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BAGEL -
- 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. . .
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- 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.)
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- 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!
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- Real bagels are first boiled in a kettle,
- then rinsed and cooled in a fresh water trough.
- Only then are they baked.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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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