St. Patrick’s Day Multicoloured Bagels ( recipe & tutorial )

Making your own bagels is great fun but making your own multicoloured bagels is just mind blowing! What better time to dye that dough than this week in honour of St.Patrick.  Get kneading and your family and friends could be lucky enough to share in the delicious results.  These tricolour beauties are not just pretty they’re chewy and crusty, with a soft yeasty interior. You’ll never look back. Paired with some cold dill cream cheese and organic Irish Smoked Salmon these make a suitably festive brunch come St.Patricks day. Perfect fuel for all the family before the big parade. I’m not one for going overboard on food colouring but had to make an exception for these! This recipe ( from my first book Make Bake Love ) makes a huge amount of bagels but they do freeze well, just don’t forget to slice them in half. These would make a really nice gift over the weekend for friends and family too. Enjoy!
Lilly x

St. Patrick’s Day Bagels

Makes about 21

Make the dough recipe below x 3

For 1 batch of dough you’ll need:

300ml warm water

½ tsp salt

1 sachet (7g) fast action yeast

2 tablespoons sunflower oil

580g (1lb 4oz) strong bread flour

Food colouring in orange or green (I had no orange so mixed red & yellow)

Mix the water, salt, sugar and yeast in a bowl. You can add the food colouring now too. Add a little at first and see what results you get. You can always add more to the dough as you knead it.

Add the flour and oil. Mix until a dough forms. Add more food colouring as necessary.

Knead for 10 minutes. Repeat three times so you have one ball of plain dough, one orange and one green. Leave each dough rest for half an hour in a large bowl covered with cling film.

Roll each ball of dough out into a large rectangle about 16″ long and 10″ wide. Layer the rectangles on top of one another. Use a sharp knife to slice down vertically, 1 1/2 ” strips of dough. Cut each length of dough in three then twist each length into a spiral bagel shape. It’s quite easy to do but complicated to explain! Make sure you seal the ends tightly. Place the bagels on an oiled tray and cover with a clean cloth. Leave to rest for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Bring a large pot of water to the boil.

Gently drop each bagel into the water, turn every minute or so.

After 3 minutes of boiling carefully place each bagel on a rack to dry slightly.

Place the boiled bagels on a greased baking tray and bake for 15 minutes, turn over and bake for a further 5 minutes until golden. Leave to cool on a rack. Serve lightly toasted with dill cream cheese and smoked salmon.