Best Montreal Bagel Recipe (Step-by-Step, 1 hour)
This Montreal bagel recipe is exceptional – straight from the iconic St.-Viateur bagel company in Montreal. In about 1 hour, you will be feasting on soft, warm, chewy and slightly sweet bagels covered in seeds.
Bagels are not difficult to make with clear step-by-step instructions. After the first time, you’ll be a pro. Shmear on the cream cheese, toast them or eat them plain. All delish!
Montreal bagels are, hands down, the best bagels anywhere. (Full disclosure – I’m an ex-Montrealer.) This is an authentic Montreal bagel recipe – except for the wood oven part. It comes from St.-Viateur Bagel, founded by Myer Lewkowicz, and has been operating in Montreal for over 60 years.
I learned to make Montreal-style bagels from Chef de Volpi of McGill University. He was demonstrating a traditional lox and bagel spread for a McGill fundraiser. The bagels came out great – er, all 3 times I made them in the past month 🙂
Bagels originated in Jewish communities in Poland. They were traditionally formed by hand, boiled then baked, just as they still are at St-Viateur Bagel.
Think about it. Hot fresh bagels right out of the oven. Perfect every time!
Ingredients – tailored to your taste
The ingredients for this Montreal bagel recipe are pretty much typical bread ingredients – flour, yeast, water, sugar, salt. The bagels are boiled in water with honey (or brown sugar) before baking. The recipe includes an egg, but it’s not essential.
Variations
- Leave out the egg if you can’t eat them.
- For the honey water (to boil the bagels), you can substitute brown sugar which is cheaper.
- Toppings: Use sesame seeds, poppy seeds, no seeds or all dressed e.g. everything bagel seasoning blend (homemade) or store-bought which you can buy at Trader Joe’s or Amazon.
Step-by-step instructions
Make Ahead
- To store: Allow the hot bagels to cool completely and keep them in a sealed container or a sealed plastic bag for a few days at room temperature.
- To freeze:
- Once cooked: Cool bagels, then freeze them for up to 3 months. Tip: I slice them before freezing so I can toss the frozen halves right into the toaster.
- When raw: After shaping the dough into bagels, freeze them. When ready to use, defrost them, boil and bake as per instructions.
Bagel FAQs
Bagels are made and sold worldwide, in bagel shops and grocery stores in a wide variety of flavors. The most popular (about 85%) are sesame seed bagels. A distant second are poppy seed, also called black seed bagels. Then you have various seasoning blends such as ‘everything bagel’, onion, garlic and the specialty bagels like gluten-free, cinnamon raisin, chocolate chip and pumpernickel. Did I miss a few? Probably.
A Montreal bagel is hand-rolled, smaller, thinner, chewier, sweeter (they are boiled in honey water), have a bigger hole and are wood-fired. A New York-style bagel is puffier, softer, doughier, mostly machine-made and baked in a traditional oven.
That depends on where you come from and who introduced you to bagels. New Yorkers typically love their bagels sliced, warm, fresh and shmeared with a thick layer of cream cheese. No toasting! Montrealers also like their bagels plain and fresh, but out of the wood burning oven – sometimes with cream cheese (and lox) or egg salad. Am I the only one who loves a bagel toasted and slathered with butter?
Not exactly. The size is usually the issue since one bagel is equivalent to 3- 31/2 slices of bread, making them pretty high in calories and refined carbs. If you control the portions (eat half or a mini bagel), there’s nothing wrong with indulging once in a while.
Typically, people eat bagels with cream cheese or toasted with butter. They are also fantastic served with smoked salmon/gravlax/lox, tomatoes, capers and red onions – along with the cream cheese of course.
Easy homemade no-pectin jams for your bagels
Other homemade bread recipes
If you like this recipe, please leave a 5 star rating 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟in the recipe card below. And if you REALLY like it, consider a review in the comments. Thanks very much!
Best Montreal Bagel Recipe (Step-by-Step, 1 hour)
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups warm water (about 95-100F/ 35-37.8C)
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
- 2 teaspoon salt
- 10 g active dry or instant yeast (1 package)
- 1 egg (you can leave this out if you want)
- 2 tablespoons oil canola or vegetable
- 4 cups all purpose or bread flour, Note 1 plus an extra 1/2 cup/62g as needed
For boiling and baking
- 12 cups water
- 1/2 cup brown sugar or 1/2 cup/170g honey
- 1 cup sesame seeds or poppy or everything bagel seeds
Instructions
- HEAT OVEN TO 425F/217C. [for mini bagels, heat oven to 450F/232C]. Line a large pan or two smaller ones with parchment paper.
- MAKE DOUGH BY HAND: To use mixer instead, Note 2. In large bowl, mix warm water, sugar and maple syrup. Add yeast and let sit for 5 minutes. It will froth up a bit. Stir in egg, oil, salt and flour until dough begins to come together. Pull dough onto a sheet of parchment on the counter or a cutting board, lightly dusted with flour. Begin kneading, adding up to an extra 1/2 cup/62g of flour until the dough is no longer sticky. Knead for about 12 minutes. Here's a video on how to knead dough. The dough will lighten up a bit in color.
- REST DOUGH: Cover smooth dough with a bowl and let it rest for 10 minutes.
- SHAPE BAGELS: Cut dough into 12 equal parts for regular bagels (or 24 for mini bagels). Roll each piece on a lightly floured surface into a log 8-10 inches long (20-25cm). Curve each log into a bagel shape, overlapping 1-2 inches (2.5-5cm). Roll the overlapped part on the counter to smooth it or just pinch the dough together. No need for perfection – mis-shaped bagels are just fine. The dough will puff up when boiled.
- LET BAGELS REST FOR 10 MINUTES. While they are resting, put sesame seeds in a bowl. And Fill a large pot or frying pan with about 2 1/2 to 3 liters of water, add brown sugar or honey and bring to a boil. Lower heat to simmer.
- BOIL BAGELS: Put in 3-4 bagels at a time and boil for 45 seconds. Flip over and boil another 45 seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon to drain on a paper towel.
- DIP IN SEEDS: Don't wait too long to dip each bagel in seeds (top, bottom, sides) and place them in a single layer in the prepared pan(s).
- BAKE: Bake bagels for 8 minutes. Turn over, then bake another 6-8 minutes until a light golden brown. A total of 14-16 minutes, depending on how hot your oven is. If doing a second batch, they will bake quicker. Cool on a rack. For mini bagels, Note 3.
Recipe Notes
- Flour: you can use half white flour and half whole wheat flour. Let the dough rise for 20-30 minutes before cutting and shaping it.
- To knead the dough in a stand mixer, place warm water, salt, maple syrup and yeast in the mixer bowl and let sit for 5 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead with the dough hook for 10 minutes, starting slow, then speeding up (to about medium). Add flour as needed until the dough is firm and smooth and not sticky.
- To bake mini bagels, place in 450F/232C oven for a total of 12 minutes, turning half way through.
- Make ahead:
- To store: Cool bagels and keep in sealed container or bag for a few days at room temperature.
- To freeze:
- Once cooked: Cool bagels, then freeze them for up to 3 months. Tip: I slice them before freezing so I can toss the frozen halves right into the toaster.
- When raw: After shaping the dough into bagels, freeze them. When ready to use, defrost them, boil and bake as per instructions.
True Montreal bagels do not have salt in them. That hydration rate seems very high .
Hi Stan, It’s true that many Montreal bagels do not include salt. I guess the highly popular iconic St-Viateur bagel company didn’t get the memo since they do use salt in their bagels! You can certainly leave it out if you like. Thanks for picking that up.
Other recipes have them rise before boiling why don’t these
Hi Andrea, I can’t tell you why other recipes are different. This one is from a chef who got the recipe from an iconic bagel place in Montreal. There are two short 10 minute resting times for the dough, one of which is before boiling the bagels. All I know is that the recipe works! I hope you will give it a try – I don’t think you will be disappointed. I would love to hear how you liked the bagels if you do decide to try them 🙂
This is the perfect bagel recipe. My family can now enjoy bagels every weekend and I don’t even have to drive to St. Viateur! Now I just have to make sure we have cream cheese in the house.
Glad you liked them Jose! Thanks for leaving a comment 🙂
My husband and I usually buy the bags of these, but I tried this recipe for the first time & we will probably never buy them again!! It is SO close its almost scary!
Wow – what a lovely compliment! Thank you! Glad they hit the spot.
Whole wheat sucks up a lot more water than AP so if you do substitute you may need to increase the amount of water in the recipe.
Hi Joe, You’re right that substituting all the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour can alter the taste and density of the bagels. That’s why the recipe note (Note 1) says “you can use HALF white flour and HALF whole wheat flour” – a suggestion from the Chef who created the recipe. He thought that ratio would not affect the taste and texture of the bagel. Hope that clarifies it.
Thank you so much for sharing this amazing bagel recipe! I just made some today….and they are so good 😋😋😋 This recipe is the best! Merci!!!
De rien! Glad you liked the recipe Carmen!
I made these today. First time ever using yeast! It was so EASY, I don’t know what I was so worried about! Thank you for this recipe. The bagels turned out AMAZING and I’m feeling very proud of myself!!!! Thanks for giving me the guts to go for it! Now….how do I stop myself from gobbling them all up?! Haha!
Funny. So glad they worked out! Treat yourself and keep gobbling…
Thank you for this perfect recipe. I made them with vegan (no egg/brown sugar in the water) and they turned out amazing (I used bread flour). I am a Montrealer now living in the US and was looking to recreate the Montreal-style and this WAS EXACTLY IT! Thank you!!
Thanks for sharing the vegan option! Glad you don’t have to miss Montreal bagels anymore 🙂
I would like to try the vegan option and was wondering if you had to make any other changes (increase liquid or something else)?
Hi Emilye. You don’t need to do anything else when you leave out the egg. Many bagels are made without eggs. You will just be losing a bit of protein and iron. Hope that helps.
First time bagel maker also and these turned out awesome! Followed the recipe and instructions exactly and they soo remind me of the bagels I used to get in Montreal. YUM. Definitely will be making again! Thanks!
Aww. A bit of nostalgia. So glad you liked them Hillary. I do too.l! Thanks for leaving a comment.
They were so good and really fun to make!! The directions were very easy to follow for a first time bagel maker like me!!🥯
Happy to hear Emma! So glad they turned out well, especially your first time. 👍
GREAT recipe, first time bagel maker here! Tasted just like how I remember having them in Montreal! 🥯 I baked for 16 minutes in total. Every oven is a little different. This recipe is a keeper for sure. 🙏
Glad they turned out so well. Now you’re a pro! Thanks for leaving a comment.
These came out perfect! It definitely satisfied my craving for St-Viateur bagels!
Well, that’s a ringing endorsement! St-Viateur bagels are the best! Thanks for leaving a comment Kassandra.
To perfection thank you for sharing the recipe my family loves it 💕
So happy to hear! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.
Great recipe. It was my first time and I enjoyed following the recipe. Although I baked them for 22 minutes. 14 minutes wasn’t enough as they were very soft. Thanks.
Thanks Naveenta. So glad you enjoyed them. Oven temperatures can vary a lot so you have to learn what’s best for yours. Thanks for leaving a comment.