Best cream cheese ever.

I’ve developed a weekly ritual where I trek down to a local bagel shop and work for a few hours just to get out of the house. I always order the exact same thing (so far) which is a bagel and their delicious crunchy veggie cream cheese.

Last week I probably weirded out some of the workers there by obsessively dissecting my cream cheese to figure out all the veggies that it included.

Yep. I reverse engineered cream cheese. And you should be glad that I did.

Adding a bunch of really crunchy vegetables to cream cheese just takes it to another level. Not to mention it makes it somewhat healthier.

Crunchy Veggie Cream Cheese

Yield: 8-10 bagels worth

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound cream cheese, room temp
1 large carrot, or 6-7 baby carrots
3-4 radishes
1/2 red pepper
1 stalk celery
3 scallions
2 Teaspoons fresh ground pepper
Pinch of salt

Helpful Equipment:
Food processor or heck, just a box grater

Directions:

1) Take your time grating or mincing veggies until they are evenly shaped and fairly small.

2) Mix in cream cheese. This will be a lot easier if your cream cheese is room temp.

3) Season with salt and pepper.

4) Schmear it!

Prepping the Veggies

Ideally, you want to end up with about 2-3 cups of very finely minced or grated veggies for this recipe. The above measurements are far from scientific and you should feel free to add more or less if you want.

This ratio worked great for me though. I thought it ended up with the perfect mix of veggies and cheese.

You don't need a lot.

The fastest way to get the veggies to a nice even mince is to use a grater. I was being pretty lazy on this day and decided to try out my grater disc on my food processor. It worked pretty well except on the celery and scallions. Those I just diced by hand.

Say hello to my little friend.

As you can imagine though, the most important thing for this recipe is just making sure your veggies are minced or grated super-fine.

So take your time and use the best tools you have to get the job done. Even a box grater would work great for this.

Here’s my finished veggies.

Colorful stuff!

Mixing in Cream Cheese

Mixing in the cream cheese is really easy if you let it come to room temperature before you try mixing it. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a workout.

I, of course, forgot to take my out of the fridge so I had two hard blocks of cheese in my bowl.

It helps it your cream cheese is room temp.

The Secret Ingredient

Once you get everything mixed up, you can add the secret ingredient: LOTS of crushed black pepper.

It gets mixed in with the veggies and everything and just works beautifully.

Lots of pepper is the key.

Once everything is mixed together, you’ll have a nice and thick mixture. It’s creamy, but crunchy.

It looks a bit like a hot mess, but trust me. It’s good.

BAM.

Of course, the first thing I did with my cream cheese is deploy the traditional schmear.

Definition of Schmear.

This is a quick and simple recipe that you can make it just a few minutes and it keeps fine for a week or two.

It really does take the standard bagel to another level and is vastly better than the veggie cream cheese that you can buy in the store.

I realized recently that I’ve never made bagels before, but I knew the process was somewhat similar to pretzels. For my first bagel attempt I went with cinnamon raisin. They are probably my favorite basic bagel.

Worth the work.

This recipe produces fantastic bagels. I might be willing to put them up against any DC bagel I’ve had. I’ve definitely had better in New York, but not by much. They are really quite good.

The recipe calls for an ingredient that isn’t very common: malt syrup. I happened to have a jar of it laying around because a neighbor at work gave it to me because she didn’t know what to do with it. I kept it in my fridge and figured I would need it someday. I was so right.

If you don’t have it though you can substitute honey without a problem or brown sugar.

Cinnamon Raisin Bagels

Yield: 12 bagels

Prep Time: 45 minutes + 3 hours of rise time

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes + 3 hour rise time

Ingredients:

Sponge:
4 Cups (18 ounces) unbleached bread flour
2 1/2 Cups (20 ounces) water, room temp
1 Teaspoon instant yeast

Final Dough:
3 3/4 Cups unbleached bread flour or high-gluten flour (I used bread flour, but I bet high-gluten works even better)
1 Teaspoon instant yeast
2 3/4 Teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon malt syrup (you can substitute honey or brown sugar)
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
5 Tablespoons sugar
2 Cups raisins, rinsed and patted dry

1 Tablespoon baking soda for boiling

Directions:

1) Start by combining all your sponge ingredients in a large bowl. Cover this loosely and let it sit at room temperature for 2 hours.

2) Meanwhile get all your final dough ingredients ready. If you don’t want to do cinnamon raisin, just get rid of the cinnamon and raisins obviously. Also, cut out the sugar and reduce the yeast to 1/2 Teaspoon.

3) Assuming you are doing cinnamon raisin, be sure to wash your raisins to remove any dirt or natural yeast that’s on them. Just pat them dry afterward.

4) After two hours, sponge should be bubbly. Then add all dough ingredients except the flour and finally stir in your flour until the dough forms a ball.

5) Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead it for about 10 minutes. It’s kind of weird to knead dough with a bunch of raisins spotted throughout, but it works just fine. Eventually it should pass the windowpane test.

6) Once your dough passes the windowpane test, immediately start forming your bagels. Cut your dough into about 12 or 13 even pieces. If you have a digital scale this is super easy. Just weigh your entire dough ball, divide by 12 or 13 and see what you get. Then you can weigh out each tiny ball for evenly sized bagels. Each one of my bagels was a bit over 5 ounces of dough.

7) Let balls of dough rest for about 20 minutes just so they relax a bit. Grab a ball and gently press down in the direct center of it with your thumb. Eventually it will poke through. Then slowly work the side of the bagel out, making the hole bigger, until the hole is about 1-2 inches in diameter. The goal is for the bagel to be perfectly even all the way around.

8) Set each bagel on a parchment lined baking sheet when you’re done forming it. Let the bagels rise again for about 30 minutes. Let them sit in the fridge overnight to develop more flavor (opt.).

9) Put a large pot of water on and once it is slowly boiling add 1 Tablespoon of baking soda for approximately every gallon of water.

10) Preheat your oven to 500 degrees.

11) Boil bagels a few at a time for 1 minute per side. Move them straight to a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. If you were topping them with something, now would be the time!

12) Bake them for 5 minutes at 500, then rotate your sheet pans and bake them for another 5 minutes at 450. You can bake them a bit longer if you like them darker.

13) Move them onto a rack to cool right away and let them cool for at least 10 minutes before cutting them open and eating!

14) These are obviously great straight out of the oven, but they lose very little in quality if you freeze them correctly. Just make sure they are cooled completely and then store them in a sealed plastic bag. To de-thaw them, set the bagel in a 350 degree oven for about 5 minutes and then slice it and toast it as you would normally.

From The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

Making the Dough

I don’t think this recipe is all that difficult. It just takes a little bit of love. The dough is pretty straightforward. Start by combining all your sponge ingredients in a large bowl. It will be a soupy mixture (Top left). Cover this loosely and let it sit at room temperature for 2 hours.

Meanwhile get all your final dough ingredients ready (top right). If you don’t want to do cinnamon raisin, just get rid of the cinnamon and raisins obviously. Also, cut out the sugar and reduce the yeast to 1/2 Teaspoon. But assuming you are doing cinnamon raisin, be sure to wash your raisins to remove any dirt or natural yeast that’s on them. Just pat them dry afterward (middle left).

After two hours, your sponge should be bubbly (mid right). Then add all your dough ingredients except the flour (bottom left) and finally stir in your flour until the dough forms a ball (bottom right).

Get it?

Turn your dough out onto a floured surface and knead it for about 10 minutes. It’s kind of weird to knead dough with a bunch of raisins spotted throughout, but it works just fine. Eventually it should pass the windowpane test.

After a work out.

Making the Bagels

Once your dough passes the windowpane test, immediately start forming your bagels. Cut your dough into about 12 or 13 even pieces. If you have a digital scale this is super easy. Just weigh your entire dough ball, divide by 12 or 13 and see what you get. Then you can weigh out each tiny ball for evenly sized bagels. Each one of my bagels was a bit over 5 ounces of dough.

Of course, you could also just guess. If you end up with 30 balls, they are too small. If you end up with 3, they are too big.

5 ounces each if possible.

Let your balls of dough rest for about 20 minutes just so they relax a bit (you want to catch them off guard you see). Then grab a ball and gently press down in the direct center of it with your thumb. Eventually it will poke through. Then slowly work the side of the bagel out, making the hole bigger, until the hole is about 1-2 inches in diameter. The goal is for the bagel to be perfectly even all the way around.

Making a bagel.

Set each bagel on a parchment lined baking sheet when you’re done forming it. Let the bagels rise again for about 30 minutes. You’ll know when they are ready because they will float! You just have to test one and they should all be done.

Ready to go!

At this point Peter recommends letting them sit in the fridge overnight to develop more flavor. I did this but my main problem was figuring out a way to stack two sheet trays in my fridge without crushing the bagels! I eventually came up with a complicated system of props (including hand mixer attachments) that let me evenly stack two trays without crushing the bagels on the lower tray.

Not sure that this is necessary...

Of course, I think you could also just make the bagels immediately and avoid that whole mess…

Boiling the bagels

Just like the pretzels, it’s very important to boil the bagels so they develop that nice chewy interior and get that great crust on the outside. Put a large pot of water on and once it is slowly boiling add 1 Tablespoon of baking soda for approximately every gallon of water. Now would also be a good time to preheat your oven to 500 degrees.

Then boil your bagels a few at a time for 1 minute per side. Move them straight to a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. If you were topping them with something, now would be the time!

Very different texture after a boil.

Baking the bagels

These do not need to bake that long. Bake them for 5 minutes at 500, then rotate your sheet pans and bake them for another 5 minutes at 450. You can bake them a bit longer if you like them darker.

Move them onto a rack to cool right away and let them cool for at least 10 minutes before cutting them open and eating!

So good.

Storing the bagels

These are obviously great straight out of the oven, but I found that they lose very little in quality if you freeze them correctly. Just make sure they are cooled completely and then store them in a sealed plastic bag.

I’m still eating mine that I made 3 weeks ago and they taste great! To de-thaw them, just set the bagel in a 350 degree oven for about 5 minutes and then slice it and toast it as you would normally. Works like a charm!

Couldn't resist.

These bagels are chewy and delicious. They are jam packed with raisins and cinnamon flavor. One of my pet-peeves is getting a raisin bagel with like two raisins in it. I hate raisin rationing.

I thought these were really fun to make. The final product was very tasty and they store great. What’s not to love about this recipe?