Homemade Banana Bagels

Everyone in the house had been craving bagels, but with us trying to cut back on our budget by only buying the basics, store bought bagels are on the "no-no" list. So I went on my hunt over the internet and Pinterest to try and find a decent bagel recipe that I could throw everything into my bread machine and let it do all of the hard work of mixing and rising. The recipes that I found made the bagels super hard, chewy, and HEAVY. They still tasted good, but with the threat of breaking all of our teeth I decided to do an experiment with a couple of recipes mashed together to form my own version.

I'm really bad about temperature of the water, I just judge it by feel and as long as it is warmer than my hand/wrist I call it good and use that. In practice, I believe that the water is supposed to be around 105 degrees to 110 degrees, whatever the standard is for making bread. For this recipe you will need a fairly large bread machine, or at least one with a 2 lb loaf capacity because this dough rises a lot.

So you basically just add the ingredients listed in order to the machine:

1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups warm water
2 T Honey
1 T Avocado Oil (you can probably use any oil, but I prefer avocado)
2 tsp salt
4 tsp sugar
4 to 5 cups of Bread Flour (depending on how wet the dough looks after its started mixing in the bread machine, I always start with 4 and add more as needed)
1 to 2 tsp Cinnamon (I like cinnamon, so I did 2 and it tastes great!)
1 to 2 bananas (I sliced lengthwise and than cut it up into chunks from there)
2 1/4 tsp yeast

I place the bananas around the edges of the pan. It worked well for me. Also, I always make a little well in the flour for the yeast to sit, not sure if it matters, but it makes me feel better. After you have added the ingredients, turn your machine on to the dough setting and let it go!

Ready to go in the bread machine! Looks yummy already!

Once done, the dough should be fluffy and very sticky, which I would recommend turning the dough out onto a lightly floured surface so you can make your dough rings easier. Pull and roll the dough into 12-13 balls or if you like bigger bagels, 7-8 balls. Roll like you used to with play-doh to make a snake as a child. Try to get your "snake" about 8-9 inches long. Wrap around one hand making sure to have a good 1 inch plus overlap and seal the bagel up into the bagel ring shape.

It's so FLUFFY!

Let the dough rest, covered with a towel to help prevent drying out for 10 minutes. About this time you can start preheating the oven to 425 degrees and getting a pot of water set to boil. Also, highly recommend using parchment paper on the cookie sheets with a thin spray of oil to help the bagels not stick to them. Boil the bagels on each side for 15-30 seconds and than take them out to dry before placing on the cookie sheet. Make sure there is enough room in your pot of water for them to float free, like the picture below.

Boiling away!

Bake them 10 mins, than rotate the sheet around and bake another 5-10 minutes, or until golden brown on top. This amount of dough should make anywhere from 8 big bagels to 12 or 13 small to medium bagels. It's up to you how large you want them.

This batch had 13 bagels, but the kids love them fresh out of the oven after they have cooled off a bit and gobbled them up!

You could also make this same recipe with blueberries. They are so yummy and I reduced the cinnamon for the blueberry recipe to 1 tsp, but you can keep it at 2 tsp if you like the cinnamon stronger. 

And that is about it! Enjoy! 

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