Wondering what to do with bagels? This guide covers how to pick them, cook them, store them, and swap them, plus 14 recipes to put them to work.

What are bagels?

A bagel is a dense, chewy ring of yeast-leavened wheat dough that is boiled before it is baked. That short boil is what sets a real bagel apart from any other bread roll.

The boil gelatinizes the starch on the surface, so the crust turns glossy and the inside stays tight and elastic instead of soft and airy.

The dough is lean and stiff, made with high-protein flour and very little fat. Many recipes add a little malt or honey to the boiling water, which deepens the color and gives the crust its faint sweetness.

Bagels come plain or studded with toppings: sesame, poppy, onion, garlic, or the everything blend that combines them all with salt. The ring shape bakes evenly and gives you that signature chew all the way around.

Ways to Use a Bagel

The classic move is to split it, toast it, then load it up. Toasting does more than warm it; it crisps the cut faces and revives the chew, which is why a day-old bagel almost always tastes better toasted than fresh.

Lox and cream cheese is the benchmark. A toasted bagel under cream cheese, smoked salmon, capers, and red onion is the New York deli standard, and the dense crumb keeps it from collapsing under a wet, rich topping.

Bagels also make excellent sandwich bread. The tight crumb holds up to fillings without going soggy, which is why Smoked Turkey Bagel Sandwich and Light Cream Cheese & Salmon Bagel both lean on it, and Mexican Breakfast Bagel piles egg and salsa onto a toasted half.

Stale bagels have a second life. Sliced thin and baked until crisp they become bagel chips, as in Salt & Garlic Bagel Chips, and torn into cubes they soak up custard for a chewy bread pudding or savory strata.

Topping and Pairing

Cream cheese is the default partner, but bagels take heat and sharp flavors well. Apple Bagel Broil melts cheese and apple over a toasted half, and a schmear happily holds smoked fish or a fried egg.

The biggest mistake is skipping the toast and treating a fresh bagel like sandwich bread. Untoasted, the crumb is gummy and heavy; toasted, the same bagel turns chewy and light.

Toast it unless you are eating it within an hour of baking.

The second mistake is buying too many. Bagels stale faster than most bread because the lean, low-fat dough dries out quickly, going firm within a day at room temperature. Freeze or repurpose anything you cannot eat the first day.

Substitutes

For a sandwich, an English muffin is the closest swap. It splits and toasts the same way and has a similar chewy, craggy interior, though it is smaller and milder. Many a bagel breakfast translates straight onto a muffin.

A bialy works too. It is a cousin of the bagel that is baked but not boiled, with an onion-filled dimple instead of a hole.

That makes it softer and less chewy, but still in the family.

A kaiser roll or a sturdy ciabatta roll will carry a sandwich filling, but neither has the boiled chew. For the lox-and-cream-cheese experience specifically, there is no real substitute for the dense, boiled crumb.

Buying and Storing

A good fresh bagel feels heavy for its size with a smooth, glossy crust. A light, fluffy, bread-roll texture usually means it was baked without a proper boil, and bakery bagels beat most supermarket bags, which tend toward soft.

At room temperature in a paper or loosely closed bag, bagels keep about a day before they firm up.

Do not refrigerate them. The fridge speeds up staling and dries them out faster than the counter.

Freezing is the right long-term move. Slice each bagel in half before freezing so you can drop the halves straight into the toaster from frozen, then keep them in a sealed bag for up to 3 months.

Quick facts

In Chinese

百吉饼

British (UK) term

Bagels

en français

bagels

en español

panecillos

Recipes using bagels

There are 14 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 14 recipes