Bagel bonanza

The golden age of rolls with holes

A lot of you reading this right now probably had a bagel this morning. If so, you’re in good company: 24 million Americans split and schmeared one today. (In the States, we average 38.7 bagels per person, per year.)

There was a time, and not all that long ago, when you could find bagels in New York and Montreal, but few places in between. Now, you can find spectacular bagels at shops from New Orleans to Los Angeles — hand rolled, sourdough, wood oven-baked, you name it — and less spectacular ones pretty much everywhere, from hospital cafeterias to airports to office break rooms.

These bagels are not from an office break room.

It’s these sorts of bagels — the oversized, bland, pale ones with no discernible flavor — that caused my podcast cohost and colleague David to remark, on video no less, that “most New York bagels are trash.” And before you go getting mad about it, let me reassure you that David qualified that statement by saying that, yes, it’s possible to get great bagels in his home city of New York (and many other places, too), but more common to get very mediocre ones, no matter where you may find yourself.

But perhaps it’s more offensive to eat a subpar bagel in New York than other places, because New York was where bagels first put down roots in America. Brought to this country by Jewish bakers from Eastern Europe, bagels came to define the city. At the turn of the 20^th century, there were 70 bagel bakeries operating in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 70! The powerful Beigel Bakers’ Union defined what a bagel was (and what it wasn’t, so: no blueberry or rainbow bagels) and protected a trade that was entirely manual. It’s possible bagels were better back then. But we’re seeing a resurgence of craft bagels that makes me think we’re (reentering) a golden age of bagels.

For a while last year, I was on a real bagel-making roll, mixing batch after batch until I swear I could hear my mixer sighing when I pulled it out of the cupboard. (A mixer is key; the dough is so stiff it needs a good long mechanical mix.) High-Gluten Flour gives them a distinctive chewy texture, and though it’s controversial, I add a little barley malt syrup to the boiling water bath for shine and color. I like to shape them in the evening and then refrigerate the bagels overnight before boiling and baking them the next morning, all so I can be one among 24 million.

(If you need a great recipe, here’s one from America’s sweetheart, my colleague Martin Philip.)

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Supersize it, add frosting and sprinkles, and a cookie becomes a celebration cake.

Bake of the Week

There are no birthdays, graduations, or other celebrations on my calendar for the foreseeable future, but that will not stop me from making this Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake, this week’s Bake of the Week. The recipe is heavy on the brown sugar, which gives the cookie … er, cake … a caramelized flavor that I love. It can also be made with our Measure For Measure for the gluten-free among us, making it an ultra-inclusive, supremely delicious treat. And while a cookie cake doesn’t require frosting, piping some on (and adding sprinkles!) gives it a festive glow-up that makes it party ready, should you have one on the horizon.

Follow these Crumbs

• Here are the full show notes for our bagel episode.

• This week, it’s all about cake: Jordan Smith made this one, topped with cherry limeade jelly (!), Bronwen Wyatt created this jam patchwork number, and let’s just take a moment for this woven rhubarb darling.

• In Vermont, maple creemee season has begun. Here’s a list of where to find a good one. What’s a creemee, you ask? Soft serve ice cream flavored with pure Vermont maple syrup. The best!

• Apple pie … baked beans?