Bagels are bread products in the form of a roughly hand-sized ring.
Bagel
Bagels are bread products in the form of a roughly hand-sized ring.
Bagel History
Bagel history is unclear, but it appears to have been invented in Central Europe. The earliest mention of the bagel is in 1610 in the statutes of the Jewish community of Krakow, Poland which state that a gift of bagels may be made to the woman who has given birth, and other women who were present.
An oft-repeated story states that both the bagel and the croissant originated in 1683 in Vienna, Austria, when an Austrian baker created them to commemorate the victory in the Battle of Vienna over the Turks that sieged the city. The bagel is supposedly related to the victorious final cavalry charge led by King John III Sobieski of Poland. Thus, the baked good was fashioned in the form of a stirrup (German: Steigb?gel). Others have suggested that the round hole in the center of the bagel allowed Russian and Polish bakers to carry many of them on a long pole as they walked the streets selling their fresh bread.
There was a tradition among many observant Jewish families to make bagels on Saturday evenings at the conclusion of the Sabbath. The bagel’s method of preparation made it a convenient form of bread that could be baked without breaking the rule of no work on the Sabbath. The preparation of the dough was done prior to the start of Sabbath, the dough was then left to rise slowly, and was ready for cooking when Sabbath ended.
Eastern European Jewish immigrants brought their skills as bagel makers to North America, particularly New York City, at the end of the nineteenth century. The bagel today is popular the world over, a platform for foods as diverse as the meanings and values it carries for those who eat them. For many Americans, the bagel represents Eastern European culture, for others it represents New York City, and for people around the world it is American.
Bagel Preparation
The bagel is a dense bread, raised with yeast, and containing almost no fat. At its most basic, traditional bagel dough contains wheat flour (without germ or bran), salt, water, and yeast leavening. Bread flour or other high gluten flours are preferred to create the firm and dense bagel shape and texture. Most bagel recipes call for the addition of a sweetener to the dough, often barley malt (syrup or crystals), honey, or sugar. Leavening can be accomplished using either a sourdough technique, or using commercially produced yeast.
New York style bagels are traditionally made by mixing and kneading the ingredients to form the dough, then shaping the dough into the traditional bagel shape, round with a hole in the middle. Bagels are then proofed for at least 12 hours at low temperature, and then boiled in water that may or may not contain additives such as lye, baking soda, barley malt syrup, or honey before baking in the oven. It is this unusual production method which is said to give bagels their distinctive taste, chewy texture, and shiny appearance. Bagels are often topped with seeds baked onto the outer crust with the most traditional being poppy or sesame seeds, although garlic, onion, caraway, and salt are also popular, as is the “everything" bagel which is topped with a mixture of toppings, the exact ingredients depending on the vendor.
Bagel Varieties
The two most prominent styles of traditional bagel in North America are the Montreal-style bagel and the New York-style bagel.
The New York-style bagel is normally and traditionally made of yeasted wheat, but there are many variations which change the dough recipe, including pumpernickel, rye, sourdough, bran, whole wheat, and multigrain. Other variations change the flavor of the dough, often using salt, onion, garlic, egg, cinnamon, raisin, blueberry or other fruits, and even chocolate chip or cheese. There are even green bagels for St. Patrick's Day.
The Montreal bagel is a distinctive variety of hand-made and wood-fired baked bagel. In contrast to the New York-style bagel, the Montreal bagel is smaller, sweeter, and denser, with a larger hole, and is always baked in a wood-fired oven. It contains malt, egg, and no salt, and is boiled in honey-sweetened water before being baked in a wood-fired oven, whose irregular flames give it a dappled light-and-dark surface color. There are two predominant varieties: black-seed (poppyseed) or white-seed (sesame seed).
The traditional London bagel (or "beigel" as it is called) is harder than the North American varieties, and has a coarser texture with air bubbles.
In Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, the bublik is essentially a very enlarged bagel. Other ring-shaped pastries known among East Slavs are baranki (smaller and drier) and sushki (even smaller and drier).
In some parts of Austria, ring-shaped pastries called Beugel are sold in the weeks before Easter. Like a bagel, the yeasted wheat dough, usually flavored with caraway, is boiled before baking, however, the Beugel is crispy and can be stored for weeks. Traditionally it has to be torn apart by two individuals before eating.