Oddly enough, there's almost a total lack of pumpkin bagel recipes to make by hand out there. It's mostly bread machine recipes and from the looks of it it's just 1 bread machine recipe from a recipe site that has been tweaked ever-so-slightly by various people.
I don't have a bread machine and maybe I could've just used the bread machine recipe and done the proofing, kneading, etc. by hand, but I really liked John D. Lee's recipe so I attempted to adapt that one into a pumpkin spice bagel recipe. The kind you do by hand, not by bread machine.
Totally flying by the seat of pants here - John's recipe calls for 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 cups water and because pumpkin puree has a lot of water in it, I decreased the water content to 1 cup and used 1/2 cup puree. The bread machine recipes are for 3 cups of flour and John's recipe uses 4, so I pulled the brown sugar and spice amounts from the bread machine recipe(s) figuring my bagels, with the added cup flour, would be slightly less spicy and sweet which is what I wanted.
That's not what I ended up with because I mistakenly used the 1/2 cup measure for the brown sugar instead of the 1/3, and the spices were still too much. I ate one for breakfast this morning with a soft boiled egg & the bagel ran right over the poor egg. They're still quite delicious though, but in a holiday dessert kind of way.
One more thing to note - unlike the whole wheat bagels, the pumpkin bagels didn't seem to puff at all during the 20 minute rest & they sunk right to the bottom of the kettle of boiling water. It took just a little nudge with a slotted spoon to get them to float back up to the top but I was a little concerned they were going to bake up like dense bricks.
Everything turned out fine, though. They puffed up a little in the boiling water & got a nice spring in the oven, baking up nice and fluffy with a light crumb.
So here's my adapted recipe, modified for less spice:
Pumpkin Spice Bagels
adapted from Homemade Bagel Recipe by John D. Lee
Proof:
2 tsp active dry yeast
¼ cup warm water
pinch sugar
Combine:
4 cups bread flour
1 ½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp cloves
In a stand mixer bowl with dough hook, combine proofed yeast, flour mixture and:
1 Tbsp oil
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
½ cup pumpkin puree
3/4 cup warm water
Knead with dough hook for 10 minutes.
Turn dough out onto silpat. Very lightly dust with flour and knead lightly. Cut dough into 8 pieces. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest 10 minutes.
Follow the rest of John's instructions for rolling the bagels, resting, boiling, draining & baking.
