The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
So what should a bagel be? For me, it’s really nothing more than a roll shaped like a donut, the size of my hand. According to food writer and connoisseur, Mimi Sheraton, among commenters solicited by The New York Times for an item on the State of the Bagel in the NYT, “a bagel should be about 3.5 inches in diameter.” She describes the bigger-sized one that have since proliferated in neighborhood breakfast nooks and sold from carts, “like rubber tires.”
She also claims these have been baked with dough conditioners “to keep them soft,” but which lessens the much-vaunted chewy texture; also, such additives have given some bagels a longer shelf life, adding to their falsity—a real bagel turns literally into stone after four hours, hence, it should be eaten fresh; no New Yorker who knows will ask for a toasted bagel.
But while it’s a big deal for NY purists as to how it can be genuine, the first three steps in its making honestly remind me of how Filipinos make “palitao”—surely one to raise an eyebrow if New Yorkers get wind of this. Yet, consider this process in the making of both: the dough first, the shape next, and then, the boiling of each, though the comparison ends there.
For one thing, bagel dough is of flour, with salt, yeast and a little malt, where “palitao” is just rice. Yes, both boiled, with bagels “kettled” in a vat, then moved to a canvass-covered wooden tray to be slightly baked for that thin crust—no other bread is known as boiled; “palitao,” on the other hand, when it floats up in the pot, as Filipinos know, hence, its name, would be ladled out.
Yet, even if upheld as exclusive to the city like most
New York institutions, it turns out Montreal also claims to have the best and most original bagel; its basis—the same Eastern European Jews, including Russians but, specifically Polish, who brought the tradition to New York, also landed and settled in Montreal.
Still, for New Yorkers, its being unmatched in terms of taste persists. The city’s water apparently sets it apart from the rest, proven one spring in Washington, DC during a Smithsonian Folklife Festival, where a baker from Coney Island participated. As the story goes, when the 30 gallons of NY water Steve Ross brought with him ran out, he could not get the right rise out of the dough with local water. Washington’s fire department had to airlift 20 gallons of it from NY, according to NYC24, a website run by Columbia journalism students—a detail adding to the snootiness that slightly laces the narrative.
Long lines, indeed, that snake into an often-tight breakfast place make of a typical Manhattan morning—at either Lenny’s in the Upper West Side, Daniel’s midtown on the East Side, also in other spots, for a bagel. And there’s Absolute Bagels, too, close to Columbia University, sought out by tourists for its dollar-a-bagel. Other bakeries do serve the NY bagel but not quite as sworn by for its original taste, texture and size as those named.
Most, too, have since come up with apple, cinnamon, blueberry, and what some find “preposterous,” though favored by others, the “everything” bagel, among 40 known varieties today, to which purists turn up their noses. One, a huge chignon-like version I discreetly like, from Ray’s in the Lower East Side has no hole, yet another aberration that creases brows.
Quite innocent or better yet, ignorant, of the difference, at first, my introduction to it at Daniel’s kind of set my taste for it. I loved it for the thin slightly crisp crust but a firm, unflavored dense wheat-y inside. Taught by a friend to ask for “cream cheese on the side,” hence, get my still warm bagel sliced but not thickly lathered, my first bite that I judiciously covered with cream cheese had me mouth-watering when I sniff its aroma since. It turns out, Daniel’s counts among the bagel makers, which had kept true to what it should be—most family-owned bakeries have claimed the same truth.
Writing this in a way brings to mind similar or even worse instances of exclusiveness I have encountered among Filipinos in Vancouver. Because it’s close enough to the bagel debate, I’ll cite how talks of the pan de sal’s original taste missing in a few being sold in the city could take hours. I joined in once and cited why baking it in Vancouver makes quite a huge difference, quoting what Joy Loa of Kumare Restaurant, my favored version though may not be original, once told me in an interview: the weather, and yes, the water.
But this I consider ultimate snobbery often met with narrowed eyes: honestly, for me, the best pan de sal would be the Nutribun, then Imelda’s partial solution to children’s malnourished condition. Only few remember or know about this; I have to explain what it is. I liked it for its chewy, wheat-y inside that, come to think of it, tasted somehow like a bagel.