When was bagels invented

Flash forward to the s, when Lou and Lovey Borenstein visited Arizona. Being from Queens, they knew their way around a great New York City bagel. Recent Posts. Along with the closing of Paradise Valley Mall, our Phoenix location within the mall has You asked, we answered. While they started their culinary career as food for the well off, over the years bagels came to be everyday street food associated with poverty, not wealth.

When times were very tough in Poland, many poor Jews and note that poverty was the way of life for most Polish Jews turned to selling bagels on the street as a last resort, a way to earn a few pennies when there was no other way available. Bakeries were safe spots to talk; there was always good reason to be there, so one didn't have to make excuses for being seen there.

People of all political stripes and all ages went to see the baker regularly, so stopping by to score six bagels or a loaf of rye was as normal as could be. But dreams, visions, and generally unacceptable if not often outright illegal ideas about socialism, communism, Zionism, and anarchism were rising along with the bagel dough. In this past century, bagels leaned left because bagel bakers worked under very difficult conditions, often in airless basements, toiling fourteen hours or more, six or seven days a week.

Bagel bakers, and later bagel bakers unions, were rather prominent in left wing politics. Although bagels clearly had multi-ethnic origins in Poland, here in the US they came fairly quickly to be associated with Jewish culture.

Like blintzes, latkes, pastrami, and rye bread, which came from the Eastern European communities so many Jews lived in, bagels came to be known as primarily Jewish.

Over the course of the 20th century, bagels followed the pattern of so many other ethnic foods still superficially "Jewish" -- they got softer and sweeter as they successfully moved out of New York's Lower East Side into the middle of the country and the mass market. The mass-market bagel world, led most prominently but not exclusively by Lenders, left behind much of the real work. Hand shaping shifted to machine rolling; boiling was switched to the less time consuming steaming; bakeries opted out of stone ovens in favor of standard steel.

The results of all these "efficiencies" were the soft, round breads more akin to a sort of savory donut than the chewy, crusty, hand shaped, boiled ones that came over with my grandparents' generation. As Mr. Safire said, "The formerly chewy morsel that once had to be separated from the rest of its ring by a sharp jerk of the eater's head is now devoid of character -- half-baked, seeking to be all pastry to all men.

The first written records of the bagel date to the year They showed up then in the community regulations of the Polish city of Krakow, which dictated that bagels were to be given as a gift to women after childbirth. Back in medieval Poland, their round shape led to the belief that bagels had magical powers.

Like the round loaves of challah we eat at Rosh Hashanah to symbolize a full and complete year to come, the round shape of the bagel was believed to bring good luck in childbirth and to symbolize long life.

I'm happy to have any good luck charm I can get - it never hurts to knock on wood, and I don't mind carrying a bagel with me in my bag for good luck either. This is the date of the incident -- it would not be written about until many years later. Thanks to reader Popik for the correction. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic.

Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. Photo by Ryan Stiner. Eighteen bagels from Fairmount, a shop owned by his aunt. Philadelphia has its cheesesteaks. Italy has its pasta. As for Montreal? The result is a chewy, golden bagel that folks in Montreal boast about. Talk about carb-heavy! The larger-than-life creation required 11,00 pounds of dough , gallons of water, and took 10 hours to bake.

It holds the record for the biggest bagel to date. The birth of the bagel is debated, largely because bagel-shaped bread has been around for centuries in various cultures.