These delicious pumpkin bagels are flavoured with pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spices. Baked to golden perfection with a sprinkling of brown sugar on top.
These pumpkin spice bagels get a seasonal Fall nod with the wonderful warm flavours of pumpkin spice. Pumpkin puree and pie spices are added to the dough, along with a handful or two of raisins (completely optional, though). I flavoured my bagels with the spices of my mother’s pumpkin pie – equal parts of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. If you’re a fan of cloves (I’m not really), feel free to throw a 1/2 tsp. of that in, too.
This is a perfect rainy, Fall weekend baking project. The process takes a good part of the day, but most of it is passive, rising or chilling times. It leaves enough time between steps to do some other things, so you don’t feel like a slave to the process. At the end of it, you are rewarded with a baker’s dozen of beautiful homemade bagels, along with a great sense of baking accomplishment.
Ingredients and Substitutions
Pumpkin – be sure to use pure pumpkin puree and not pumpkin pie filling.
Bread flour – high protein bread flour will produce the chewiest bagels. If you don’t have bread flour, you can use all-purpose flour. You may need to use a bit more to get the dough to come together without being too sticky. The resulting bagels will be less chewy.
Raisins – I love the addition of raisins to these bagels, but they are optional, so just omit if you like.
Recipe Tips
I like to either start these bagels in the morning and then cook them off at the end of the afternoon (or early evening), or start them at night and cook them off in the morning. The chill time provides lots of flexibility to work around other things you have to do.
Making Ahead, Storing and Freezing
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Get the Recipe: Pumpkin Spice Bagels
Ingredients
Sponge:
- 3 1/2 cups bread flour
- 2 1/2 cups water, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon instant or dry active yeast
Dough:
- 1 teaspoon instant or active dry yeast
- 2/3-1 cup pumpkin puree
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 3 Tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ginger
- 3-4 cups bread flour
- Optional: couple of handfuls of raisins
For boiling and before baking:
- 1 Tablespoon baking soda, for boiling
- 1 large egg, for egg wash
- Brown sugar, for sprinkling
Instructions
- Make the sponge: Combine yeast with water and let stand a few minutes. In a large bowl, combine the flour with the yeast/water mixture until all the flour is moistened. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let stand for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
- Make the dough: In a small bowl, combine the second teaspoon of yeast with a bit of water and let stand a few minutes. In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine the pumpkin puree with the salt, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Add the yeast/water mixture and stir in. Add the sponge mixture and combine. Start adding more flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until the dough comes together in a ball around the dough hook (*If you feel your mixer starting to strain at all, stop and remove dough to counter to finish kneading there). Knead until dough is smooth and elastic, adding flour as necessary so the dough is moist, but not sticky.
- Immediately form dough into 12-13 balls (see note below) – about 4 1/2 oz. each. Cover with a towel and let stand 20 minutes. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper or silpat. Shape dough balls into bagels by pinching through the center of each ball with your thumb and fore finger to make a hole and then gently expanding the hole, while rotating the bagel like you’re turning a steering wheel. Place shaped bagels on to prepared pan. Once all are shaped, spray some plastic wrap with oil and cover bagels tightly (oiled side down). Let stand at room temperature for an additional 30 minutes, then refrigerate anywhere from 4 hours to 12 hours (overnight-ish). Be sure pan is covered tightly with plastic wrap, so the bagels don’t dry out.
- When ready to bake pre-heat oven to 500 ° F., with rack in lower 1/3 of oven, and bring a large Dutch oven or similar-sized pot of water to a boil. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper. Once water is boiling, add 1 Tbsp. baking soda. Remove a few bagels from the fridge and pop into the boiling water, top side down. Boil for one minute, flip over, then boil for one minute more. Remove with a slotted spoon to prepared baking sheet. Repeat until you have 6 bagels boiled. Brush with egg wash and optionally, sprinkle with a bit of brown sugar. (*If using brown sugar topping, reduce oven temperature by 25 degrees for each step and extend baking time a few minutes.
- Bake for 6 minutes, then rotate pan front-to-bake, lower temperature to 450° F. and bake for an additional 8-10 minutes, until golden brown. Remove to a cooling rack. Repeat process with additional bagels.
- *How to shape dough into balls: Section off a piece of dough and lay it flat on the counter. Start pinching the opposite edges together in the centre, rotating and repeating until you’ve pinched all the edges into the centre and made a tight ball. Flip over so the pinched part is down. You should have a smooth and tight top side.
Notes
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Hi! I’m Jennifer, a home cook schooled by trial and error and almost 40 years of getting dinner on the table! I love to share my favourite recipes, both old and new, together with lots of tips and tricks to hopefully help make your home cooking enjoyable, stress free, rewarding and of course, delicious!
I was a little worried the spice would be overpowering: there is a lot of ginger and nutmeg in there. But it was not…the only change I made was to double the brown sugar.
Yes, it is surprising how the spices temper with cooking! Thanks :)
Just took mine out of the oven and broke one open to sample. Absolutely incredible. Thank you thank you thank you!
So glad to hear :) Thanks!
These look amazing! I’ll have to make them ahead of time. Do you recommend freezing them before cooking them or after they have baked to keep them fresh?!
Hi Lindsey and thanks! I freeze after baking. I usually figure out how many will be eaten freshly baked and then freeze the rest as soon as possible.
Great – thank you so much for all of your help.
Sorry – it’s me again for the last time – I promise… I’m just now getting a chance to try these bagels and I understand how you adjust the water amount when proofing the yeast for the sponge, but it’s step 2 for the dough part that I’m not sure how much water to use to proof that yeast since no other water is used for the dough? Thank you so much and have a great day!
Hi Erin, If you use Instant Yeast (as I do), you don’t need to proof it in water. You simply add it with the dry ingredients. If you only have dry active, you can proof it in a small amount of warm water (1/4-ish) and add. You’ll need to add a touch more flour to compensate for the extra liquid.