Appetizers, , Recipes, Special Diets, Vegetarian ·
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Growing up my extended family all spent summers at my grandparents shore house. When we were younger we would all be down there for the entire month of August and we called it “Camp Onivros” or “Camp O”. My mom’s maiden name is Sorvino so someone, likely my uncle/my mom’s brother, decided to spell our last name backwards and use that as the title for our little family summer camp. We would spend the month playing games in the pool, doing arts and crafts, making ice cream sundaes, competing in relay races and scavenger hunts, the list goes on and on. As we got older this month long camp was shortened to a week and then down to a single day as schedules became more and more difficult to coordinate.
This summer I’m kicking off a week of recipes in honor of Camp O and we will be starting with homemade bagel bites. Lunch time at Camp O was our favorite meal of the day. We would buy all sorts of unhealthy but incredibly delicious frozen food, scatter them on massive sheet trays, and convection bake them in my grandparents restaurant grade oven. We’d go out to the pool while they cooked and come back in dripping wet and ravenous. Bagel bites were a camp cult classic and I just had to re-do them with real ingredients. While I won’t knock the occasional frozen bagel bite for nostalgic purposes, I think these are 1000x better in the flavor department. So go ahead and enjoy yourself a grownup bagel bite and think of happy childhood memories while you eat them.
Products I use to accommodate diets:
- Gluten Free
- Dairy Free / Vegan
These homemade bagel bites are surprisingly simple to make and are so much tastier than the frozen alternative. Pair the homemade mini bagels with your favorite sauce and mozzarella and you've got yourself a treat!
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Prep Time:2 hours hrs
Cook Time:35 minutes mins
Ingredients
- 2 tsp active dry yeast (6 g)
- 4 1/2 tsp sugar (19 g)
- 1 1/4 cups warm water (300 ml) 100°F
- 3 1/2 cups *bread flour
- 1 1/2 tsp salt (6 g)
- 1 cup marinara sauce
- 1 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
- pepperoni
- 1 egg
Instructions
Make Mini Bagels
Bloom yeast: Add 2 teaspoons of active dry yeast and 4 1/2 teaspoons of sugar to 1 1/4 cups of warm water. Do not mix and let sit for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes mix to ensure all the sugar has dissolved and the yeast is broken up.
Add yeast to flour: Add 3 1/2 cups bread flour to a large bowl, make a well in the center and pour in the yeast mixture. Stir until the dough is combined.
Knead and rest dough: Turn dough out onto a lightly floured working surface and knead 4-5 times to activate the gluten. Place in an oiled bowl and let it rest for an hour in a warm spot. Once it has doubled in size, punch the dough down and let it rest for another 10 minutes.
Boil water and preheat oven: Bring a large pot of water to a boil and preheat oven to 425°F.
Divide dough: Remove dough from bowl and roll out onto a lightly floured working surface. Roll dough into 2-inch balls then using a straw or the end of a wooden spoon, poke a hole in the center of the dough. Then use your fingers to widen the hole and make into a bagel shape. Once you've shaped all the dough place them on a sheet tray and let them rest for 10 minutes.
Boil bagels: Using a slotted spoon or spatula drop bagels into the water and boil for 1 1/2 minutes then flip onto the other side for another 1 1/2 minutes. Repeat until all the bagels have been boiled.
Egg wash: Place boiled bagels on a lightly oiled baking sheet then whisk an egg and brush all the bagels lightly with egg wash.
Bake: Bake bagels for 15-20 minutes or until they're golden brown.
Make Bagel Bites
Preheat oven to 500°F
Slice bagels and top with marinara and mozzarella. Bake for 5-7 minutes then remove from the oven.
Top bagel bites with chopped pepperoni and broil until the cheese is browned.
Notes
*Bread flour: If you don’t have bread flour, for every cup of regular flour replace 2 tablespoons with 2 tablespoons of conrstarch.
If you’re slightly neurotic like me, you can use a metal straw to poke the pepperoni into teeny tiny circles and add them to the top of the bagels before you broil. Otherwise feel free to chop the pepperoni up into little pieces and scatter them on top of the bagel bites 🙂
