Where the bagel mavens roam: Gathering celebrates best of the Jewish culinary invention

LOS ANGELES – Bubbe, the bagel is having a moment.

At this month’s BagelFest West in L.A., it was clear North America’s favourite Jewish immigrant food has become “the new pizza” — meaning, gourmet pizza, with a gamut of choices from fine-handed artisans.

The April 12 fest drew foodies, bakers and innovators conjuring up endless varieties, cooking styles and toppings. A thousand attendees, each holding an open cardboard box reminiscent of ballpark hot dog vendors, navigated the Audrey Irmas Pavilion looking to nosh.

What they got: disruptive innovation and respectful traditionalism.

“We’re finally swinging back the pendulum of all this carb-free stuff. During the pandemic a lot of people were baking their own bread and finding a love and appreciation for fresh breads,” said J.D. Rocchio, co-owner of Belle’s Bagels in Los Angeles.

“Customizability has a lot to do with it, where people can have their own sense of what their bagel has or has not.”

Among the dozens of tastes, the most bizarre, perhaps, came from Rise Bagel of Irvine, Calif,, which won the festival’s “Most Creative” invention: Tokyo egg salad on a furikake bagel with Tokyo negi schmear, a jammy quail egg topped with house-made Korean chili crisp.

Alongside was a companion piece, a lightly salted sesame bagel with cookie butter schmear, topped with pickled watermelon rind with tajin, a beet strawberry ganache and a tangerine basil vinaigrette.

First launched in 2019 in New York, BagelFest looked west to Los Angeles this year. BagelFest is produced by BagelUp, and in Los Angeles in conjunction with the King Arthur Baking Company and Jewish Food Lab at Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

Toronto will host its own BagelFest April 25, at Henderson Brewing Company, with participating companies as Bagel World, Gryfe’s, and Bagel Plus.

Sam Silverman, BagelFest’s director, said there were 100 applicants in L.A.; 16 were approved.

“Frankly, not everybody meets the standard of what we believe is a great bagel. If you’re making what’s essentially a mass-produced bread that is in a bagel shape, you don’t belong here,” he said.

According to BagelFest organizers, the bagel was invented in the 1600s in Poland, as a response to antisemitic laws prohibiting Jews from baking bread.

In a creative loophole, Jews instead boiled the dough before placing it in the oven, with the tough crust containing the freshness for longer. The hole in the middle allowed for easier transport, via dowels or strings.

Folk etymology tells that the word bagel came from a contraction of the Hebrew “b’galgal” – or “on the wheel.” Yet all the standard etymological references trace “bagel” to Yiddish beygl (also spelled beigel). That Yiddish word in turn comes from Middle High German boug/beugel, meaning “ring” or “bracelet.”

Historical mentions of the bread in Kraków’s Jewish community — we’re talking the early 1600s here — use the Polish form bajgiel, reflecting this Yiddish/German ring word lineage.

Bagel recipes, along with Jewish immigrants, made their way to North American shores, and in due course, crossed over via the frozen food section in supermarkets in the late 20th century.

There is a famous rivalry: New York-style has long reigned in the U.S., and Montreal-style rules Canada, but borders only have so much clout. Toronto bagels skew more N.Y.C. while Philadelphia has a Montreal-style chain.

The Montreal bagel is boiled in honey-sweetened water then baked in a wood-fired oven; the New York variety is boiled in water prior to baking in a regular oven. The Montreal bagel is smaller, a bit tougher, and sweeter to New York’s moist crust and puffy insides.

Two years ago, The New Yorker wrote of a “Bagel Renaissance,” signalling a shift from subsistence carb to curated culinary food.

For the L.A. festival, some offerings might be so far out of the traditional sphere, that it would be akin to nouveau pizza toppings of pineapple with mayo swirls and smoked tofu – one where a fourth generation Italian pizzeria owner would be heard cursing at the sacrilege. Yet there were no reverse snobs here.

Bagel and accoutrements exhibitors jockeyed in multiple competitive categories. Entries were evaluated on flavour, texture, originality, and presentation.

Seattle’s Hey Bagel took home the “Best Bagel” title. Their pride is the handrolled sourdough bagel, with 100% organic flour.

“We take a lot of rigour in shaping and making our bagels, to seeding on both sides and making sure we have the right amount of salt. With the sourdough you get a little bit of a tang to it, and it retains the moisture,” said owner Andrew Rubinstein, who joined the world of bagels in 2017.

Most bakers, he said, “aren’t interested in that crunch, in that exterior of the bagel. I don’t just want it to be a round ring of bread.”

Launched in 2022, Inglourious Bagels and Coffee, of Carlsbad, Calif., boasts on its website that they play with water chemistry to mimic New York’s, to match its mineral and salt content.

“Nice big bagels, chewy, crusty on the outside and fluffy on the inside,” said head baker Andrew Day.

In California especially, he reckons there’s a renaissance “because we’ve just been starved of good bagels,” he said. “A lot of places use frozen dough, but we wanted fresh and high end.”

Science plays a role too: the use of hydrometers used to measure the density of a liquid mixture, added enzymes, flavour enhancers, and the like, “to improve texture and keep consistency.”

Mission Bagel of San Diego, just six months old, won runner-up with an unexpected concoction fresh off Passover, their “Gefilte Fish Hillel Bagel Sandwich” that included slices of gefilte fish over cream cheese, layered with sweet wine-soaked fruit-and-nut paste, and a slice of horseradish.

“People are recognizing that a real bagel is amazing. On the West Coast all we’ve had are machine made factory processed bagels that don’t really justify the prices. I’ve seen all across the coast bagel shops popping up and that allows us to have a renaissance,” said owner Gabe Rubin.

Bella’s Bagels, of Colorado Springs, won “Schmear of the Year” with their Pueblo Green Chili Cream Cheese. Jason Stele, cofounder and owner, said baking at high elevations is a “real challenge” versus at sea level, as the boiling point for water is different “which changes a lot of the ratios and processes.”

Steele, formerly of New Jersey, said a “great bagel is one with a depth of flavour noticeable because you don’t need anything on it to cover it up. Naked, and unafraid.”

• Cook this: The pumpernickel bagel from Bagels, Schmears, and a Nice Piece of Fish
• Cathy Barrow's brunch book is all about the bagels

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our cookbook and recipe newsletter, Cook This, here.