Change up your simple sourdough bagel recipe to make a healthy seasonal treat. Here’s our favorite recipe for sourdough cinnamon roll bagels with an optional pumpkin flavor option. These look like cinnamon rolls, but they’re only mildly sweet with the traditional texture of a boiled and baked bagel. 
Bagels have a distinct flavor and texture that is simply so delicious. When you add the element of sourdough fermentation, it makes your bagels healthy, too!
As an optional ingredient for these sourdough cinnamon roll bagels, we’ve included powdered pumpkin. Powdered pumpkin is made by dehydrating or freeze drying fresh or cooked pumpkin, or canned pumpkin.
The Value of Powdered Veggie & Fruits
Any veggie or fruit puree can be dehydrated or freeze dried to powder for use in recipes throughout the year. These powders incorporate easily into so many foods, including baked goods like bagels.
- If you’re looking to “sneak” veggies into your kids snacks, using dehydrated or freeze dried food powders is the easiest way to accomplish that!
For this recipe, I’ve used powdered pumpkin that I freeze dried from fresh winter squash that we grew in our garden. We use this powder in so many ways, like with our pumpkin pie recipe below.
–>>Read the Dehydrated Pumpkin Pie Recipe for insructions on how to dehydrate pumpkin easily.
You can make this recipe without the addition of pumpkin powder, but it adds both flavor and nutrition. Learning to dehydrate and powder veggies and fruits is a fantastic homestead skill to have and employ.
- The Purposeful Pantry can teach you how to dehydrate cann pumpkin puree, as well as how to use powdered pumpkin.
- A Modern Homestead can teach you how to make “flour” from any squash.
- Grow a Good Life will show you how to grow pumpkins, so you can produce your own food!
For further reading on this topic, try:
To keep track of your sourdough recipes, as well as ferment times and baking details, please join our newsletter family and receive our super simple Sourdough Worksheets!
Sourdough Cinnamon Roll Bagels
Make these surprisingly simple sourdough cinnamon roll bagels with an optional powdered pumpkin addition for health and flavor. These have the fantastic texture of a traditional boiled bagel with the flavor of a slightly sweet cinnamon roll.
- You can adjust the recipe for sweetness, FYI!
Sourdough Cinnamon Roll Bagels (Optional Pumpkin)
Equipment
- 1 Baking Sheet
- Parchment paper To fit the sheet
- 1 Medium-Sized Pot To boil the bagels before baking
- 1 Mesh Strainer To remove the bagels from the boiling water
Ingredients
Dough
- 4 Cups Organic White Flour
- 2 tsp. Sea Salt
- 1/4 Cup Powdered Pumpkin, Optional
- 1 1/2 Cups Warm Water Filtered or well water is best
- 3 Tbsp. Honey
- 1/2 Cup Sourdough Starter
Cinnamon Sugar Mix
- 1/2 Cup Raw Sugar May also use coconut sugar
- 1 Tbsp. Powdered Cinnamon May substitute nutmeg
Instructions
Mix the Dough
- Mix the 4 cups of flour, 1/4 cup pumpkin powder (if using), and 2 tsp. sea salt in a medium sized bowl.
- In a separate bowl, mix the 1 1/2 cups water, 2 Tbsp. honey, and 1/2 cup sourdough starter thoroughly.
- Add the water mixture to the flour mixture and mix until incorporated. If using a stand mixer, dough should clear the sides of the bowl when using a dough hook. If mixing by hand, the dough will become uniform and form a ball.
- Cover and set aside in a warm place for at least six hours to ferment.
- Mix the 1/2 cup of sugar with the 1 Tbsp. of spice.
- After at least six hours, remove the dough from the bowl and wet a clean countertop to roll the dough into a rectangle. Sprinkle half the sugar mixture evenly over the surface of the dough.
- Fold the dough in half over itself, and then in half again to make a fat rectangle. Flatten this out as you did before. You will encounter more resistance this second time since all your work with the dough will activate the gluten in the flour. Be gentle, but be firm.
- Once you've flattened the rectangle again, sprinkle the remaining sugar mixture over the dough. Fold in half, and in half again. Flatten the dough to a rectangle again. Be gentle, but firm. You won't produce as wide a rectangle this time, so just do your best.
- Orient the rectangle of dough so that its length is horizontal. Using kitchen scissors, cut eight strips of dough. You can measure or simply eyeball it.
- Pick up each strip and shape into the classic bagel shape by forming a circle with the dough strip and pressing the ends together, slightly tucking them under. Again, be gentle but firm. You're the boss, so be sure the bagel is the shape you want - round with a hole in the middle. See the notes section for more help.
- Place each bagel on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and cover* to rise for 2-3 hours, or until doubled in size.
- When the bagels are read, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil and gently place 3-4 bagels in the boiling water. Allow them to boil on each side for 1/2 minutes. Remove them one by one and place on a greased bakers rack to drain.
- Repeat with the remaining bagels and allow to drain completely.
- Place the boiled bagels on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes or until slightly browned. You should be able to smell the bagels wafting through the house when they're just about done.
- Allow to cool completely, if you can manage to wait that long. If you cut into bread before it sets up completely, it can get gummy. However, you don't need my permission to tear into your hot bagels, melt butter all over them, and eat them up for dessert tonight.
Notes
Sourdough Cinnamon Roll Bagel Notes
Here are a few notes that might help you make the best sourdough cinnamon roll bagels you can.
Subsituting Flour
You can absolutely substitute one cup of white flour with whole wheat flour. You can even make these bagels 100% whole wheat, but start with 1 cup of water. Mix and slightly knead the dough and allow it to sit for at least five minutes to hydrate.
The more bran (the brown part of whole wheat flour), the more interferrence there will be with gluten bond because the little bran particles simply get in the way. This can make your dough limp and flat. To mitigate this, we usually use slightly less water in whole grain dough.
Sourdough is part art and part science; you’ll learn exactly what perfectly hydrated dough looks and feels like with practice. This is why I’ve stopped using my mixer to make my dough, and instead mix by hand. I can feel when it’s right, even if it still looks a bit shaggy and weird.
Key Takeway: To make a whole wheat dough, start with one cup of water and mix by hand. If after 8 minutes you still have lots of flour in the bottom of the bowl and the dough is stiff, add more water.
- Similarly, you can add 1/3 cup of powdered pumpkin, if you’d like more. I’ve added up to a cup before and included a few tablespoons more of water. This increases the pumpkin flavor, FYI.
Sugary Bits
This recipe is different from a cinnamon roll in that you don’t add butter to the sugar and spice mix. This is a bagel, after all.
- On that note, you can increase the sugar and spice mix, if you’d like. I deliberately keep it light because we prefer these bagels only slightly sweet.
We typically use coconut sugar, which isn’t as sweet as granulated sugar.
It’s common to add a bit of sugar to your boiling bagel water, but you will naturally leak a bit of the sugar and spice mixture into your water bath. Allow your water to cool when your done and dump it on your compost or herb beds.
The reason for rolling out and then folding, rolling out and then folding, is that this process keeps the cinnamon and sugar in the bagel much better than simply rolling it out once.
- This process is called laminating because it seals in the inclusions (the things you are including, or adding, to your bread).
Forming the Cinnamon Roll Bagels
If you have a hard time forming your bagels from strips freehand, you can form them around the rim of a drinking glass.
- If the dough is unyielding, roll it gently in your hands like you did when you were a kid with a snake made out of playdough. Gently pull and tease the dough until it’s long enough to form a solid circle.
Keep in mind that your bagels will double in size as they rise, so the center hole may close in a bit.
To cover my bagels for rising, I use a piece of parchment paper over the bagels. Then I cover that with a kitchen towel. It keeps the moist enough as they rise but keeps the bugs, cats, and kids out of them.
When they’re ready to boil, the bagels should be nicely risen. Resist the temptation to artifically increase the ambient temperature too much. A warm space will raise bread dough faster.
However, if you overheat the space, you can overproof the bagels, which causes them to essentially over-inflate and then deflate. Been there, done that. Made donuts from that, as you can see below.
Still, if it’s cinnamon roll bagels you want, let’s make those with as few mistakes as possible.
- FYI, If you don’t have a fancy mesh strainer to remove the bagels from the boiling water, you can use tongs or a slotted spoon. The strainer is nice because it doesn’t damage the soft bagel or alter its shape. You’re smart, though – use whatever you have.
Slowing Down the Ferment or Rise
Because sourdough is a slow food, it often happens that you mis-time your dough and end up having to be away from your house when should be there doing something critical with your bread. Don’t let your bread bully you!
Remember when I said you’re the boss? If you have to be gone when you should be shaping your perfectly fermented dough, cover it and put it in the fridge to slow down that process. You can pull it out and shape the dough when you’re back home.
If you need to be gone when your sourdough cinnamon roll bagels are going to be perfectly doubled in size, cover them and put them in your fridge to slow down their rise time. Pull them out and bake them when you get home.
- See, you’re the boss. No need to put off learning how to bake with sourdough because you can adapt it to fit your life!
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