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- BAGEL
- by Mia T
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A Katz's delicatessen bump.
(The best in New York City.)
(Send your boy in the Army a salami)
(It's a Jewish thang, ya wouldn't understand!) dennisw
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Me, I prefer a New York bagel, some nova and a (fat-free) schmeer. . . The bagel's attenuation, BTW,
has nothing whatever to do with triangulation,
Safire notwithstanding.
(The clintons analogize not to the bagel's substance but to its hole.) The modern bagel is not trying to be a doughnut.
The doughnut-ization of the bagel is illusory.
The tough torus softened because of technology,
not demographics, or even demagogues. . .
It all boils down to boiling...
and, according to some bagel purists, New York water! Real bagels are first boiled in a kettle,
then rinsed and cooled in a fresh water trough.
Only then are they baked. The boiling process
reduces the starch and increases the gluten
to produce the real bagel's
characteristic leaden heft, golden brown thin crust and chewy center. So-called bagel stores in recent years have skipped
this very important step.
They steam the bagels in a rack oven
producing the ubiquitous,
(and quite-by-accident doughnut-esque),
ersatz bagel. Why this happened:
Real-bagel makers are dying off and taking their trade secrets with them.
Real-bagel making is more time- and labor-intensive. Boiling reduces shelf-life...
Would that we had parboiled the co-presidents, too...
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