Can bagels be frozen? Maybe you’ve got a large assortment of bagels you just can’t eat before they expire. Or you found bagels in the frozen aisle of your grocery store and are confused about how to use them. In this post, we will be talking about how to freeze bagels, why some bagels are sold frozen, and how to properly defrost bagels. Ready? Let's begin...
Can Your Freeze Bagels?
First things first, can you freeze bagels? The answer is, YES! Bagels can be frozen and freezing your bagels can be a great way to preserve them. In fact, this is why some bagels are sold frozen.
The Greater Knead bagels, for example, are frozen because freezing bagels is a form of preservation. So by selling Gluten-Free and Allergen-Free New York Style Bagels frozen, we are preserving them without having to use a bunch of preservatives.
If you’re looking to freeze your own bagels, follow the below four steps:
Make sure your bagels are sliced completely in half. (This is because the bagels will be nearly impossible to slice once frozen).
Wrap each bagel half in plastic wrap, foil, or beeswax paper. (This is to prevent the bagel halves from sticking and freezing to each other).
Place the bagels in a freezer-safe bag
Freeze and store for up to 3-4 months. Removing and toasting them as you’re ready to enjoy.
How to Defrost Bagels
Many guides to freezing bagels say that when you’re ready to enjoy your frozen bagel, simply pop it in the toaster until brown and crispy and enjoy. If you’ve bought our gluten-free and top 9 allergen-free bagels from the store, you will want to take a different process of defrosting.
Take the frozen gluten-free bagel out of the bag and microwave for 60 seconds, adding 15-second increments until fully soft
Toast bagel as desired
Let cool and spread desired toppings
The reason for microwaving the bagel is to activate the flours and yeasts to create a true New York Bagel experience. And we aren’t the only people to swear by warming up frozen bagels before toasting. The Rachael Ray Show swears by running your wrapped frozen bagels under warm water to activate them before toasting too.
How to Make Frozen Bagel Breakfast Sandwich
There are a lot of ways to make a frozen bagel breakfast sandwich to reheat for an easy on-the-go breakfast. Whether you are using frozen or non-frozen bagels to assemble your bagel breakfast sandwich for freezing, the concept is generally the same.
You first need to prepare your filling. This means cooking any eggs, slicing any cheese, cooking bacon or sausage patties, and/or preparing any other breakfast sandwich filling you might want.
Then you will want to let all of the fillings cool to room temperature. This is important to prevent any steam from getting trapped in the bagel and causing a soggy sandwich.
While your fillings are cooling, you can toast your bagels (if the bagels are frozen, be sure to defrost as directed before toasting).
Once the fillings and bagels have cooled, you can assemble your bagel breakfast sandwiches and wrap them each individually with plastic wrap, foil, or beeswax paper.
Store them in a freezer-safe Ziploc bag and keep them for up to 60 days.
When ready to enjoy, every recipe has different directions, some people unwrap the sandwich from the parchment paper, plastic wrap, etc., and wrap it in a damp paper towel and microwave. Other’s unwrap the sandwich and microwave for ~2 minutes or until fully reheated (you may need to cook it in 30-second increments depending on how thick the sandwich is). You can also reheat the sandwich in the air-fryer or oven. If you’re playing around with making your own sandwich, feel free to try out other reheating methods, otherwise, I’d follow the reheating methods as directed by each recipe.
