NY Bagel Cafe & Deli - Baking the Bagel

The bagel is one of those elusive goods. Although enjoyed at home and on the go, served in cafes, delis and diners throughout the country, the average person will rarely make a bagel in the comforts of their own kitchen. It is no easy feat, not least because of the wide variety of methods that you can potentially employ in order to bake the perfect bagel. The traditional method is made by mixing wheat flour, salt, water and yeast, often adding yeast. You then assemble the shape of the bagel - often a harder technique to perfect than it looks - before leaving them for at least 12 hours at a certain temperature. After which you dip the formed bagels into boiling water, and then bake in the oven.

Although this is the basic form of the recipe it is hotly disputed as the exact science of the perfect bagel. The outside needs to be crunchy, but the inside chewy. It is also best served freshly baked, which means a lot of effort in the morning to produce the desired bagel for breakfast or lunch. NY Bagel Cafe attributes its success to this very reason. It claims to have perfected the baking method, which harks back to the Polish Jewish immigrants of the turn of the 20th Century in New York. The popularity of the bagel baked with their methods has seen a growth ever since for replications of the famous New York bagel countrywide. Where usual bakers use the lesser valued liquid barley malt, NY Bagel bakes with a better quality powdered variety. The bagels are then rested for 12 hours, optimum time for developing the right texture that blends crunchy and chewy. They are then kettle boiled and opt for a traditional hearth baked finish, for the best taste of New York.

There are some slightly different methods: the Montreal style bagel, the Chicago steamed variety. Bagels can also be store bought of course and toasted at home. Nothing really compares however to a true New York style bagel; freshly baked, freshly toasted and topped with your choice of filling.

That’s where companies such as NY Bagel Cafe have got their formula right. A good bake, fresh each day and made on site using the best ingredients. A method dating back over a hundred years is difficult to argue with - and their growing number of locations is proving that it isn’t just New York where the bagel is a proving lucrative business.

NY Bagel Cafe - Shaping the bagel

Bagels come in all flavours, different fillings, toppings, even different sizes, sweet or savoury. But its distinctiveness is attributed to its unmistakable shape. There are discrepancies on how the rounded shape with the hole in the middle came to be. One theory goes that it was created by Polish bakers apparently to resemble a stirrup. Another is that it was designed as a revolt in small Jewish villages in Russia against Tsarist taxation, which demanded the inner tenth of any baked goods be given to the authorities, i.e. the best part of the bread. The bagel, having a hole in the middle, was thus exempt from taxation. Neither origin seems very likely, it was probably designed as such for easy transport for sellers to carry on a stick.

Whatever the reason, the distinct shape of a delicious bagel is now identifiable world over. It is, however, a little difficult to replicate the perfect bagel at home and it is increasingly a good that we are spending food dollars on away from home. Shaping the bagel across the States is the success of franchise NY Bagel Cafe. NY Bagel Cafe supplies its growing number of locations with artisan bagels made of the best quality ingredients. They are shaped before being allowed to rest for 12 hours on fermentation boards to allow development of flavor before then being kettle boiled briefly and hearth baked to preserve the best shape and texture.

While possible to bake your own at home it proves surprisingly difficult to produce that perfected round shape. There are a few techniques: either forming the dough into a rope and then looping it around your hand, or shaping it into a circular size and then poking the hole through with your finger. Unfortunately both methods prove easier said than done, and you can end up tying yourself in knots, with the result being more akin to a pretzel.

If this seems a bit of an effort, it is easy to buy them premade from supermarkets, or frozen to bake at home. But nothing quite matches up to an authentic fresh bake. Likely why the average consumer prefers to source their bagel from outside the comforts of their own kitchen. Stores such as NY Bagel Cafe bakes theirs fresh daily in each other locations, for the best taste and texture of this delicacy..