Making Einstein Bros Bagels At Home!

We've been doing breakfast for dinner at home a lot lately! I guess that's because there's so many tasty breakfast foods that we wouldn't otherwise be making.
Bagels are delicious and we love having a yummy bagel smothered with cream cheese. Today we're going to be Making Einstein Bros Bagels at Home!

For these Make at Home meals, I've enjoyed making at much of the stuff at home as I can. So we're not only going to be making bagels, but also Cream Cheese! The ingredients are very simple. I used the recipe from biggerbolderbaking.com for "How to Make Cream Cheese".  I've got two flavors in mind, so we're going to make a double batch. Each batch is supposed to make about 8 ounces.

First up, Alli poured 4 cups of milk into a pot.

And because we're making two batches, Ian poured the next 4 cups.

After heating it all up, it's time to add the stuff that's going to make this milk curdle. The recipe suggested lemon juice, lime juice, or vinegar. Vinegar was easy enough, so we all took turns adding it tablespoon by tablespoon and stirring constantly so the curds would separate from the whey.

After a few minutes, it was time to strain it. Thank you photographer Alli for capturing the action.

And even a close-up shot? Nice eye Alli!

Using a cloth, we strained out the whey.

After buzzing it in the food processor, we've got something that's nice and smooth.

I was curious to check the weight of it all since it didn't seem like a pound of cream cheese that our double recipe was supposed to generate. Hmm, only 9.9 ounces. That's alright, it'll be enough for our purposes.

Regular cream cheese is good, but one of my favorite schmears they offer is a honey almond flavor. Can't do almonds due to allergies for some, but I can certainly add honey! I put both mixtures into the fridge to cool down. Both are still warm after coming off the stove.

Time to make the bagels! This New-York Style Bagel recipe from sophisticatedgourmet.com has 1600 reviews and 5 stars! That's the one we're going to make. Like most bread recipes there's yeast, flour, sugar, salt, and water. The recipe makes 8 bagels, but I'm going to bump it up to a dozen.

That's because one of Theresa's favorite bagels (and I suspect a few others) is chocolate chip! I didn't look for a recipe, but just decided to mix in a few extra chocolate chips to a third of the dough.

It's nice to have the mixer with the dough hook. It made short work of mixing in the chocolate chips.

After setting the dough off to the side and letting it rise, I punched the dough down and measured out equal portions using the scale.

And then all those ragged balls got rolled into nice smooth balls, and left to rise again.

Time to make the hole in the middle. I got a little flour on my finger, poked it through the middle of each dough ball, and then stretched it out into a ring.

And now another round of rising. There's quite a bit of proofing with these bagels.

Next was a step I haven't done with breads before. Boiling? I had two pots of water going on the stove because I could only fit 3 at a time. These chocolate chip bagels turned the water brown, so it was a good thing I boiled them last.

After coming out of the water, I chose one to top off with my favorite. Asiago cheese! These will go into the oven at 425F for 22 minutes!

Because we're having breakfast, and breakfast sandwiches, Theresa cooked up some bacon and eggs for us. That poor butter dish in the background...

It's a warm summer day in So Cal, and with the heat of the day, plus the heat of the kitchen, it just could take any more.

And if that's not enough, I wanted to make one more item from Einstein Bros Bagels. I've never had theirs before, but they looked like they would be tasty. The twice-baked hash brown. I hadn't originally planned on making them so I'm having to make some substitutions. Instead of shredded potatoes and panko breadcrumbs, I used tater tots and homemade white bread crumbs.

The website everydaymadefresh.com has a copycat recipe for Baked Hash Brown Cups.

After mixing it all together, I transferred the mix into the silicone baking cups. They'll spend 40 minutes in a 350F toaster oven.

Whew! All that was pretty involved! Let's eat them!

According to Wikipedia, Einstein Bros Bagels was actually founded in Golden Colorado in 1995. Noah's Bagels, a California chain, was bought by Einstein Bros Bagels in 1996.
Here's the official product photos from Einstein Bros Bagels. Plain bagel, Asiago, Chocolate Chip, plain shmear, honey almond shmear, and twice-baked hash browns.

And after coming out of the oven, this is what my bagels look like!

My Asiago bagel turned out so pretty! From the living room, Alli could smell the Asiago baking and came running to the kitchen to see if we were making cheese crisps. She does love them.

And the chocolate chip bagels turned out looking great as well! Now I see why they sometimes have swirls going through them. The chocolate chips get warmed up during the kneading and make chocolate streaks in the dough.

One of the other things I wanted to try was a bagel sandwich, courtesy of Theresa's bacon, egg, and cheese.

The kids' cream cheese turned out pretty good too! After chilling in the fridge, I added a little milk and whipped it up. It had just a little more tang to it, likely thanks to the vinegar, but probably only because I was looking for it.

The twice-baked hash browns are all toasty, with a crispy top on them.

Here's my plate! That's going to be a good dinner.

A closer look at the hash browns. They turned out okay, but a bit salty. Could be the tater tots.

My Asiago bagel was delicious! Topped with the Honey Cream Cheese it was every bit as good as one from Einstein Bros.

By absolutely no surprise, both kids chose a chocolate chip bagel. They loved it too, with Alli eating one all by herself, and Ian eating 1.5!

Theresa preferred the chocolate chip bagels to the regular bagels too. They were all pretty good!

And the next morning, the leftover bagels toasted up perfectly! These turned out great!