Put the yeast, water, malt syrup together in a jug and leave for a few minutes to froth.
Using a stand mixer on speed 1 (you can do this by hand too but it's quite hard work as it's a stiff dough), and a dough hook, mix together the flour, salt and water mixture. Mix for around 10 full minutes. Every so often stop the machine and pull down the dough from the hook. After about 10 minutes the bowl is clean without traces of the dough on the sides. Pull the dough off the hook, cover the bowl and leave in a cool place to rise for about 8 hours.
If you aren't in a hurry, do this a couple more times, punching down the risen dough, covering and leaving it overnight.
Then cut the dough into sections of 25g and make balls. Using a very floury finger, make a hole in the middle of each one. The hole will start to close, so make it quite big. Lay out the little bagels on a silpat, cover and leave to rise for a few hours again.
Put a large pot of water on the boil (as I use an aga, I use another baking tin on the burner so the bagels have plenty of room), and add 1 tbsp of malt syrup and 1 tbsp of baking powder.
Preheat your oven to 200C.
Place the bagels carefully in the water, leaving them to boil for one minute, then flip them over and leave for another minute. The longer you leave them to boil, the chewier they are.
Scoop them out with a slotted spoon and place on tray lined with parchment or a silpat. You may need to use some kitchen paper to remove some of the excess liquid from the tray.
Sprinkle each bagel generously with poppy seeds.
Place the tray in the oven and bake for 10 to 12 minutes.
Remove from the oven and put them on a rack to dry out. Leave them until cooled down, then slit open and spread cream cheese, smoked salmon, a grind of pepper.
As I served them at the party, I had a few segments of lemon which I would squeeze into each bagel just before handing them out.