One thing I have been successful at these past 2 months is honing a recipe for what I remember from my youth. Dense, chewy bagels with a glossy crust and crunch. After comparing many recipes and tweaking I settled on this from Inside the Jewish Bakery http://nybakers.com/recipes/waterbagels.pdf with some modifications.
You must use high gluten flour - King Arthur Sir Lancelot is 14.2% protein or KA Bread flour. Since it is an old recipe, not specifying weights I fooled around with that and use 640g flour and 340-355 g water depending on the days humidity to fully hydrate.
I do use malt powder and 2t Diamond Crystal Kosher salt. I struggled a lot with salt type and quantity as well as the yeast. In fact such a low amount of yeast is needed for density. For shaping there are many YouTube videos. I prefer the finger thru the center then rotate, stretch and repeat when the gluten relaxes. The problem of them sticking to the parchment paper after the cold proof was solved by a very lightly oiled silpat. I did use malt syrup for the boil and achieved the small blisters and right color and crust after the high temp 450F baking. Sometimes they float and sometimes not. If not, I flip after 30-45 sec and go another 30 sec in the boil.
These have been so successful with my NYC expat friends that I am doing 1-2 dozen/week for drive by pickup. Everything Bagel topping is the most preferred