If you don’t already have one, you can order one here: Kitchen Scale. https://www.sophisticatedgourmet.com/2009/10/new-york-style-bagel-recipe It should feel slightly tacky but not sticky. Roll each portion into a tight, smooth ball, keeping the rest of the dough covered with plastic wrap or a damp towel while you’re working, so it doesn’t dry out. My own hydration experiment for bagels Doughs that have high water content are sticky and harder to work with. Mixing: Low and slow’s the way to go. Knead the dough properly. How to Knead Dough. Most bialy makers rely on bagel dough for the foundation but permit the dough to rise, and usually, although some bialy mavens differ, the dough is baked, not boiled.-- Marcy Goldman. So unless you have a serious intolerance, just commit to having a bagel with full-gluten flour (we used about 87% high-gluten flour and 13% all-purpose flour). low hydration (<60% or so)not enough water! Bagel dough is a low-hydration dough which means the ratio of water to flour is very low. It doesn't stick together when you work with it. Hi Chiljo, Actually, most people who get into bread will, at first, tend to want their dough rather dry, a step above “tacky”. Fold the dough over and push down with the heels of your hands. Dough is crumby, craggy, and really hard to work with. There's an art to kneading. By ‘breaking’ the smooth outer layer I can see how some extra moisture can get into the bagels during boiling. https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/bagels-366757 Next time, let them proof for shorter time in the fridge (I find that doughs get overproofed in the refrigerator after about 12 hours, so 24 hours is a very long cold proof) and possibly boil them slightly shorter. Give the dough a quarter turn, then fold and push again. To achieve that smooth, stretchy texture necessary for your bagel shaping, mix your dough using an electric mixer with a hook attachment at low speed. Too little, and you may not distribute the yeast through the dough. They keep adding a little more flour and a little more and a little more as they aim for dough that is smooth and has no tack at all. Resume mixing with dough hook 10 minutes more, or turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead 10 minutes or until dough is smooth and satiny. Too much kneading may make the dough so tough that it cannot expand. This may be desirable in some cases, such as for bagels. Others seem to have this problem when the moisture balance of their dough wasn’t correct. That seems less like to be your issue since not all bagels showed the problem. The dough will then be too weak to be able to rise. Bagels tend to flatten when you remove them from the water if the dough is overproofed or you boiled them for too long. 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