Easy Seeded Wholemeal Spelt Bagels in Donut Pan

Easy Seeded Wholemeal Spelt Bagels in Donut Pan

I don’t think there is a huge bagel culture in Australia but I remember them being a massive breakfast staple when I visited the USA and also remember really cute bagel sandwich stations throughout Europe, in particular the UK. I really love bagels because I grew up loving toast with cream cheese for breakfast. A bagel is pretty much the same thing but just makes me feel a little more special. To date the only bagels I have found in Australia have been really bad ones from the supermarkets, the ones with a list of a hundred ingredients that I would not voluntarily put in my mouth. There are also these really disgusting blueberry bagels that are actually blue in colour and look mouldy. I am sure lots of people have found healthier bagels in Australia, particularly in larger cities like Melbourne or Sydney but so far the supermarket ones are all that I have come across. So I have been looking for a bagel recipe that is wholesome, healthy and vegan for a very long time.

I was quite overwhelmed by how complicated bagels are to make. They usually involve boiling before baking and all sorts of other weird stuff, not to mention it was hard to find a recipe that didn’t use white flour. I really am a simple baker. Out of all the types of cooking there is baking is the one that stresses me out the most. I could not find even one recipe that was easy enough for me to try and replicate so I never ended up trying.  I don’t know how but somehow I convinced myself that making a bagel in a large donut tray would be easy and one day I decided I would try to adapt my simple wholemeal spelt bread recipe and turn it into a bagel. The trick really is the donut tray, which is why I had to add it in the title. Baked donuts/donut trays were trending for a while but I never got onto the baked donut bandwagon because I actually hate donuts and never had a desire to make them. I am no where near advanced enough to shape bagels traditionally. The bagel shaping bit was probably the bit that freaked me out the most, so if you do not have a donut tray do not even attempt this recipe. You also need the large donut trays as most donut trays make small donuts that would be too small for bagels.

As you can tell from the rest of my blog my flour of choice for baking is usually wholemeal spelt flour. I find it quite forgiving, it is low in gluten and full of nutrients. Its also no where near as bitter to the taste as whole wheat flour so I find that I can use it without having to add in a white flour. I have tried a few wholemeal spelt flour varieties though and have come across some that were a little too course. Try and get a finely milled whole spelt flour if possible as the results always turn out better! I was shocked that it worked so well and now am very proud that I can contribute a wholesome EASY home made bagel recipe to the internet. Because the bagels are 100% whole spelt they are a little dense and very filling but they hold their shape quite well, can easily be sliced in half without falling to bits and toast up quite well in the toaster too! I also have a really easy almond cream cheese recipe to go along with the bagels which is even more authentic ( and easier) than the cashew cream cheese recipe I put up on my blog a while ago. I will add the link to the cream cheese recipe in this post once I have uploaded it to the blog.