These delicious French Toast bagels are flavoured with maple syrup and topped with maple (or brown) sugar. A perfect morning bagel!
I think there’s maybe nothing nicer for breakfast than a warm, buttered French Toast bagel. The smell of maple coming up from the toaster. Intoxicating. The melted butter together with the lightly sweet carbs. Always perfect.
These French Toast Bagels came about this week for two reasons. First, my sister mentioned having one somewhere (and really enjoying it) and then I found a bag of maple sugar flakes in my cupboard. That’s about all I need to get some baking inspiration.
I usually use a variation of Peter Reinhart’s bagel recipe, which is delicious, but a two-day baking adventure. For these, I decided to see if I could drastically reduce the time and still get a great bagel. I’m pleased to report, I did. That said, you’ll still need a few hours to make these bagels, but most of it is passive rising or chilling time. The chilling time after shaping the bagels is very flexible, so it allows time to do something else or for an overnight rise, if you’d like to make at night and boil/bake in the morning.
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- Ingredients and Substitutions
- Cook’s Notes
- Serving, Storing and Freezing
- Get the Recipe: French Toast Bagels
- More Bagel Recipes to Love!
Ingredients and Substitutions
Yeast – you can use Active Dry yeast or Instant yeast to make these bagels.
Maple Syrup – real maple syrup is always recommended, but in a pinch, maple-flavoured syrup will work.
Maple Sugar – If you can’t find maple sugar flakes, maple sugar will work just as well. I found maple syrup flakes in a bag (not in a bin), at Bulk Barn in Canada. I imagine health food stores or sections of larger store would have maple sugar or flakes, as well. I really recommend seeking them out for these bagels. They really are the perfect finishing touch. Failing that, a little brown sugar is fine to use.
Cook’s Notes
As for the french toast flavours, I added a couple of eggs, some cinnamon, brown sugar and vanilla, along with some real maple syrup. A generous sprinkling of the maple flakes (or brown sugar) goes on before baking. Despite totally winging it, I have to say, they really do taste like french toast! I wouldn’t change a thing.
Serving, Storing and Freezing
These bagels are best eaten as soon after baking as possible. The sugar topping will tend to melt a bit the longer they sit. If you can’t eat them all up quickly, they do freeze beautifully.
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Get the Recipe: French Toast Bagels
Easy french toast bagels, flavoured with real maple syrup and cinnamon and topped with maple sugar (or brown sugar). Makes 8 large - 10 smaller bagels.
5 stars from 3 ratings
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Prep Time: 35 minutes mins
Cook Time: 20 minutes mins
Rising Time:: 1 hour hr 45 minutes mins
Total Time: 2 hours hrs 40 minutes mins
Yield: 10 bagels
Ingredients
Sponge:
- 1 cup all-purpose or bread flour, spooned and levelled
- 1 cup lukewarm water, about 105F
- 1 teaspoon instant or dry active yeast
Dough:
- 1 1/4 teaspoon instant or dry active yeast
- 1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, slightly less if using fine table salt
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup maple syrup
- 3 - 3 1/2 cups all-purpose or bread flour, spooned and levelled
For finishing:
- 1 Tablespoon baking soda, for boiling
- 1 large egg, for egg wash
- Maple sugar or light brown sugar, for sprinkling tops
Instructions
*If using active dry yeast, proof yeast in the lukewarm water prior to adding to dough.
In a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the flour, water and yeast. Using your paddle attachment, mix until well combined. Let stand for 20-30 minutes, until bubbly.
*If using active dry yeast, proof yeast in a couple of tablespoons of water before adding. You might need to use a touch more flour.
Add the rest of the ingredients, except the flour and mix in with your paddle attachment. Switch to your kneading hook and add 2 cups of the flour. Knead until combined. Continue adding flour 1/4 cup at a time and mixing in, until the dough is smooth, cleans the bowl and is not sticky. Transfer to a greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled, 1 1/2-2 hours.
Remove risen dough to a lightly flour surface and de-gas gently. Cut dough into 8-10 equal-sized pieces and form each into a ball. Let rest a few minutes. Using a floured index finger, poke a hole into the centre of each ball and stretch around to form a bagel shape. Place shaped bagels onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat until all are formed. Cover well with greased (sprayed with cooking oil) plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for 10-15 minutes, then transfer to the refrigerate. Chill dough for at least 1 hour (can let chill up to 12 hours).
Bring water to a boil in a large pot. Pre-heat oven to 425° F. (not fan assisted) with racks in lower 1/3 and upper 1/3 of oven. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. When water boiling, add 1 Tbsp. baking soda. Remove bagels from the fridge. Add 2-3 bagels to the boiling water. Boil for 1 minute, flip over and boil for 1 minute more. Remove to a parchment lined baking sheet, 4-5 per baking sheet. Repeat until all bagels are boiled.
Mix egg with 1 Tbsp. water. Brush each bagel liberally with egg wash and sprinkle tops generously with maple sugar or flakes. Place baking sheets in oven on top and bottom racks. Bake for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, switch the baking sheets top to bottom and front to back. Bake a further 8-10 minutes, or until golden. Remove to a cooling rack to cool.
Notes
Be sure to read the notes above this Recipe Card, for more tips on making this recipe.
Cuisine: American, Canadian
Course: Bread, Breakfast
Author: Jennifer Maloney
Serving: 1serving, Calories: 124kcal, Carbohydrates: 24g, Protein: 2g, Fat: 1g, Cholesterol: 49mg, Sodium: 760mg, Potassium: 65mg, Sugar: 13g, Vitamin A: 70IU, Calcium: 32mg, Iron: 0.9mg
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More Bagel Recipes to Love!
Jennifer Maloney
Hi! I’m Jennifer, a home cook schooled by trial and error and almost 40 years of getting dinner on the table! I love to share my favourite recipes, both old and new, together with lots of tips and tricks to hopefully help make your home cooking enjoyable, stress free, rewarding and of course, delicious!
www.seasonsandsuppers.ca/about/
Bread Recipes Rolls, Buns and Flatbreads
originally published on Mar 13, 2014 (last updated Aug 14, 2023)
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22 comments on “French Toast Bagels”
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Jacki —Reply
I’m going to try these tomorrow. Your recipe looks great, I only wish you weighed your flour. I make all our breads and find weighing the ingredients easier and more accurate. Maybe it’s because I’m not American, I’m Canadian. We no longer use imperial measurements. Thank you for the recipe!
Jennifer Maloney —Reply
Hi Jacki, I’m Canadian, too :) Even in metric Canada, it’s hard to escape recipes written in cups, online and in cookbooks. You can easily convert any flour amount in cups to weight. My spooned and levelled cup of al purpose flour is consistently 125g.
Sadie —Reply
Excellent! Wonderful chew and flavour. Great plain or toasted. In addition to the maple sugar flakes on the tops I also sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar. Because of the sweetness of the crust I reduced the brown sugar and maple syrup in the dough to 1/4 cup each . Instead of making the sponge in the recipe, I subbed sourdough discard. I weigh ingredients so used the volume measures in the recipe as a starting point, and had to add more flour to get the right dough consistency. The dough kneaded for more than 10 minutes before passing the windowpane test. I bulk fermented it at room temperature for 1 hour until it was about two-thirds doubled, then finished the bulk fermentation in the fridge overnight. In the morning the cold dough was easy to shape. It portioned evenly into 8 large bagels (121 grams dough per bagel). To prevent the holes from shrinking while the bagels proofed I put greased spice bottles in them to hold the shape. As soon as the bagels passed the float test I poached them so that they wouldn’t overproof. I added barley malt syrup and salt to the water. They baked to a deep golden brown in 17 minutes. Keepers!!Jennifer —Reply
Sounds lovely, Sadie. So glad you enjoyed them :) Thanks!
Erin Corbin —Reply
Is there a difference in the final outcome of the bagels depending on whether you use all-purpose or bread flour? Thanks!
Jennifer —Reply
Hi Erin, using bread flour will provide a slightly chewier bagel.
Kayla —Reply
I have some malt syrup should I boil the bagels with some along with the baking soda for better flavor? If so, how much should I add to the water?
Jennifer —Reply
You certainly can, Kayla. About 1 Tbsp malt syrup for every 3 cups of water.
Erin Corbin —Reply
I made these today with the intention of having breakfast for dinner, but we ended up going out to eat instead, so we had these for a dessert! They were DELICIOUS!!!! We had them warm right out of the oven and loved them! They were so good that I asked my parents to come over late for a quick dessert! Thank you so much for sharing your recipes! After making your cinnamon skillet bread several times, I knew these had to be good too! I can’t wait to try the pumpkin bagels next!Jennifer —Reply
Thanks Erin and so glad you enjoyed these! I am such a fan of homemade bagels and these are a lovely, sweet one.
Michelle —Reply
Made these this morning, although I used my own bagel sponge recipe, and they were completely awesome. Not only smelled like french toast but taste like it too! Made the kitchen smell fantastic. Thanks for the recipe :)
Jennifer —Reply
So glad you enjoyed them, Michelle. One of my favourite bagels!
MB —Reply
I had never considered the possibility of making my own bagels. These look incredible – my family will love them. Thanks for the idea!
Jennifer M —Reply
Hope you get a chance to make some. These are a quick version, so a great recipe to start with.
Sophie —Reply
LOVE the french toast flavors! I’ve got to try these beauties!
Jennifer M —Reply
Thanks Sophie. You won’t regret trying these ones :)
Abbie @ Needs Salt —Reply
Everything about these bagels look perfect! I could totally go for one right now with my tea. Perfection.
Pinning!Jennifer M —Reply
Thanks Abbie and these bagels would be great with tea. Thanks for pinning!
Laura (Tutti Dolci) —Reply
Absolutely gorgeous, love the maple topping!
Jennifer M —Reply
Thanks Laura. I loved the maple flakes on these bagels. And they were pretty good eating right out of the bag, too :)
Katrina @ WVS —Reply
I had a French toast bagel when they first came out at Tim Hortons! They’re super awesome, so I can only imagine how great these homemade ones are!! Yum!
Jennifer M —Reply
I was really pleased with how they came out. Delicious warm with lots of butter!
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