No Lenders for Me

Jon and I recently returned from a trip to the East Coast, Atlantic City to be precise. We went to celebrate my cousin’s wedding. The wedding was delightful. Happy occasions with the whole family are always a treat. And it’s a good thing that it was such a blast since it completely took my mind off the fact that we had to spend two days on the East Coast.

I grew up in New Jersey so I’m no stranger to that right hand coast, but I left as soon as I could for many reason that I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say, the West Coast kicks the East Coast’s butt. However, there are things that the East Coast has that are not easy to find out here. Specifically, I’m talking about a decent bagel.

Yes, you might be able to buy bagels in just about any grocery store here, but they aren’t really bagels. I like to refer to them as buns with holes.

Real bagels are not airy and light. They are dense and chewy with a thick, shiny crust. Real bagels do not contain any form of fruit; no blueberries, raisins or cranberries. Real bagels are not big and fluffy. They are not made with whole grains or rye. They have a noticeable seam where the long, thin piece of dough is joined into a ring. The top of the crust can be covered in seeds, salt, onions, garlic or a combination of these or all of them, but never melted cheese. And they are definitely not a sandwich bread substitute. They should be eaten with cream cheese (butter is acceptable but looked down upon) and maybe some type of smoked fish. Capers, onions, and tomatoes may also be added but that’s where the allowable toppings end.

By now you are probably thinking I am just another East Coast snob, and you may be right (at least when it comes to bagels) but I feel I owe much of my early upbringing to this humble bread. In fact, without bagels, I may never have made it to adulthood.

You see, when I was just a babe, every Sunday my grandparents would bring bagels with all the fixings to my parents and exchange them for me. They would take me away for most of the day so Mom and Dad could have some down time. My parents soon learned to associate bagels with the peace and quiet of not having to deal with a difficult child (and I’ve been a difficult child since birth). As long as there were bagels in the house, even if I was there too, the bagels’ calming influence insured that I was in no danger of being kicked out or left on the curb to fend for myself. And the added benefit was there were always bagels in the house for me to eat.

I’m probably not the only one who owes my life to bagels. Although originally bagels were available only to the wealthy (since white wheat flour was a luxury in the 14th century), eventually they became know as peasant food and were sold in the streets, skewered on sticks or tied through with string. There were probably quite a few people who subsisted on bagels alone in the old days (and there probably still are people who choose to do so today) or made their living selling them.

Strangely enough, bagels were given as gifts to pregnant women so they could bite down on them when the contractions started. A good, chewy bagel may have been just the thing to pull a woman through a difficult birth.

Bagels are often considered a Jewish food, even though there is no evidence that Jews invented them. Poland seems to be the birthplace of the bagel and it was purportedly invented as Lenten bread. Jews were permitted to bake them at a time when only Christians were allowed to bake bread because bagels must be boiled before they are baked (and I guess boiling took away any cooties the anti-Semites of the time thought they might catch).

The long rise time required to make a true bagel also allowed Jews to have fresh bread at the end of Sabbath, during which they could do no work. If they mixed up a batch of dough Friday and let it rise in a cool place on Saturday, they could boil and bake the bagels quickly when Sabbath ended.

These two disparate influences made bagels quite popular with Eastern European Jews and when they came to New York in the late 1800s they brought bagels with them. Bagels thrived in New York for years until industrialized food production got to them and made them soft and puffy.

To understand what went wrong, you have to understand how a good bagel is made. First, you mix up a lean dough (one with less water than regular bread dough), which you let it rise in a cool place for at least 12 hours. Then you form it into a long thin snake that you join into a ring and let it rise again briefly. When it has risen, you boil the dough for a minute or two then bake it until it’s brown and crisp.

Industrial production figured out how to make bagels without the long rise time or the boiling, which makes it cheaper and faster to crank out lots of bagels. Modern bagels are steamed and then baked. Steaming makes the bagels puff up and doesn’t give them the thick chewy crust. That thick crust is the sure sign of a real bagel.

I’ve been living in the Northwest for over 20 years now. When I’m on the East Coast I try to eat at least one bagel a day, if not more, thinking this will somehow give me a reserve for when I head back West. I’ve smuggled dozens and dozens of bagels in the overhead compartment on flights back from my visits to New Jersey (this is only a problem if they are all onion bagels and the smell wafts out when the compartment is opened during flight). Unfortunately, they never lasted and I was left dreaming of bagels.

And then I discovered Bear and his bagels from Icehouse Pizzeria and Bakery in Hope. Bear makes real bagels. You can’t buy cinnamon raisin bagels from him but you can buy salt bagels. The bagels are chewy and dense and delicious and they are even better than some of the bagels I’ve had back east. Why it took me so long to figure this out I’m not sure, but I’m glad I did. I will schlep bagels no more.

Now if I could just find a local source of smoked sablefish.