Back in another lifetime, my mum Janene, my sisters Loryn and Ellen and I used to hit the road and do cooking classes around Victoria showing people how to use and love their Thermomix machine! And our first ever class was our ‘Thermomix Bread’ showcase. Over the next six years, this turned out to not just be our flagship class, but our most popular one! What could be better than a warm loaf of bread fresh from the oven? 🤗 While COVID means we can no longer run these classes, you can buy the class booklet with all the recipes here! But one recipe my mum would always demo at a class (to much excitement!) but was never published anywhere was her plaited bagel…. beautiful bagel dough with a delicious roasted vegetable filling. It’s one of our family favourites! So we’ve made a video showing you exactly how we do it… and it’s now FREE for all to access. Almost like being at one of our cooking classes again ❤️️.

Here’s a warning though - this isn’t my usual “super easy anyone can do it” style of recipe, it’s pretty advanced! You can see why we kept it to cooking classes where we could step you through it in person 😂. If you’ve made bagels from scratch before, then you’ve totally got this! If you haven’t, I’d recommend making a batch of regular bagels first to familiarise yourself with the process. My spiced fruit bagel recipe can be found FREE here, or you can turn to page 195 of Thermo Cooker Fresh Favourites for my cinnamon and raisin spelt bagels.

+ dairy free
+ nut free
+ soy free
+ vegetarian
+ vegan

Note this recipe makes enough bagel dough for two plaited bagels, but only enough filling for one. You can double the filling recipe for two, use the remaining bagel dough to make a batch of regular round bagels or freeze the excess dough which will be the perfect amount for your next plaited bagel!

Ingredients

2 red onions, cut into 2cm pieces
2 eggplants, cut into 2cm pieces
2 red capsicums, cut into 2cm pieces
70g olive oil
5 tsp fine salt
360g water
20g raw sugar
2 tsp dried yeast
520g bakers flour

Method

Preheat oven to 180C.
Toss vegetables in 50g olive oil and 2 tsp of salt to coat. Spread evenly across two lined baking trays (our pick is to line with a silicone baking mat or use our silicone baking trays). Cook for 1 hour, or until vegetables are nice and roasted and the mixture isn’t watery. At this point, you can either continue on with the recipe or refrigerate your roasted vegetable filling for up to 3 days before continuing on with your plaited bagel.
Place water and sugar in TC bowl. Heat for 3 minutes, 37C, speed 2.
Add in yeast and mix for 3 seconds, speed 3. Allow to stand for 10 minutes.
Add in flour, 20g oil and 3 tsp salt. Mix for 8 seconds, speed 6.
Knead for 2 minutes, dough function.
Place dough in oiled bowl, cover with a shower cap, silicone baking mat or damp tea towel and stand in a warm place for an hour or until the dough has doubled in quantity.
Once cooked, allow vegetables to cool as much as possible - we don’t want to be using the mixture hot!
Once risen, halve your bagel dough - you’ll only need half for this recipe (see note above).
Now shape your plaited bagel - watch the above video to see how exactly how it’s done! Video also available here.
Once shaped, preheat oven to 180C.
Fill thermo cooker with 700ml boiling water (you can use your thermo cooker to bring water to the boil). Insert trivet into your lower thermo steaming tray, then lay across plaited bagel (as per video).
Steam for 9 minutes, steaming temperature, speed 3.
Transfer from steaming tray to baking tray using baking paper (see video!), then brush with water and sprinkle with seeds or finely chopped red onion. Bake for 35 minutes, or until bagel is browned top and bottom.