Rosemary & Olive Oil Bagels – Classic bagel dough is speckled with fresh rosemary leaves and a drizzle of olive oil and baked to make for an incredibly flavorful, chewy breakfast treat.

Every once in a while, a new food will pop into my life and change me forever. One of those foods for me from the last 5 years was a Rosemary & Olive Oil Bagel. A friend of mine got me one from a popular bagel chain and it blew me away. It was so fragrant and herby that it was almost intoxicating. I could stick my head in a bag full of those smells and be happy forever.

This bagel was so surprising to me because I generally am only mildly impressed by rosemary. We had a rosemary bush at my home growing up so we used rosemary a lot. As such, it wasn’t anything new to me. But I had never had it in bread before. We used it with chicken or in stuffing. But never homemade bread.

After having it in these bagels and in my favorite focaccia recipe, I am convinced that bread and rosemary were meant to be together. Rosemary elicits a warm, comforting smell that just works with the equally comforting bread. My husband calls that smell “Christmas”, and I can’t say I disagree with him.

Because of my love for these bagels, I just had to make them myself. I perfected my basic bagel recipe a couple years ago so I used that as my base for this recipe. I simply added in some fresh rosemary leaves and extra virgin olive oil to transform that recipe in to my version of Rosemary & Olive Oil Bagels.

Before we get into the recipe, here are some photos of these beauties!

The chewiest bagels you’ve ever had

I am very, very passionate about bread. I am still perfecting the craft of making incredible bread, but I sure do know what to look for in great bread, For bagels, specifically, they need to be chewy on the inside and shiny and crisp on the outside.

To achieve this specific texture, I talk all about the process for making bagels in my post for Homemade Bagels. In summary, here are the important steps for making great bagels

1. Create dough from bread flour, water, yeast, and barley syrup.
2. Let bagels rise slowly overnight in the fridge.
3. Boil bagels in a bath of water, baking soda, and barley syrup.
4. Bake bagels on a pizza stone until crisp and golden brown

For this rosemary and olive oil version, we simply add in those ingredients during the dough stage. Everything else remains exactly the same after that.

Rosemary & olive oil

To achieve a fragrant rosemary flavor in the bagels, the rosemary leaves are chopped to release their oils. The leaves are then added to the olive oil to load the oil with rosemary flavor. The longer you let the oil sit with the rosemary, the more powerful the flavor will become.

Tips & Tricks

1. Breads need some sugar to feed the yeast. But for bagels, this sugar comes in the form of barley malt syrup. It adds the signature flavor and color to the bagels, so don’t skip this ingredient! I had a tough time finding it at my local grocery store, but Amazon pulled through for me.
2. Bread flour is a MUST! To get that chewy texture that I require, the flour has to be loaded with the right amount of protein and gluten. Enter bread flour. This also makes the dough much more stiff than, say, cinnamon roll dough. So the kneading process will be a little tougher than you’re used to, probably – at least it was for me.
3. For the reason stated in #1 above, this dough is tougher than other bread dough. Therefore, your mixer will be working hard to knead this dough so make sure you do not leave your mixer unattended because it’ll be moving around a bit. You don’t want it falling off the counter!
4. It’s in your best interest to weigh the dough to achieve bagels of the same size. This will ensure that they all bake the same amount of time. Each of my bagels weighed about 4 ounces before baking.
5. And finally, to help get the crust to the perfect crispiness that I love, I gave in and purchased a pizza stone to bake the bagels on. The stone retains heat at the perfect temperature, which helps the bagels cook evenly and build a gorgeous crust on the outside.

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More recipes you’ll love:

Homemade Bagels

Rosemary & Olive Oil Focaccia

Everything Bagel Breakfast Casserole