dissolve yeast in the water in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the other ingredients beginning with 6 cups flour and mix with dough hook, adding more flour as needed to make a stiff dough.

Allow to rise one hour and form into bagels. Allow the bagels to rise about 20 minutes or until they sink slowly in a bowl of water.

Boil the bagels briefly in salted sweetened water and place them on baking sheets. Sprinkle with poppy, sesame or salt as desired.

Put an empty baking pan on the floor in a 500-degree oven, slide in the baking sheets with the bagels and pour boiling water into the empty pan to create steam.  Bake until nicely brown, about 20 minutes.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.