So I’ve been seeing videos of shio pan bagels, and it just sounded like a fun idea to use my sourdough starter to recreate! Shio pan, for those unfamiliar, is a Japanese pastry that literally translates to “salt bread”. They are soft, tender, croissant-looking bread rolls that are baked with butter in the middle, so they just puff up in the middle. In the case of these shio pan bagels, in the video that showed them, it looked like they took shio pan dough, stuffed them with butter, shaped them into bagels, and treated them as such – i.e. boiling them then baking them with plenty of flaky salt on top. While making these with a yeasted dough would be a lot faster and more efficient compared to sourdough, I figured the tang from sourdough would play off the rich, buttery flavor well. That and I just got back into feeding my now two-year old starter, so I figured I might as well put it to work and use it for some fun new bakes! The final bagel had a nice golden brown exterior, a soft, almost butter interior, and captured what I love in both a good bagel and a soft shio pan bun!

If you do not have an active sourdough starter, you would need one to make this recipe. Make sure your starter has been fed for at least 5 days before even attempting this, otherwise you will get rock-hard bagels, which is never a fun time. I will be honest – sourdough baking is a time suck. I found that the best way to tolerate the long proofing/wait times for these kinds of baked goods is multitasking, and letting these recipes be background processes. Because otherwise, you’re going to be staring at sourdough-leavened doughs slowly but somewhat surely proof until you go insane. Go on a walk, go to the gym, read a book, learn a language, just fill your time in between with something productive, otherwise you’ll grow to resent sourdough baking instead of appreciating it for the low and slow process that it usually is. If you get impatient, you will end up with rubbery bagels, instead of light shio pan ones. There also is a chilling process involved with these, just because bagels need to be boiled before baking, and shio pan requires you to place butter inside of the dough before baking, so bringing down the temperature of the dough first will ensure that the butter won’t explode during the boiling process. If that does happen to you, super sorry and hope you didn’t lose an eye? In either way, please be very careful during the boiling process(wear goggles and a mask if you need to), just so you don’t end up with explosive butter and water in your face. Surprisingly I’m not speaking from experience, just that I can see that happening given how butter can react to being boiled.

Makes 4 bagels:
For the dough:
1 1/2 cups AP flour
2oz water
2oz sourdough starter, fed the day before
2oz melted butter
a pinch of salt
egg

In a bowl, mix the flour, water, and sourdough starter. Let sit at room temperature for 4 hours before transferring to the refrigerator and chilling for another 8 hours. Then remove the dough and mix in the melted butter, salt, and egg. Allow your dough to rest at room temperature for another 4 hours before divvying up into 4 pieces.

For assembly:
4 tbsp salted butter
2 tbsp honey
2 tsp baking soda
Water
Maldon salt

With the bagel dough, roll them out into thin cylinders. Cut the butter into thin rectangles and wrap the dough around the bagel before pinching the ends together to form rings. Store the bagels in the freezer at this point just to ensure the butter stays firm, but no more than 30 minutes. In a pot, bring water, honey, and baking soda to a boil. Boil the still-chilled bagels in the water for 2 minutes. Then transfer to a sheet tray lined with parchment and sprinkle on a generous amount of Maldon salt. Bake at 375 F for 20 minutes.