marble twist

1 grain

10 gram

12 gram

carrot

jalapeno corn

pesto

sun-dried tomato & her

A •

because the king of Poland intervened. In grati-
tude, this Jewish baker prepared a bread shaped
like the king's riding stirrups. Later, the little
handle was dropped, the bread became perfectly
round, and the "beugel" — German for "ring" or
"round" or "bracelet" or something — was an in-
stant favorite throughout the coffee shops of Vi-
enna.
That, at least, is the gospel according to Leo
Rosten and other experts. And if you believe it,
there's a bridge in Brooklyn that you might like
to purchase.
In the first place, there were very few Jews in
late 17th century Vienna, the Austrian govern-
ment having expelled them a few years before.
Even more telling, the story is nearly identical to
the one explaining the birth of the croissant, the
only difference being in the shape of the bread.

CI AEL IN

Obviously, no one really knows for sure how or
why bagels originated. All that's clear is that they
were a well-established and popular food among
East European Jews by the time of their mass
immigration at the turn of the last century. By
1910, the bagel bakers of the Lower East Side had
their own union (although, to be fair, that's hard-
ly a distinction. By 1910, every conceivable group
on the Lower East Side, including the chroni-
cally unemployed, had its own union).

The Bagel In Modern Times

From the pushcarts of Delancey Street, the
bagel slowly made its way uptown, insinuating
itself into the culture of New York City, and grad-
ually spreading out like cream cheese, first up
and down the East Coast and then across the wide
Missouri into the American heartland itself.

4 0DERN QIMES

TODAY I WILL ORDER
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15 Too STRE55FLAL,
Too COMPLICATED.
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BAGEL OTHowr

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Eating the croissant was supposedly a way to
mock the Turks, who fought under the Islamic
symbol of the crescent. Any day now, some
hoaxmeister is going to defrost that hoary tale to
explain the origins of brown 'n' serve rolls. ("See,
the soft interior represents the weakness of the
Turkish army, while the crusty brown top repre-
sents ...")
OK, then how about this one, proposed by a dis-
tinguished professor of ancient history in a 1965
edition of The Saturday Review, an erstwhile,
erudite literary magazine? It seems there dwelt
in ancient Athens a certain baker named
Bagelous, who suffered from the gout. To relieve
the terrible pain, Bagelous devised, in that pre-
Dr. Scholl era, a ring of soft dough to encircle each
affected toe. One afternoon, he fell asleep in his
courtyard, and the hot Athenian sun baked the
dough rings into hard — and, Bagelous discov-
ered, tasty — rolls. As his contemporary,
Archimedes (played by Zero Mostel), would have
shouted, "Eureka! Bagels!"
No? Then how about the idea that bagels orig-
inated among the Australian aborigines as the
rough draft of what waslater
perfected as the
--
boomerang? Or that they first appeared in Egypt
during the reign of Pharaoh Bagelramses?

01 Irli]fl

With its wider dissemination, the bagel strayed
farther and farther from its roots. You can still
find the real thing in old-fashioned delicatessens
and specialized bagel shops, but even there the
traditional plain, onion, and seeded varieties must
compete with such decidedly un-traditional con-
coctions as pesto bagels, raspberry bagels, and
chocolate chip bagels. And the mass-marketed
variety, especially those purveyed by fast-food
joints, are generally so soft and malleable that
their only semblance to the real thing is the pres-
ence of the hole.
The shadchan for middle America's love affair
with the bagel was probably the Lender
Bagel Bakery, which introduced frozen
bagels to a national market in the 1960s.
And if critics complain that Lender's Bagels
are bland, tasteless, and redolent of sawdust, oth-
ers point out that Lender's today is owned by Kraft
Foods Corp., the same gastronomical geniuses
who gave the world Miracle Whip and Cheez-
Whiz.
Does this mean that Murray Lender is sin-
glehandedly responsible for the late 20th-centu-
ry crisis in Jewish identity?
Yes. ❑

How To Roll Your Own

How do you make bagels? You take a hole, you put some
dough around it. Then you add a little chutzpah, boil, and bake.
Just be sure to use a high-quality bread flour, available in any
supermarket, rather than all-purpose flour.
Ingredients:
414 to 41/2 cups bread flour
2 packages active dry yeast
11/2 cups warm water (about 110°)
2 tablespoons sugar
1 to 2 tablespoons regular salt, to taste
1 tablespoon kosher salt
Procedure:
Combine the flour and regular salt in a large bowl. In a small-
er bowl, proof the yeast, along with a pinch of sugar, in the
warm water. Blend the two mixtures to form a soft, sticky
dough. (If the dough is too soft, work in a little extra flour.)
Add the chutzpah by kneading well for about 10 minutes un-
til the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Take out all your
frustrations on the dough — smack it, slam it, pummel it. Pre-
tend it's your boss or your kids. (Home baking of bagels is one
reason for the traditionally low rates of domestic violence
among Jews.)
Turn the kneaded dough into a greased bowl, cover with a
dish towel, put in a warm place, and let it rest for about an hour.
You rest, too. The dough should double in bulk. You should
not you should even lose a few pounds from all this exercise.
Preheat oven to 400°. Bring about 3-4 quarts of water to boil
in a large kettle and add the sugar and kosher salt.
Turn dough onto a floured board and knead again for a few
minutes. Now shape the dough into bagels. There are two ways
to do this.
To make bagels with large holes, break off pieces of dough
about the size of a plum and roll into a rope about 5 inches long.
Taper the ends of each rope and bring the ends together to
form a circle.
To make bagels with smaller holes, divide the dough into
about 10 to 12 equal pieces. With the palm of your hand, roll
each piece into a smooth sphere. Then put some flour on your
index finger, poke your finger into the center of the sphere, and
pull gently to form the hole.
Let the shaped bagels stand, uncovered, for about 10 min-
utes, until they start to rise again.
Optional step for a smooth, glossy surface: Place the raised
bagels on an ungreased baking sheet and broil, about 5 inches
from the heat, for no more than 2 minutes on each side.
Drop the bagels one by one into the kettle of boiling wa-
ter, a few at a time. Cook about 6-7 minutes, turning once
with a slotted spoon. Remove to a greased baking
sheet.
If desired, sprinkle the bagels with your fa-
vorite topping, such as toasted sesame
seeds, poppy seeds, or sauteed onion.
Bake until golden, about 30-35
minutes (25-30 minutes for bagels
that have been broiled). ❑

cCN

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