I recently picked up Maria Balinska's new book from Yale University Press, "The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread." I was hoping that the book would shed some light on the baking industry in early 20th-century New York City, given my interest in Lochner v. New York.
The book was only marginally helpful in that regard, but I am otherwise interested in bagels, one of my favorite foods, so I read the whole thing. Despite good reviews elsewhere, I found the book disappointing.
Balinska approaches the book more as a historian than as a sociologist or anthropologist. She provides some very interesting early history of the bagel. But thereafter she is limited by her sources. For exmaple, the book has a lot of detail about the New York Jewish bakers' union, but that story, while mildly interesting, is largely tangential to the history of the bagel. Moreover, because she relies on union sources, the story is completely one-sided; the reader doesn't get the perspective of any of the bagel bakery owners, just the workers. And, not surprisingly for work in this genre, Balinska attributes victories to the union, such as a nine-hour day, which are better attributed historically to generally rising standards of living. (UPDATE: Almost all bakers, unionized or not, already were working no more than nine-hour days when the Jewish bakers' union won this "concession.")
Balinskaaalso spends a great deal of time talking about the history of Lender's Bagels, which undoubtedly helped spread the bagel around the country through its frozen bagels. The Lender family was apparently quite generous with its time. But what about local bagel redoubts that kept the flame of bageldom alive in Jewish communities around the U.S.?
Anyway, as a native New York Jewish bagel afficiando, here are some things that I think the book should have covered:
(1) Why did bagels become so popular, while bialys (which I think are never mentioned in the book), were left in the dust? When I was a kid, an order of a dozen bagels would usually add a few bialys, and bagels set out for brunch were usually accompanied by a smaller number of bialys. Whither the bialy? (By the way, as of two years ago, there's an amazingly good bialy place still operating on the Lower East Side).
(2) How similar are modern bagels to the Polish-Jewish original?
(3) Given that hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews migrated to Palestine before and after WWII, why are bagels (not bagelehs, a pale Mideastern alternative) not native to Israel? Why are Israeli bagelries inevitably opened by immigrants from New York (until they inevitably fail?)
(4) Why has it historically been so difficult to find a decent bagel in the U.S. outside the New York Metro area? What about the folklore in the New York Jewish community that there is something in the New York water that's especially conducive to bagel-making?
(5) While bagels are associated with "Jewish food," the vast majority of the "Hot Bagels" stores I encountered growing up were run by Italians, with Italian appetizing available in store. How did the Jewish bagel become an Italian business?
(6) What, an entire book about bagels and no mention (except for an old picture) of H & H?
(7) The book reeks of bagel triumphalism, but is the round roll sold as a bagel in most of the U.S. really a bagel? The history of the bagel suggests that boiling before baking is the essence of a bagel, but I believe that most bread that passes for "bagel" nowadays is simply baked after some water is spritzed on the dough.
(8) The rise and fall of national bagel chains in the 1990s--Einstein Brothers, New York Bagel Bakery, etc.
(9) The growth in bagel girth in New York. (Bagels purchased at a proper bagel shop are now maybe twice the size as when I was a boy).
(10)More about Montreal bagels. Apparently, Montreal claims to have the best bagels in the world. I never even heard of a Montreal bagel until a very recent trip to Canada. But the author only discusses Montreal bagels briefly at the very end of the book.
(11) What about other traditional Jewish street food, such as the amazing knish? Why do we have "bagel and lox Judaism," not "sliced knish with spicy mustard in the center" Judaism? In other words, why did Jewish culture become associated with the bagel as opposed to knishes, or black and white cookies, or rugelach? How did the bagel displace chicken soup?
(12) How did McDonald's come to serve sausage, egg, and cheese bagels?
(13) We learn about the first cinnamon raisin bagel, but who invented the blueberry bagel? The asiago cheese bagel? The chocolate chip bagel? Were these advances in bagel versatility, or an example of the "pizza phemonenon" (good New York pizza needs no toppings; dreck like Pizza Hut requires enough toppings that you don't actually taste the pizza).
Bonus bagel information: For those of you who live in the D.C. area, there's a great, relatively new bagelry in Rockville, called Goldberg's. Their bagels are the only bagels I've ever had in the D.C. area that are worthy of the name. (Sorry Bagel City fans, those just don't cut it). Goldberg's is kosher, so it's not open on Saturday.
Bruegger's bagels are boiled before being baked. It's been a while since I had one so I can't reliably comment on whether they are that good or not but at one point I liked them fairly well.
At least you're not playing into stereotypes or anything.
(4) The water thing is touted about pizza, too. I think it's over blown. Einsteins/Noahs is not all that bad, if you just get a plain bagel.
(8) As mentioned above, einateins (in Texas) and Noah's (in CA &the PNW) still thrive, regardless of merit
(13) These innovations are ridiculous IMO
I suggest Bethesda Bagel; their bagels are also pretty good.
A flying saucer lands at a service station in NYC. A little green man gets out and asks the manager if he can fix a flat. The manager takes a look but the wheels are much smaller than anything he has in stock. Then the manager gets an idea. Maybe he can replace the flying saucer's tire with a bagel. He tries it and the bagel fits perfectly.
"That's incredible," says the little green man, "Who'd have thought that on a backwater planet like this you'd have a tire replacement for a classy saucer like mine."
"Actually," the manager says, "that's a bagel. They're not really tires. Here on earth we eat them."
The little green man is intrigued. He askls for a bagel and takes a bite. "You know," he says, "these wouldn't taste bad with a little lox and cream cheese."
2) The proper way to eat a bagel is to tear it in half, and put butter or cream cheese on the end, take a bite and repeat.
3) The best way to make cream cheese for a bagel is to get the neufchatel/lite type and put it in a blender until it flows (best done with two packages). You can add veggies/goat cheese, etc.
4)OTOH, the way you know you are not in bagel-land is when someone asks you if you want a fresh one toasted. To a great extent this is because the unboiled bagels need it.
A bialy freezes well. Just pop in the toaster/oven and it tastes almost freshly baked!
And yes, Kossar's is the standard by which all other Bialys are judged. I'm not even sure where else to get a real bialy.
My grandmother would sometimes exclaim that some unfavored individual should "lig in drerd and bock bygel." This means to lie down in hell and bake bagels.
I was puzzled by the reference until I had the pleasure of knowing an old Polish-American immigrant. Why bock bygel,
I asked him. He explained that by comparison to other bakers, a bagel maker was held in disrepute. Often enough, they would pick up their very simple equipment and decamp, owing money.
Shouldn't that be "Goldberg's is run by Jews who observe the sabbath, so it's not open on Saturday"? My understanding is that kosher refers only to dietary laws.
As for Bethesda Bagel, I think their product has gone seriously south in the last few years (though I admit to having not gone there for a while).
And Montreal bagels? Maybe it was a bad day when I tried them last year, but as P notes above, mine were tiny, over-cooked and very, very dry. Tried again the next day; same results. On the other hand, I first tried Eggspectations in Montreal, which was very good, and has now opened a (slightly less good) outpost in downtown Silver Spring. Just behind the AFI theater.
A great bagel in the Boston area can be found at Kupel's bakery on Harvard Avenue in Brookline.
4) The same reason you can't find decent Buffalo wings outside of Buffalo. The place of origin has the best people contanting watching quality control, and the public won't put up with anything less. And the place of origin has many more fanatics than, say Des Moines.
5)) The same reason that most sushi bars has mostly korean or vietnamese people working there. Or even Mexicans. It's a good living and easy for immigrants to get into, but jews would rather become doctors or lawyers.
9) The same reason a bottle of Coke grew to a can of Coke, which grew to a supersized bottle. Food ingredients are actually cheap. The real costs are overhead and labor. Therefore, the smart business person will give larger portions to attract the people who think they are getting a better value (ie, more food to eat than the same-priced competitor next door).
10) yeah. There are always going to be immitators trying to steal the crown. It's just a publiticy stunt. I'm sure that somewhere out west will claim to have the best crabcakes, someplace down south will claim the best boston beans, etc.
11) Bagels offer that secret ingredient of individualism. Knishes or cookies do not. You can order your bagel with any sort of topping. Then you can order it toasted or not. then you can ask for any assortment of fillings. You end up with something completely different from what your friend is ordering. That's the fun. There is no fun in ordering a knish.
12) The same reason that Burger King offers a 'croissandwich.' Corporate overlords are always trying to take something really good and adapt to miserable tastes. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don't. Look, there are probably dozens of people whose full time job is come up with such travesties.
13) Harvard MBAs. If you are going to open a shop, how to you differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack? You offer something that they don't! Americans like novelty acts, and you do whatever it takes to get people into your store, and if you make a dill pickle/ice cream bagel, some idiots will try it out to see what the fuss is. If it's a success, then bingo.
Remember: In America, nothing succeeds like excess. That's that short answer to most of your questions.
See Pantagraph.com Bagel Recipe; my adaptation of that recipe.
I don't recall a sentence with "whiter" and "bialy" in it before.
RE point 8, I think we're roughly the same generation, do you recall the 70s chain "Bagel Nosh"? I was sad to see that fail.
Incidentally, the Bagel Shop on Richmond Road in Ottawa makes a fantastic Montreal-style bagel - certainly the best I've had outside of Montreal.
David, I do some pro bono work now and then for the local agency that ceritifies kashrus. The supervisor needs to have access to the kitchen when it is in use, which of course creates a problem for any establshment (regardless of who owns it) that operates on Saturdays.
There's no protectionism at issue here. The rule only applies to establishments owned by Jews, and Marx's in Cincinnati, which does have great bagels, is under full Kosher supervision and indeed is open on Saturday, since it is owned by a non-Jew. Establishments open on Saturday owned by Jews cannot be certified Kosher because the fruits of labor performed by a Jew on the Sabbath are generally prohibited to derive benefit from. Food cooked or baked on the Sabbath in a Jewish establishment is actually a textbook case for this rule, so a Jewish owned establishment producing such food on the Sabbath cannot be certified Kosher.
There's no protectionism at issue here. The rule only applies to establishments owned by Jews, and Marx's in Cincinnati, which does have great bagels, is under full Kosher supervision and indeed is open on Saturday, since it is owned by a non-Jew. Establishments open on Saturday owned by Jews cannot be certified Kosher because the fruits of labor performed by a Jew on the Sabbath are generally prohibited to derive benefit from. Food cooked or baked on the Sabbath in a Jewish establishment is actually a textbook case for this rule, so a Jewish owned establishment producing such food on the Sabbath cannot be certified Kosher.
Then you've done something wrong. Was there a hot oven with a pile of bagels which just came out in front of it? If not then you went to the wrong place. Was there a sign out front saying the shop had been open longer than you've been alive? Then you went to the wrong place*
*actually that's not true some of the new places like at Faubourg are good, and some of the old places have since replaced their mixmasters which make the dough come out with a different texture.
A good Montreal bagel is still warm from the oven. They should hand you the bagels in a paper bag to let the moisture out as they cool and give you a plastic bag to put them in once they've cooled.
I've always been puzzled why NYC bagels are considered noteworthy -- they seem like just round rolls with dimples in the centre. Montreal bagels are sweeter, chewier, and have a very different crumb -- large air bubbles rather than the caky texture of NYC bagels. And of course they're actually shaped like bagels.
As you noted w.r.t. Montreal: if that's what you're getting, you're in the wrong shop. An interesting paradox about NYC: due to the sheer hugeness of the city and the volume of stores, there are plenty of places in NYC where you can get traditional NYC foods made very poorly. It's probably statistically easier in NYC to get bad bagels (or pizza, or pastrami) then good. But the good is VERY good.
Bruegger's almost gets it.
Some years ago, Dunkin' Donuts tried bagels. Their campaign slogan was "It's round, it's got a hole, we understand it" and that pretty much described what they were serving. It might have been toroidal, but it wasn't a bagel.
(They have a second incarnation of bagels, but they still don't get the with part of with cream cheese - some day I will order a bagel with cream cheese, and a coffee with milk and sugar ("regular") and complain that they didn't give me the milk and sugar on the side.)
Sun-dried tomato is OK with me, but don't give me anything sweet that belongs in a muffin.
(My Chesler ancestors come from a shtetl outside Bialystok. A good friend's ancestors were from the city itself, which means, as she says, "We don't have holes.")
I second your approval of Marx's. I pick up a dozen every other week or so. In fact, I had a couple about an hour ago. When we lived in Lexington, KY for two years, I had to make my own bagels. Of course, one notes the little differences at Marx's. For example, they have "combo" bagels instead of "everything" bagels. And the last time I was there, the guy in front of me asked for a "half-and-half" cookie instead of a "black-and-white." Idiot. But the biggest travesty of all is the Bengal bagel: pumpernickel with orange food coloring on half of it.
Will bagels still be legal after His Holiness, the Ayatollah Obama, turns the country over to the weird beards to run under Sharia law and Jewishness is outlawed?
[/smartass]
Steve, there's a reason the line "If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere," is NOT in a song about Detroit.
You commented that many Orthodox Jews would not trust a non-Sabbath-observing Jew to obey kosher laws. But where I live (Ohio), I see Orthodox Sabbath-observing Jews shopping at commercial groceries and other places that are open 7 days a week, and they buy meat and other products there no problem. (The stores have signs in their butcher sections indicating what is kosher and what is not, and the kosher stuff is usually segregated in a separate display case). Now, I am not a Jew myself, so this is way outside my jurisdiction...but I just found this rule interesting.
And regarding the original post, it's Lender's, not Lendner's.
Another commenter said the rule is actually based on the principle that you can't derive benefit from the labor of a Jew on the Sabbath, which is different from what I had been told. But if so, even there, enforcement seems inconsistent. Orthodox Jews will, in fact, buy products from general grocery stores owned by Jews, or for that matter, eat kosher food on Carnival Cruise Lines (owned by Ted Arison) or in hotels owned by Jews. So what gives? Again, I think it's primarily protectionist.
Packaged foods are considered to present a problem because there was no physical change done to the food, so they aren't considered fruits of forbidden labor. Food from hotels and cruises would indeed present a problem if the Jewish owner was paid specifically for the food; since the food is just included in the price of the hotel or cruise, it is really no different from renting an aprtment for the month which naturally includes Saturdays. As such, there is no objection to eating the food as long as it wasn't actually cooked or otherwise heated on the Sabbath in a manner that violates the Sabbath. Kosher supervision agencies in these places ensure that the food is all cooked before Friday night at sunset, and kept warm in Sabbath complient ways.
When my wife and I moved to the DC area (Montgomery County, MD, actually), we inadvertently moved into a heavily Jewish neighborhood. The three things that struck us was a) the fact that only two houses on the block put out Christmas decorations, b) that Jewish delis were really great places to eat and c) Passover means something more than when the Last Supper occurred.
Spiritually, it was a great experience. My Christian congregation occasionally met with the local Conservative rabbi who taught us a little humility about viewing Jesus from a 2000-year perspective that has been willfully ignorant of its cultural context. The recognition of the "Judeo" part of a shared Judeo-Christian tradition is not a gimmick, but an evolutionary change in theologic perspective for a lot of Christians who are viewing their faith in a very different historical and cultural light.
Gastronomically, it was stunning. Our favorite haunt was BJ Pumpernickle's in Olney, MD, run at the time by Barry and Jerry Schwartz. I understand your taste for New York bagels, but I gotta say that the food there was impressive. Morning bagels with lox, tomato, onion, lettuce and a little cream cheese is like heroin. Fried matzo. Latkes with apple sauce. Lamb knishes. Mile high cheesecake. Man.
Then we moved to rural Georgia. It was a great place, but we ended up going through physical withdrawal. We couldn't even *buy* lox. We had to move. I still blame Barry.
After just going through the process for making lox (Nova, cold smoked, if you must know) I have to wonder if it was the inspiration for the invention of the bagel, or vice versa.
If you are a traditionalist, you want to have small boiled-before-baking bagels with traditional toppings (salt, poppy seed, onion, garlic, sesame or a *very* restained everything) and a few razor-thin slices of wild-caught mildly-smoked Atlantic salmon and a small schmear (sp?).
If you are a new age person, then anything goes: giant soft cranberry-tofu bagels with turkducken infused herring rossel on a bed of organic bar-b-q pork 'n' spicy goat cheese with sashimi chitterlings and Goa jerk goat.
Let's not be judgemental...
Which came first, the pretzel or the bagel?
When I was last in NYC, the two contenders for top bagel were H&H and Ess-a-bagel. H&H is also convenient to Zabar's. Who has the crown these days?
In Chicago, try New York Bagel and Bialy in Lincolnwood. In the SF Bay Area, House of Bagels is quite OK, although they sell out very early.
Here in Columbus, there is only one store that cuts and processes kosher meat. The others buy packaged meat from the processor. The one store that carries fresh meat has an extensive written agreement with the supervising agency. Among other things, the agreement requires all work in the department to come to an end in time for the suprevisors to get home for the Sabbath and Holy Days. If you shop there on Friday night or Saturday, you will find the kitchen locked and nothing being produced, with only packaged, wrapped and sealed items for sale. If you come during the week while the kitchen is open, you can have meat or fish cooked to order, buy fresh salads in bulk, get a rotisserie chicken, etc.
No protectionism -- just protection of the kosher consumer to make sure that products sold as kosher are indeed kosher.
(The stores have signs in their butcher sections indicating what is kosher and what is not, and the kosher stuff is usually segregated in a separate display case). Now, I am not a Jew myself, so this is way outside my jurisdiction...but I just found this rule interesting.
In the Boston area, a passable bagel used to be sold at Kupel's near Coolige Corner in Brookline. Breuggers? Feh.
We moved away in 2004, and I loved H&H (never had Ess-a-Bagel), but Murry's on 13th St. and 6th Ave. ran a very close second. What I wouldn't do for one of their everything bagels with cream cheese, belly lox, and red onion right now.
blech!
the delis here suck so badly i started doing my own pickling, so i could have a REAL sour pickle.
Maybe like this: Many years ago, when I was living in Cambridge, Mass, I went into Savenor's (Julia Child's favorite market). Mrs. Savenor was behind the counter, and I asked if they had any sourdough bread. "Oh," she said, "we have some wonderful Jewish sourdough bread." They did, it wasn't, but I gave her an A for effort.
A couple of important points: The flavor of sourdough depends on the local microbes, which will sooner or later overwhelm any starter brought in from elsewhere. (I suppose someone in Cambrdge could culture SF's local yeast and bacteria in a lab, though.) Most people associate the term sourdough with SF's sourdough bread, which is made from white flour. In contrast, Jewish sourdough bread is likely to be rye and wheat bread. (Confusingly, true sourdough rye is all but unobtainable in the SF Bay Area. One commonly available bread is made from a fake starter featuring onion.)
http://chaosoutoforder.wordpress.com/
More like Freudian ventriloquism if Eugene made the mistake in a post by David Bernstein.
(*I realize it may seem oxymoronic to talk about a "light" bagel, but it's relative.)
The reason for this, of course, is that Maria is a female. Polish surnames are adjectives, and inflect appropriately. The best known example of this is Maria Sklodowska Cuie
stpuid keyboard
Juan Epstein?
(from wikipedia)
Juan Luis Pedro Philippo DeHuevos Epstein
(Robert Hegyes)
A fiercely proud Puerto Rican Jew (his father was Puerto Rican; his mother's name was Bibbermann), and one of the toughest students at Buchanan High. He normally walked with a tough-man strut, wore a red handkerchief hanging out of his right back pocket, and was voted "Most Likely To Take A Life" by his peers. In the season one episode, One Of Our Sweathogs Is Missing, Epstein was shown to be the sixth child in his family, although his mother had 10. Epstein was also known to have a "buddy" relationship with Principal Lazarus as he often referred to him by his first name, Jack. On a few occasions when Kotter would do his Groucho Marx impersonation, Epstein would jump in and impersonate Marx Brother Chico. Epstein's height and hair are common jokes associated with him.
Epstein's Catchphrase:
"Hey, Mr. Kotter, I got a note!"
(The phony notes, excusing Epstein from classes and other sundry functions, were always written by Epstein himself, though he claimed they were signed by, as written, "Epstein's Mother". Epstein would lip-synch the wording of the note while Kotter would read it aloud, usually proving the note was written by Epstein himself).
“The book was only marginally helpful in that regard . . .”
So it seems there was a hole in the author’s coverage.
“the book has a lot of detail about the New York Jewish bakers' union, but that story, while mildly interesting, is largely tangential to the history of the bagel . . .”
What do you mean? There is a fascinating story there about the numerous strikes and lox-outs in the bagel industry.
“How did the Jewish bagel become an Italian business?”
The Italians made the Jewish bagel-makers an offer they couldn’t refuse. It was either turn over the bagel business to the Mafia, or sleep with the knishes.
“The history of the bagel suggests that boiling before baking is the essence of a bagel, but I believe that most bread that passes for "bagel" nowadays is simply baked after some water is sprited on the dough.”
I believe Maimonides had a lengthy discussion of this subject.
Yum.