In 1683, so the story goes, an Austrian Jewish baker wished to honor King Jan Sobieski of Poland for repelling an invading army. The king was renowned as a horseman, and so the baker shaped a ring of dough into the shape of a stirrup — a beugel.
That origin story might be impossible to verify, but the bagel is inextricably entwined with the culinary history of Eastern European Jews — and, thanks to immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with the culinary history of New York City.
Today, of course, bagels are consumed not only within New York's Jewish communities but throughout the city — and the United States — as standard American breakfast fare. Commercially packaged and, typically, frozen, bagels are displayed and sold in the same chain stores that sell brand-name sliced bread. But while they might adhere to the basics — yeasted dough shaped into a ring, briefly boiled, then baked — these mass-market bagels are factory-made.
Small-batch bagels, however, are still in fashion in Queens. See a few that we've enjoyed on Culinary Backstreets.
