The Late Night Gourmet
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This bit of sorcery was provided by - you guessed it - Weight Watchers. As I often do, I modified the recipe a bit: they didn't dunk the bagels in boiling water before baking, which I think is essential to developing that distinctive bagel "skin". The bagels had a different proportion of yogurt to flour (it was 1:1, whereas mine is 2:3). And, most significantly, the recipe made small bagels, somewhere between the size of a mini-bagel and a normal one. I upped the size of each bagel so it's the size you'd get at a bagel shop.
I was initially skeptical that this was anything more than just a way to work the Weight Watchers point system, and that these couldn't possibly be anything healthier than a regular bagel. But, inputting the ingredients into the (free) sparkpeople.com recipe nutrition calculator shows that they are:
A stock standard bagel is 288 calories, give or take, so this is a huge difference. Best of all, these bagels taste...like bagels. Really, they do. I think what's happening here is that water - usually added to flour in bagel recipes - mostly just hydrates the flour, but doesn't add much volume. The yogurt, however, does keep its volume, and an ounce of fat free yogurt is much healthier than an ounce of flour-and-water.
One thing that I've heard is important is the choice of yogurt: Fage and Siggi brand yogurts are thicker than Dannon or Oikos. But, I also think that the people saying this aren't comfortable with baking, so there may be other things at work here. I will try this recipe again (I've already made it twice) using Oikos and see what happens.
About what I do for the topping: I've seen recipes that say to sprinkle the topping on after doing the egg wash. I find that not nearly enough topping ends up sticking to the bagel. So, I've decided to brush them one at a time (so the wash doesn't dry) and jam it into the topping bowl. I also apply the topping halfway through so it doesn't burn the topping.
Ingredients
4 1/2 cups self rising flour
24 ounces fat free Greek yogurt
4 - 6 ounces water (as needed to achieve dough consistency)
1 egg
Salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, caraway seeds, etc for a topping
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
2. Blend flour with yogurt in a mixer equipped with dough hooks until the dough starts to pull away from the edges. Turn out dough and unincorporated flour on a lightly floured surface. Knead dough until flour is incorporated, adding water as needed to achieve a slightly sticky but firm consistency.
3. Divide dough into 12 equal portions, a little less than 4 ounces each. Roll each portion into a tube, then link the ends and pinch them together to form a ring.
4. Place bagels in a single layer in boiling water so they don't touch. They will sink to the bottom and stick, so give each one a slight nudge to loosen it up from the bottom. Boil for 3 minutes, then remove using a skimmer.
5. Arrange bagels on baking sheets covered in cooking spray. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove trays from the oven.
6. Place toppings in shallow bowls. I made an "everything bagel" topping by mixing equal amounts of caraway seeds, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and garlic salt.
7. Form an egg wash using whisked egg and a tablespoon of water. Brush the surface of one bagel, then press washed surface down into the topping, then return bagel to the baking sheet (topping-side up!) Repeat for each bagel.
8. Bake for another 13 minutes, then turn on the broiler and bake for 2 more minutes to brown the surface of the bagels. Watch the bagels, however, since every broiler is different, and you don't want them to burn!
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Of course! They are certainly not bagels without that step. How odd that they omitted it. After all, it doesn't add any calories!