The Bagel Controversy
May 13, 2021 19:14:03 #
I'm not gonna write a BAGEL history, you can look that up on Google and find out all about their origin in the Eastern European Jewish culture way back when.
The controversy among battle loves is which bagels are better than the ones from New York City, Montreal, California or wherever? Anyone here is free to chime in and make an argument.
When I was a kid in Brooklyn, the bagel bakery was right around the corner. The store was on street level but the ovens were in the cellar of the build and accessible for a kinda trap-door on the sidewalk. If you did not look where you were going, you could fall in, the doors were always open for ventilation. You could see the fires in the wood-burning ovens and the sweaty men working. We, the older kids, told the younger kids that were HELL and the folks down there were devils! That way- they would no walk too close to the pit!
So..the test of a REAL New York bagel is that it was round but compact- not too much of a diameter. It is soft on the inside, kinda crispy and shiny on the outside and since no chemicals or preservatives were used, in 2 days the would become hard as stone. A 3-day old New York bagel could be considered a deadly weapon! REAL bagels had black poppy seeds and noen of these "newfangled" flavours like onion, chocolate, garlic, NADA. They were purchased and eaten- freezing was unheaded of! Typically served to with Philadeppjia Crem Cheese and Lox (smoked salmon), sometimes with smoked whitefish or carp- poor people ate them with sardines! Recipes and exact baking procedures were closely guarded family secrets.
Montreal Bagels are larger and somewhat softer. The two major bakers are St. Viator and The Fairmount Bagel Companies. These were the originals and today there are many more bit the old-timers consider the rest kinda counterfeit or ersatz!
Bagel purists don't care for all the toppings just= black seeds or white ones!
I have had 2 local bagel bakeries as commercial clients They all are kinda hybrids of New York and Montreal. The closest one to the REAL McCoy is Kellermans- they are hand-made, baked in a wood-burning oven and look a bit imperfect. They are made in a wood-fired oven and delivered in purposely crumpled paper bags. The other one was Bagle-Bagle- they closed shop but had an incredibly vast selection of toppings and flavours and had 2 sit-down restaurants serving a wide variety of bagel sandwiches and plates. Their product was more uniform and perfect looking! There is one other shop in town- I haven't worked for the as yet.
Personally, I'm into the more un-gentrified look- what do y'all think.
Anyway, for me, being somewhat of a bagel traditionlist. I don't consider any of the mass-produced so-called bagels made by the big bread companies as real authentic bagels. They are kinda like donuts made of white bread!
The controversy among battle loves is which bagels are better than the ones from New York City, Montreal, California or wherever? Anyone here is free to chime in and make an argument.
When I was a kid in Brooklyn, the bagel bakery was right around the corner. The store was on street level but the ovens were in the cellar of the build and accessible for a kinda trap-door on the sidewalk. If you did not look where you were going, you could fall in, the doors were always open for ventilation. You could see the fires in the wood-burning ovens and the sweaty men working. We, the older kids, told the younger kids that were HELL and the folks down there were devils! That way- they would no walk too close to the pit!
So..the test of a REAL New York bagel is that it was round but compact- not too much of a diameter. It is soft on the inside, kinda crispy and shiny on the outside and since no chemicals or preservatives were used, in 2 days the would become hard as stone. A 3-day old New York bagel could be considered a deadly weapon! REAL bagels had black poppy seeds and noen of these "newfangled" flavours like onion, chocolate, garlic, NADA. They were purchased and eaten- freezing was unheaded of! Typically served to with Philadeppjia Crem Cheese and Lox (smoked salmon), sometimes with smoked whitefish or carp- poor people ate them with sardines! Recipes and exact baking procedures were closely guarded family secrets.
Montreal Bagels are larger and somewhat softer. The two major bakers are St. Viator and The Fairmount Bagel Companies. These were the originals and today there are many more bit the old-timers consider the rest kinda counterfeit or ersatz!
Bagel purists don't care for all the toppings just= black seeds or white ones!
I have had 2 local bagel bakeries as commercial clients They all are kinda hybrids of New York and Montreal. The closest one to the REAL McCoy is Kellermans- they are hand-made, baked in a wood-burning oven and look a bit imperfect. They are made in a wood-fired oven and delivered in purposely crumpled paper bags. The other one was Bagle-Bagle- they closed shop but had an incredibly vast selection of toppings and flavours and had 2 sit-down restaurants serving a wide variety of bagel sandwiches and plates. Their product was more uniform and perfect looking! There is one other shop in town- I haven't worked for the as yet.
Personally, I'm into the more un-gentrified look- what do y'all think.
Anyway, for me, being somewhat of a bagel traditionlist. I don't consider any of the mass-produced so-called bagels made by the big bread companies as real authentic bagels. They are kinda like donuts made of white bread!
May 13, 2021 19:27:00 #
Haven't had a "real" Bagel in years. The old style were boiled then baked. A wonderful tough outside and perfect inside. There are a lot of wonderful breads that are very hard to get. A genuine Rye Bread, Pumpernickel, Kommisbrot, Croissant, Brioche, etc. In fairness, part is where I chose to live. Some I can bake myself, but not real old time Bagels!
May 13, 2021 19:43:10 #
Best are from NYC due to NYC water. They must be man made and NOT machine made. The tell tale sign of machine made is the grid design on the bottom of the bagel. They must not taste like soft pretzels either. Forget all the frozen Brands. They just look like bagels and are no where close to the taste and texrure of a real bagel. I grew up with the real deal eating them for almost 50 years in Brooklyn Jewish neighborhoods.
May 13, 2021 19:43:46 #
Einstein's is my go to bagel in AZ. In OR it was Rose's Deli bagels. Now on the OR coast, so far I just find crap.... 😩🤢
Sad.
Sad.
May 13, 2021 21:28:20 #
I just had dinner, but you all are making me wish I had a good old-fashioned bagel to bite into....😕
May 13, 2021 22:25:48 #
E.L.. Shapiro wrote:
I'm not gonna write a BAGEL history, you can look... (show quote)
Bagels have to be hand made with the right flour - Conagra's Kyrol - which gives them some fight. When you bite into a non-NY bagel, it's like eating slightly denser white bread. A proper bagel needs to have a crisp outside, and a dense, chewy inside. Typically you use a fermentation style dough - very little yeast but 12-24 hours of bulk fermentation and barley malt syrup instead of sugar. This adds a little sweetness, but also adds minerals and enzymes that help in the fermentation and add complexity to the bagel that plain sugar does not. Lastly, a real bagel is rolled by hand into a log then the ends are joined to form a doughnut.
Bagels from the Bronx (Riverdale, Grand Concourse, Moshulu Parkway), Manhattan, especially the Lower East Side, Upper West Side, Brooklyn's many neighborhoods, but Coney Island stands out with the highest concentration - and a few places here and there in Westchester County - all serve up the real thing - though no two bagels are alike - there are many that seem to come from the same family. Then there are the posers which are not worth ruining a good cream cheese and Nova (Nova Scotia smoked salmon, as opposed to Lox, which is incredibly salty but not smoked salmon). The better versions are salt cured and not brined. Lox is closer to the Scandinavian Gravadlax - which can be cured with salt and sugar, and seasoned with juniper berries (or gin), dill, black peppercorns, etc). There was an amazing restaurant on 4th Ave in Brooklyn that made the best Gravadlax ever - at least according to my Norwegian friend's grandmother - just like home she used to say - but I digress.
We've found them in various places - there is a company called The Original Brooklyn Water Bagel in Florida with about 12 locations. In Southern Delaware there is Surf Bagel, Uber Bagel and J&J Beyond Bagels - that we've found so far. There may be others.
But there is no controversy - there are NY Bagels, and then there are bread shaped to look like bagels with only a tenuous and vague similarity to a NY Bagel.
May 14, 2021 05:25:20 #
May 14, 2021 06:38:02 #
May 14, 2021 10:57:49 #
Gene51 wrote:
Bagels have to be hand made with the right flour -
But there is no controversy - there are NY Bagels, and then there are bread shaped to look like bagels with only a tenuous and vague similarity to a NY Bagel.
But there is no controversy - there are NY Bagels, and then there are bread shaped to look like bagels with only a tenuous and vague similarity to a NY Bagel.
Great info and history. I've never had a true NY Bagel - only the imitations from the NW. Oh well, such is life. At least (off-topic) I don't have to eat crappy "Atlantic" salmon - Coho, Silver, Chinook, and Sockeye can be had here in OR.
May 14, 2021 11:19:20 #
yorkiebyte wrote:
Great info and history. I've never had a true NY Bagel - only the imitations from the NW. Oh well, such is life. At least (off-topic) I don't have to eat crappy "Atlantic" salmon - Coho, Silver, Chinook, and Sockeye can be had here in OR.
Some of the best-smoked salmon comes from up here in Canada, the Province of Nova Scotia In New York "Scotia-Lox" was considered a special delicacy.
May 14, 2021 12:19:44 #
The good old days. Problem is, many of the old-time bakers and cooks have retired or passed away. There were and great recipes for baked, smoked fishes and meats and many other traditional foods that were handed down through the generations but somethg is missing. I am not a chef or a gourmet, so I can't put my finger on it or explain the difference except for personal taste and texture. The old-timmers had a TOUCH. They seemed to take more time, there was little or no automation and lots more labour. Many commercial bakers, restaurants and specialty food shops cooked and baked like my grandmother- she didn't measure each ingredient there was a hand full of this and a pinch of that but it always came out perfectly. She tasted as she cooked and seasoned accordingly.
Perhas some of the original ingredients are now considered unhealthy- stuff like schmaltz (rendered chicken fat), Kosher salt, organ meats, etc., so modern substitutions are made- they ain't the same!
Jewish comedians would make jokes about traditional foods. Alan King uses to say that the Israeli Defence Forces used stale New York bagels instead of artillery shells and the Plaistians fought back with hot sauce instead of flam throwers. I recall my maternal grandmother made matzo balls with seltzer (carbonated ware) so they were light and fluffy. My paternal grandmother preferred a more solid matzo-ball. I use to say that I had one of the latter matzo balls in my stomach for the last 65 years and still have not managed to digest it!
Even the cream cheese ain't what it used to be. The lunch counters had a block of cream cheese about 2 square feet in size, kept in a fridge with a pull-up glass door. Not that fluffy stuff from a plastic container! When you ordered a bagle and lox, the counterman would take a spatula that looked like a paint scraper and yank a slab of cheese off the block and shmear it on the bagle. The hole in the bagel was just the right size so nothing would leak out, not that it could leak out because it had the viscosity of wood filler- but it was yummy!
I have dozes of "ethnic" cookbook and have shot images for many as well- Jewish (Eastern European, North African and Ethiopian), Arabic, Asian, Indian, African and many more. We try some of the recipes at home. Seems many have been modernized perhaps Americanizeded or Canadianized but the results ain't the same as when my many diverse friends invite us over for dinner! It's the TOUCH!
Perhas some of the original ingredients are now considered unhealthy- stuff like schmaltz (rendered chicken fat), Kosher salt, organ meats, etc., so modern substitutions are made- they ain't the same!
Jewish comedians would make jokes about traditional foods. Alan King uses to say that the Israeli Defence Forces used stale New York bagels instead of artillery shells and the Plaistians fought back with hot sauce instead of flam throwers. I recall my maternal grandmother made matzo balls with seltzer (carbonated ware) so they were light and fluffy. My paternal grandmother preferred a more solid matzo-ball. I use to say that I had one of the latter matzo balls in my stomach for the last 65 years and still have not managed to digest it!
Even the cream cheese ain't what it used to be. The lunch counters had a block of cream cheese about 2 square feet in size, kept in a fridge with a pull-up glass door. Not that fluffy stuff from a plastic container! When you ordered a bagle and lox, the counterman would take a spatula that looked like a paint scraper and yank a slab of cheese off the block and shmear it on the bagle. The hole in the bagel was just the right size so nothing would leak out, not that it could leak out because it had the viscosity of wood filler- but it was yummy!
I have dozes of "ethnic" cookbook and have shot images for many as well- Jewish (Eastern European, North African and Ethiopian), Arabic, Asian, Indian, African and many more. We try some of the recipes at home. Seems many have been modernized perhaps Americanizeded or Canadianized but the results ain't the same as when my many diverse friends invite us over for dinner! It's the TOUCH!
May 14, 2021 15:00:43 #
yorkiebyte wrote:
Great info and history. I've never had a true NY Bagel - only the imitations from the NW. Oh well, such is life. At least (off-topic) I don't have to eat crappy "Atlantic" salmon - Coho, Silver, Chinook, and Sockeye can be had here in OR.
Hey Hey - Atlantic salmon is good stuff - But the best salmon has to be Scottish - they know how to farm their fish, and though they are milder tasting - they have an incomparable mouth feel - "like buttah".
May 14, 2021 16:59:41 #
Gene51 wrote:
Bagels have to be hand made with the right flour -... (show quote)
I am enjoying your information on bagels. I had to look up the Kyrol flour. I might have to try some for my Scottish Baps. How would it compare to strong white bread flour? This seems to be higher in the gluten content.
May 14, 2021 18:27:16 #
May 14, 2021 18:27:38 #
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