The Perfect Keto Bagel

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I’m a sucker for breakfast foods, especially pastries and breads. Even now, with so much time on keto, I still think about bread sometimes. Not like I would binge, but I do think about it once in a while.

One of my favorite things to eat was a bagel with eggs, meat, cheese, and Louisiana hot sauce. An absolute favorite.

I’ve made do with the eggs, meat, cheese, and hot sauce all this time and then I decided to try my hand at making my own bagels. So I messed around until I got the right texture and flavor and now…

okay, almost crying here. Now, I’m having bagels again and smearing them with cream cheese and whatever else I want to.

This is a game changer for me, people. Now that I can do items that I used to love and substitute them pretty well, I don’t worry about wanting to go back… it’s an added spoke in my wheel of freedom from food.

So let’s get started.

First off, I always ALWAYS use paper plates and bowls to mix my fathead dough. The cleanup is SO much easier. Trust me. I ruined a glass bowl in the beginning days.

Second, preheat oven to 400 deg Fahrenheit. This keeps the cheese in the recipe from spreading out in a flat shape. No one wants a deflated bagel.

So you’ll put your shredded cheese in the bowl and then top it with the other ingredients. What this does is sink the ingredients into the center of the melted cheese after you microwave it for a minute or two.

Um, holy keto Batman! This seasoning is a GAME CHANGER. Literally. A. GAME. CHANGER. I got it here because I couldn’t find it anywhere else in my neck of the woods. It isn’t cheap BUT it goes a LONG way. I use 1 tbsp for each batch of two bagels. You can cut back or increase as you desire.

You don’t even need to use this! I would substitute a bit of salt (1/8 tspn) to help with the flavor.

Ooooh, it’s going in the microwave. Can you believe how fun and colorful that looks?

This is after I’ve microwaved it. I forgot to add the coconut flour in BEFORE the microwave. That’s okay. It’s fixable. My daughter was stressing out and I was like, what is the problem? We’ll add it now. No biggy. You can rest assured I mix it long enough that it doesn’t matter.

Mix it with a FORK in a folding motion. Over and over and over and over and over.

Can you see how the lower curves of the bowl still have the coconut flour sitting there and you can still see the CF not fully mixed in here? I put it back in the microwave for another 30 seconds and then mixed it some more. You want it fully incorporated. This takes a few minutes.

Once it’s done, cut the ball in the bowl in half with the fork. It doesn’t need to be fancy. Seriously. Just get it into halves. I might have tried to make my half bigger, but my daughter is proficient in fractions and she pointed out where I’d gone wrong. (She does keto with me).

This is about the size of one half when it’s been rolled into a ball. Trust me, this sucker rises. Coconut flour acts like its own leavening. If you want to substitute almond flour, you’ll double the amount you need for the coconut flour and add in 1/4 baking powder.

Roll into a fat… well, roll. It’s warm but not greasy or anything.

Form into a bagel shape and put on parchment paper on your pan. I just use a cookie sheet. Nothing fancy.

Give them some space on the pan and put them on the top rack in the middle of the oven. Also, ignore my messy oven. I have 6 kids who know how to cook. They apparently don’t know how to clean.

As you can see, it’s risen really well. The outside shell isn’t crispy, it has that smooth firm exterior that carb-filled bagels have. The inside is that chewy texture we love, as well.

Oh, here I am trying out my new photography box and I love how the lights make those bagels look. I like them done a little bit more because they are made of cheese – so they need a little bit longer to cook.

This is what my bagel sandwich looked like with scrambled eggs and bacon chunks and cheese and hot sauce. Yeah, this filled me UP!

 

**UPDATE: I had a GREAT question come in about the lack of egg in this fathead-style recipe. I prefer not to use egg in my fathead doughs. This is simply because I don’t like the delicacy of egg as you work with higher temperatures needed for working with melted cheese. It makes it harder to incorporate the egg into the recipe and requires more work. Then, you really can taste the cheese and the egg when I’d rather it taste like bread.

However, if you’re finding that your bagels aren’t rising enough or still have a cheesy texture in the middle, add an egg and see if that doesn’t leaven things more for you. What’s awesome about these bagels, is that they can’t be broken. I love them!

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