Homemade Slow Cooker Bagels

You can make bagels in the slow cooker in 2 hours! This easy homemade bagels recipe is made with all purpose flour and other simple ingredients. A fun simple recipe that you have to try!

I admit, I’m spoiled by the best bagels – NYC bagels. Nothing can beat them. Lots of people say it’s the NYC water that makes them so good. NYC water is great, put your glass under the tap in the sink, and enjoy some of the best tasting water there is, no filter needed. Scientifically they say that NYC water has low concentrations of calcium and magnesium, making it soft. Hard water makes gluten strong in dough, resulting in tough bagels, which noone wants. But NYC bagels – perfection.

But right now we’re missing out on going to our favorite bagel shop, and being at home all the time (for future readers, it’s May 2020!), I’ve been trying to make everything homemade. Knowing that we’ve had success making bread in the slow cooker, I’ve been thinking alot about making bagels with this same method. So here we go, let’s make Homemade Slow Cooker Bagels!

How to Make Homemade Bagels

Pour 1 cup warm water into a large bowl. Add honey to the bowl and stir.

Add active dry yeast. Stir again.

Let this sit in a warm spot for 15 minutes. On days where it’s not warm in my house I put in my microwave and close the door (DONT turn the microwave on! It’s just a warm spot). After this time it should start looking foamy.

Add salt and vegetable oil to bowl and stir.

Measure 3 cups all purpose flour. You can also use whole wheat flour too if you’d like.

Add flour to the bowl and mix with your hands, kneading the dough for 5 minutes. It will look a little crumbly, that’s ok.

Coat the bowl in olive oil, place dough back into bowl, and cover with plastic wrap.

Place in a warm spot and let rise for 30-45 minutes. During this time the dough should almost double in size.

Form the dough into 6 balls, rolling them into the best looking balls you can shape. These steps are important and will make the difference if you want these to look like bagels, instead of rolls. Honestly, I’m not the best ball roller, but I’ve made this recipe enough times to share tips so yours looks like bagels the first time making them (wish I could say that mine looked like bagels the first time!).

Ok, this is really important. Bagels have holes in the middle, right? With your finger, poke a hole in the middle of each piece of dough, stretching the hole to about 2 inches. Any smaller and when the dough bakes, the hole will disappear. Make sure the hole is at least 2 inches wide!

You will need 2-3 pieces of parchment paper for this recipe, depending on how big your slow cooker is. Place your first parchment paper on the bottom of the slow cooker. I like to also spray each piece of parchment paper with nonstick spray to be extra safe. Now put 2-3 bagels on the parchment paper, depending on how many you can comfortably fit. Don’t over do it as the bagels will expand and you don’t want to ruin their circle shapes.

Now layer another piece of parchment paper on top and repeat the steps until all the bagels are now in the slow cooker. Tip: When layering, distribute the weight so the parchment paper doesn’t sag down – this not going to be good for bagel shape. You basically want a stack of bagels on top of each other, with parchment paper in between them.

Now cook for 2 hours on HIGH. And 2 hours later you’ll have homemade bagels! How good do these look?

After they come out of the slow cooker, you have 2 options:

1. Enjoy them as is.
2. Brown the tops slightly, making them a little more delicious and better looking. This is my preferred method.

To do this, brush a little butter on top of each one. A little goes a long way.

Now put them in the oven under the broiler and WATCH THEM LIKE A HAWK. It won’t take long for the tops to brown and you’ll want to pull them right before they burn. It literally takes seconds to go from brown to burning, so watch them carefully!

After they come out of the oven, I like to add some sesame seeds on top but you can leave “as is” too. What else can you do? You can add everything bagel seasoning to make a proper “everything bagel”.

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