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A Lost World

The simple bialy roll represents an era in Poland decimated by the Holocaust.

Jewish Book Fair

IED

fact, the original name of Kossar's was
Kossar's Bialystoker Kuchen.
Before setting off for Poland, she met
with Izaak Rybal, the late Bialystok-born
director of the Bialystok Center and
Home for the Aged on the Lower East
Side. When she told him of her interest,
he first replied, "Why go so far? Kossar's
is only two blocks away." In Bialystok, she
found a handful of Jews and no signs of
bialys, which had been made by Jewish
bakers. Most of her information about
bialys and Jewish Bialystok came later
from the worldwide network of
Bialystokers she developed after writing
an article for the Center's magazine.

SAND EE BRAWARS KY
Special to the Jewish News

roust had his
madeleines, Mimi
Sheraton her bialys.
In a new book, the
former New York Times food
critic reports on a seven-year
odyssey to trace the origins of
the soft, yeasty roll with its
crisp, onion-topped center
Mimi Sheraton
back to Bialystok, Poland. Her
culinary adventures evoke a
Jewish world that is no more.
Reading The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a
Bread and a Lost World (Broadway), written
with passion, results in a powerful craving for a
warm bialy We catch up with Sheraton at
Kossar's Bialys, on Grand Street on the Lower
East Side — for her, these set the standard —
and she indulges in a baker's dozen. Sheraton,
the award-winning author of 14 cookbooks,
apprenticed in bialy making at Kossar's, and
explains the steps from balling the dough (by
machine) to making the distinctive well in the
center (by hand).
Although she doesn't remember her first
bialy, Sheraton says she's been eating them since
her Brooklyn childhood. When asked why a
journalist who's written about the world's finest
restaurants and most elegant foods would be
interested in a crusty roll, she says she's drawn
to "simple things and complicated things, find-
ing the authentic thing and the good thing and
the thing I like."

A Long Search

She has traveled to Denmark in search of Danish pastries, to Turkey to track
down Turkish delights, so it seemed natural, when on assignment in Warsaw
in 1992, to take a detour to Bialystok to look for bialys.
She notes that there's some dispute as to whether bialys indeed come from
Bialystok, as several people who grew up there say they've never heard of
them. But she points out that in Poland these small cousins of the bagel were
known as Bialystoker kuchen; in America the name was shortened to bialys. In

Kuchen Power

International lawyer Samuel Pisar said
that when he was "hallucinating from
hunger" in Auschwitz, he'd often "try to
recall the shape and savory aroma of the
kuchen we used to eat at home." Another
Bialystoker mentioned that in the 1920s
and '30s, there were small kuchen bak-
eries on every street.
The engaging book includes a bialy
recipe Sheraton adapted from Kossar's.
Now in Bialystok — and perhaps as a
result of an article that ran in the local
paper about Sheraton's visit — a shop
called New York Bagels sells bialys; a con-
temporary Polish twist is a variety of top-
pings.
At the 64-year-old Kossar's, where they
now turn out 28,000 bialys a day, the
bakers are Italian and Jewish, the clerks are from the Philippines and
Thailand, the customers Chinese and West Indian. Saturday nights, Chasidim
wait alongside young people with spiky hair in a line stretching out the door.
For Sheraton, the bialy adventure goes on. "This is going to be the thread
of my life."

❑

Mimi Sheraton will appear at the Jewish Book Fair "Food Day," 9 a.m.
Friday, Nova 10, at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield.

11/3
2000

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