I make bagels because my wife wouldn’t stop asking for them.

That’s not really a joke. A bagel and a cup of coffee is her idea of a perfect morning, and for years that meant store-bought bagels going stale in a paper bag, because I couldn’t be bothered to make something I didn’t even want to eat myself. So about a decade ago, I started trying. Badly, for a long time.

My first bagels were pale, oddly shaped, and had the rough skin of something that gave up halfway through. Probably New York style, mixed and baked same day, because that’s what most recipes told me to do back then. I don’t remember much else about them, which is probably for the best.

Then I actually started paying attention

It wasn’t the pandemic that got me serious about bagels, even though the timing lines up. It was that I still didn’t enjoy eating the ones I made. So I started testing. A lot. The more recipes I tried, the more I understood what I actually wanted in a bagel, and the less patience I had for anyone insisting there’s only one right way to get there.

That search sent me down a real rabbit hole. Courage Bagel and its whole high-hydration sourdough approach taught me a ton, but it wasn’t actually what I was chasing. Then two bagel shops changed how I thought about the whole thing: Bubbies in Traverse City and Tilly in Chicago. Different builds, different philosophies, same result. I drove home wanting a bagel like that and couldn’t find one anywhere near me.

So I decided to build my own.

My perfect bagel

Here’s what I’m actually chasing, if you want the specifics. A crust that’s deep mahogany, not burnt no matter what my wife says, with enough sheen to know the starches gelatinized right. A profile that looks like an inner tube from the side. A crumb that’s moderately open, like a sponge, never dense enough to feel like styrofoam. Flavor good enough that I’d eat it plain, no schmear required.

Three things matter more than anything else to get there: a flour with real strength, a boil before the bake, and time. Real time. I think a good bagel takes three days, mostly because of what cold fermentation does for flavor that you simply can’t rush.

Beyond that, I’m not precious about it. I use commercial yeast, not sourdough, because after hundreds of batches I couldn’t taste the difference in the finished bagel, and I could absolutely feel the difference in my free time. I don’t bake on boards, because I like the thin crust I get without them. I like mine dark enough that people assume it’s burnt. None of that makes my way the only way. It’s just mine.

What’s here

Everything on this site comes out of that search. The recipes are the results. The newsletter is where I write about what I’m still learning. DoughLogic exists because I got tired of doing this math by hand, so you can build a dough that works. Knead to Know exists because people kept asking me why their bagels looked the way they did, so you can know why they failed and what to change next batch. The free tools are there so you can try them first. The Pro versions go deeper, with your recipe and your process.