Cinnamon Raisin Sourdough Bagels

Adding a few simple ingredients to your sourdough starter will give you beautiful homemade sourdough cinnamon raisin bagels. These deliciously chewy bagels are flavored with juicy raisins and fragrant cinnamon sugar making them even better than plain sourdough bagels!

Why You’ll Love This Recipe!

• Chewy Crust – You’ll love the chewy crust of these bagels, alongside the bursts of plump raisins and the sweetness of cinnamon sugar. Honestly, they’re well worth the effort!
• Low Effort, High Reward – This recipe is so low effort because you can mix the dough with a stand mixer or even a bread machine on the knead function. Shaping isn’t as hard as you might think, and like most things, practice makes perfect!
• Flexible – This recipe is super flexible. You can use active starter for a long ferment, or use discard and some yeast if you need them more quickly.

Ingredients

• Sourdough Starter – Just like making sourdough bread, you’ll need an active sourdough starter for this bagel recipe (however I’ve also included instructions for using discard further down).
• Bread Flour – You can swap up to half of the bread flour for whole wheat flour for a more nutrient dense bagel. You may need to add a little extra water if you are using whole wheat flour though. I don’t recommend using all-purpose flour as you won’t get the chewy crust bagels are famous for!
• Diastatic Malt Powder – You can add a little bit of diastatic malt powder to increase the color and texture of your bagel crust.
• Water – You’ll need some warm water to make the bagel dough, as well as at least 2 litres to boil the bagels in before baking.
• Granulated Sugar
• Salt
• Raisins – Swap the raisins for cranberries or you can also use this recipe to make sourdough blueberry bagels – you can just leave out the raisins and add blueberries instead. 
• Ground Cinnamon
• Honey – This is used in the water when you boil the bagels. If you’d prefer not to use honey to boil the bagels, you can use brown sugar, barley malt syrup, maple syrup or even baking soda.

How To Make Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin Bagels

Sourdough bagels are relatively easy to make, they just take a little know how when it comes to shaping. This is something that comes with practice … so bake bake bake! I recommend using a stand mixer for this recipe as it is a stiff dough. It’s perfectly fine to use your hands too, but just be warned, you’ll need to bring your muscles!

This process has been adapted from my sourdough bagel recipe – you’ll find lots of tips and helpful hints for baking sourdough bagels here also.

Add your active starter, warm water, flour, sugar and salt to the bowl of a stand mixer and bring together to form a shaggy dough using the dough hook attachment. Allow the rough dough to rest for around 15 minutes.

Add the raisins to the dough and knead until the dough is smooth and supple. This is a stiff dough (much like sandwich bread dough) so it won’t be super elastic, however it should be smooth and not sticky.

Once the dough is sufficiently kneaded, you’ll need to allow it to rise or ferment at room temperature. You want the dough to double and be puffy and soft.

Now it’s time to shape the bagels. It’s quite simple, you just need a little patience. Divide dough into 12 equal pieces weighing 80 grams each. Shape each piece of dough into a small ball. Take each ball and poke a hole in the middle using your index finger. Gently stretch the hole out and then place each bagel on a sheet of baking paper to rise.

Cover the shaped bagels with a dish cloth and allow them to proof until lovely and puffy.

While they are puffing up, bring a large pot of water with 40g of honey added to the boil and preheat your oven to 200ºC (400ºF).

When the water is boiling, carefully place 3-4 bagels into the boiling water at a time. You want to boil them for around 30 seconds each. They should float to the surface and that’s when you know to take them out. Carefully remove the bagels from the boiling water using a slotted spoon.

Place boiled bagels onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and dust with cinnamon or cinnamon sugar, depending on your preference.

Bake the bagels for around 20 – 25 minutes at 200ºC/400ºF. Remove them from the oven when they are golden brown. Allow them to cool on a wire rack before you enjoy them!

Does Cinnamon Inhibit Sourdough Fermentation?

Yes cinnamon can inhibit the normal fermentation activity of your sourdough starter. When using cinnamon along with sourdough starter I prefer to add the cinnamon to the filling or topping to avoid having to worry about the cinnamon affecting the dough rise.

For these sourdough cinnamon raisin bagels, I have added raisins to the dough but then left the cinnamon for the topping. Sprinkling these bagels with cinnamon sugar gives a lovely cinnamon flavor and the sugar added a little crunch and gloss to the top of the dough too. You get the best of both worlds.

If you do want to add cinnamon to the actual bagel dough ingredients then you could offset the effects of the cinnamon by adding a pinch of commercial yeast.

Baker’s Timeline

It’s really good to have a timeline worked out for baking sourdough bagels – so that you can have them baked fresh for breakfast. Here’s the timetable I work to when making these for breakfast. Remember this is an example only – you can adjust it to suit your sourdough starter and lifestyle. Using this timetable, you could be eating warm bagels by 8.30am!

If you are using discard with a little commercial yeast, this timetable will still work – just make sure it’s literally just a pinch or they will over-ferment overnight. Read more about creating sourdough baking timetables.

TIME	PROCESS
12 pm	DAY 1 Feed sourdough starter. I usually use a 1:2:2 ratio for this.
7 pm	Mix the bagel dough and set aside to ferment overnight.
6 am	DAY 2 Shape sourdough bagels and set aside to get puffy.
7.30 am	Preheat oven and put on a pot of boiling water.
7.45 am	Boil bagels and sprinkle with cinnamon.
8 am	Bake!

Serving Suggestions

I love serving these delicious homemade bagels with a generous layer of cream cheese. But if you want to take things to the next level, I recommend serving these cinnamon raisin sourdough bagels alongside this spiced pumpkin cream cheese or freshly made cultured butter.

How To Store + Freeze Sourdough Bagels

These sourdough cinnamon raisin bagels are really best eaten within 12 hours of baking, unless you are going to toast them.

They are suitable to freeze. I find the best way to freeze them is to place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and popping in the freezer for 2 hours. Once they are snap frozen, transfer to a plastic bag and store in the freezer for up to 3 months. After 3 months, they may lose their chewy texture.

To use frozen bagels, remove from plastic bag and allow to come to room temp. Alternatively you can zap in the microwave for 20 seconds. Then you can toast as per normal.

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