Eat My Globe

A Schmear of the History of the Bagel

Simon Majumdar (“SM”):

Hey April. Did you know that bagels are now considered unhealthy and no longer something people will have for breakfast?

April Simpson (“AS”):

What? I didn’t know that. Why?

SM:

I actually don’t know. Personally, I think it’s a real Schmear campaign.

[Laughter]

AS:

[Laughter]

SM:

That’s fantastic. I love that.

INTRO MUSIC

SM:

Hi everybody. I am Simon Majumdar, the host and creator of Eat My Globe, a podcast about things you didn’t know you didn’t know about food.

On today’s very special episode, we are going to be talking about, as the joke tells you, one of my favorite foods. That’s right we are going to be talking about the bagel. That chewy Ashkenazi bread that is now popular worldwide, but really found its home in New York City.

I would also like to say that among a lot of other research, I did find Maria Balinska’s “The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread” to be very useful indeed.

In the early 1980s, I first went to New York to visit my relatives. And I became obsessed with having Bagels for breakfast. Lox with a schmear, onions & capers. For those people who don’t know what this is, lox – or originally lax in Yiddish – is, according to Merriam Webster,

Quote

“salmon that has been cured in brine and sometimes smoked.”End quote.

A schmear is another Yiddish term – shmir or S H M I R – that Merriam Webster defines as

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“a layer of a spreadable food or condiment.”

End quote.

Literally, a schmear of cream cheese.

As for the cream cheese? According to ThoughtCo

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“Cream cheese was invented in 1872 by American dairyman William Lawrence of Chester, New York, who accidentally stumbled on a method of producing cream cheese while trying to reproduce a French cheese called Neufchâtel.”

End quote.

Anyway, Lawrence then began to wrap his cheese in foil packets and started selling it as you’ve probably guessed by now – “Philadelphia Cream Cheese.”  So, there you go.

Let’s start by differentiating Ashkenazi Jewish from the Sephardic Jewish cultures. According to Rabbi Menachem Posner at Chabad dot org,

Quote

“Contemporary Ashkenazim are Yiddish-speaking Jews and descendants of Yiddish-speaking Jews. Sephardim originate in the Iberian Peninsula and the Arabic lands.”

End quote.

What this meant in terms of eating was that Sephardic cuisine, where Sephardi Jewish people came from a more humid and hot climate like Spain and Morocco and parts of the Ottoman Empire, require much lighter food. As Aish dot com says Sephardi cuisine is

Quote

“A combination of salads, fresh and dried fruits, stuffed vegetables, fragrant sauces, and aromatic spices highlight the ingredients that were readily available in the warmer, sunnier climates and well-worn trade routes of Sephardi communities.”

End quote.

The Ashkenazi Jewish people, on the other hand, came from much colder areas of central and eastern Europe, such as Poland, and need rib sticking food with plenty of carbs. As Rabbi Menachem Posner describes it

Quote

“gefilte fish, kishke (stuffed derma), potato kugel (pudding), knishes, and chopped liver—are all Ashkenazi fare.”

End quote.

It is from this second colder area that the “bagel” likely began.

Let’s define the word, “bagel,” shall we?

Alan Davidson, editor of “The Oxford Companion to Food” calls it

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“a dense round yeast bun with a hole in the middle.”

End quote.

Which our old pal, Merriam Webster calls,

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“a firm doughnut-shaped roll traditionally made by boiling and then baking.”

End quote.

And, which Ed Levine says in his article in the New York Times,

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“A bagel should weigh four ounces or less and should make a slight cracking sound when you bite into it instead of a whoosh.”

End quote.

Many people disagree on where the term “bagel” originated.

According to Levine, Joan Nathan, author of the book, “Jewish Cooking in America,” published in 1998, apparently believes that the word comes from the German word, “biegen,” which is spelled B I E G E N, which means quote, “to bend,” end quote.

Merriam Webster, on the other hand, tells us that the word first came from the Old High German word, “bourc,” which meant ring. It then evolved into the Middle High German word, “böugel,” which also means ring. It then became the Yiddish term “beygl,” or B E Y G L.

Author Maria Balinska tells of a legend that the bagel came to be to honor Jan Sobieski, the King of Poland, when, in 1683, he defeated Ottoman invaders in Vienna. Supposedly,

Quote

“a local baker shaped yeast dough into the shape of a stirrup to honor him and called it a ‘beugel’ (Austrian for stirrup). The roll was a hit and it’s [sic] shape soon evolved into the one we know today and it’s [sic] name converted to ‘Bagel.’”

End quote.

This is, of course, just a myth since Balinska says that the bagel had been around 73 years before King Sobieski defeated the Ottomans.

Another story about the origin of the word bagel comes from Leo Rosten, the author of “The Joys of Yiddish.” He says that word was first used in Krakow, Poland.

Quote

“The first printed mention of bagels...is to be found in the Community Regulations of Cracow, Poland, for the year 1610 – which stated that bagels would be given as a gift to any woman in childbirth.”                                                                                                                   

End quote.

That is four stories of where the word came from. I suspect that there are many more stories as well.

Balinska does believe that the term was first used in Krakow in 1610, which might mean that it might already have been used a few years earlier. And that there were already similar types of round bread with a hole from history.

These will include areas such as in the Xinjian area of China where they have a round shaped bread called, “Girde Naan,” which was made by the Uighur community, and which looks very much like a bagel, but without the hole going all the way through. The girde naan arrived in China via the Silk Road and looks like the smaller and undecorated versions of the wonderful breads I have eaten in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The girde naan is cooked in a tandoor.

Baliska, however, believes that the girde naan and bagels are unrelated and developed separately.

Another round similar bread with a hole is the “guāng-bǐng,” which hails from the Fujian area of China. Legend says that it was created during the time of General Qi Jiguang of the Ming Dynasty, which lasted from 1368 to 1644. Apparently, the general created the bread to avoid detection by their enemies. The fires to cook the troops’ food gave them away so, instead, he made his soldiers carry the already cooked bread, which had a hole in the middle, by threading them and wearing them like a necklace. The bread was then named, Guang Bing, after General Qi Jiguang.

In Italy, writer Heather Smith notes that 14^th century Italians have been consuming a round bread called, “taralli,” which was  

Quote

“‘both sweeter and harder’.”

End quote.

Author Joan Nathan also describes these taralli as

Quote

“hard, round crackers flavored with fennel that have been the local snack for centuries in Puglia, Italy.”

End quote.

Nathan also notes that round bread with a hole goes back even further to ancient Egypt where they had been depicted in hieroglyphics.

And perhaps the most obvious round bread with a hole is from Poland itself, which is known as the “Obwarzanek,” which comes from the word, “obwarzyć,” meaning “to parboil.”

Balinska notes that this obwarzanek bread goes all the way back to 1394, and was eaten by a pious Polish queen, who ate it during Lent, due to its lack of fat.

As you can see, the bagel was created in an environment that already had a variety of round breads with a hole found in other parts of the globe.

So where did the modern bagel originate?

According to “The Oxford Companion to Food,” the bagel came from southern Germany to Poland, and from Poland to North America.

Let’s start with Germany. Balinska argues that the bagel may have started off as a communion bread that evolved into a pretzel in Germany, where the pretzel was considered a feast day bread. German immigrants brought them to Poland. She also notes that pretzels have appeared in Jewish 13^th century documents, so we can infer that Jewish Germans knew how to make them and also likely brought them to Poland when they left Germany for Poland. And eventually, the pretzel evolved into a round bread with a hole. And, possibly, it became known in Poland as the pious Polish queen’s favorite round boiled bread, obwarzanek.

Balinska also tells of a folk tale that bagels began in the 9^th century Prussia, which was part of German rule. The story goes that Christians in Prussia prohibited Jews from baking bread because they associated bread with the body of Christ. So, Jewish bakers then decided to boil bread, instead of baking them.

Whether the story is true or not, Jewish German bakers who migrated to Poland found protection from the Polish king when, in the 17^th century, he allowed Jewish bakers to make white bread and the obwarzanek bread, which we discussed earlier was parboiled and lacked fat.      

And so, the modern bagel may have started off as a pretzel that either became the obwarzanek, or pretzel that got mashed together with the obwarzanek by Jewish German immigrants to Poland.

How did this bagel from Poland begin going around the world and then end up in their spiritual home in New York City?

The Ashkenazi Jewish people from Poland began to arrive in New York City towards the end of the 1800s to escape anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe at the time, and they brought with them much of their baking. These included some of my favorite treats such as “Knish,” which Merriam Webster described as

Quote

“a small round or square of dough stuffed with a filling (such as potato) and baked or fried.”

End quote.

It really is one of my favorite things.

They also brought hamantaschen, a poppy filled treat made for the Jewish festival of Purim.

They also brought Bialys – one of my absolute favorite treats since I was introduced to them by one of my pals in New York, Sandra Levine. This is similar to a bagel, which The Atlantic calls, “Bagel’s Lesser-Known Cousin,” It uses the same dough, but is baked not boiled, and has an indentation rather than a hole on the top. This is usually topped with caramelized onions.

Of course, they brought the most popular of all, the bagel.

It was so popular with the Jewish community that by the early part of the 1900s bagel makers created a union known as the “Union Local 338,” as part of the Bakery and Confectionery Workers International. The Union was also so important in fighting off the Mafia who wanted to take control of its more than 2 million bagels production each week. Wow.

Yet, despite this massive operation, even by the 1960s, bagels were only really known by the Jewish community and was described by the New York Times in 1960 as

Quote

“an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis. . . [and] [i]t takes good teeth to chew even a fresh bagel.”

End quote.

According to Jason Turbow’s article for Grubstreet, the bagel makers faced horrific working conditions. He cites an industry report which declared

Quote

“There appears to be no other industry, not even the making of clothes in sweatshops, which is carried on amid so much dirt and filth.”

End quote.

He also cited a Yiddish saying, 

Quote

“Lig in der erd un bak beygl.”

End quote.

Gonna have to forgive my pronunciation there. I don’t know Yiddish quite well enough.

This apparently means, “Lay in the ground and bake bagels.” Crickey.

The union soon began to regulate the conditions by which the workers used to operate and oversee the conditions of the workers. With this came a certain amount of what Jason Turbow describes as, er

Quote

“Professional leverage.”

End quote.

The Union name, “338,” came from the number of Jewish people they had in their membership, who spoke Yiddish only, and they even had their own newspaper of record known as “Forverts” or “The Forward.” Soon, the bagel bakers became very, very wealthy.

As Jason Turbow puts it

Quote

“these men purchased homes on Long Island, drove fancy cars, and sent their children to prestigious colleges. It was a copacetic ecosystem, working out favorably for all involved.”

End quote.

However, by the 1950s and 1960s, bagels began to be known outside the New York Jewish community.

We see bagel recipes in places like “Family Circle” magazine.

Quote

“Stumped for the Hors d’oeuvres Ideas? Here’s a grand one from Fannie Engle. ‘Split these tender little triumphs in halves and then quarters. Spread with sweet butter and place a small slice of smoked salmon on each. For variations, spread with cream cheese, anchovies or red caviar. (They’re also delicious served as breakfast rolls.)’”

End quote.

By this time, the combination of lox, bagel, and cream cheese became a popular Sunday breakfast that rivaled the other breakfast combination of bacon, eggs, and toast.

From there, we have brothers Sam, Marvin and Murray Lender, to thank for the bagel being taken to the rest of the United States. Their father, Harry Lender, came to New York from Poland in 1927. Shortly thereafter, Harry bought an 800-square feet bakery called the New York Bagel Bakery. Harry’s children worked in the family business. By 1934, they grew their business and expanded their bakery to 1,200 square feet.

By the late 1950s, Harry and his sons, Sam and Murray, began to freeze their bagels to keep up with demand. It was, however, a family secret and

Quote

“No one was allowed to know that these bagels were frozen!”

End quote.

No one could tell the difference for two years until someone accidentally delivered a frozen bagel. While the customers were initially upset, they later realized that no one had been complaining for two years and the quality of the frozen bagels was still fine.

By the 1960s, Harry had passed away, Sam had retired and Marvin joined the family business. They’d also changed the name of the company to “Lender’s Bagel Bakery.” Soon, Murray and Marvin, as head of the business, were producing 750 million bagels a year. Murray, apparently, liked to say that he wanted to

Quote

“bagelize America.”

End quote.

By the 1970s, Lender’s advertised their bagels as

Quote

“the Jewish English muffin.”

End quote.

In 1984, Marvin and Murray decided to sell their business to Kraft Foods for a hefty sum. It was sold on many times after that, including to Kellog’s Company for $455 Million dollars in 1996.

Not a bad outcome for the HOLE family. Oh, I am very sorry.

In the meantime, in 1963, around the time that Marvin and Murray Lender were expanding their business, they encountered Daniel Thompson.

Daniel Thompson, who died at the age of 94 in 2015, also patented the first foldable ping pong table or table tennis table in 1953, which definitely deserves more research, I think.

But, for purposes of our discussion, he also invented the first bagel machine.

As Matthew Goodman, author of “Jewish Food: The World at Table,” once proclaimed on NPR’s “All Things Considered,”

Quote

“There is a pre-Daniel Thompson history and a post-Daniel Thompson history.”

End quote.

Adding

Quote

“Initially, the bagel was small, dense, chewy, flavorful. Today, bagels are large, soft, pillowy, flavorless.”

End quote.

What is this magical machine? Well, basically, it is a machine that takes the dough and forms it into its round shape, and then releases it onto a conveyor belt. At the time, the machine could make up to 400 bagels per hour compared to a traditional baker’s output of 120 bagels. Murray Lender leased Thompson’s bagel machine in 1963, which allowed Lender’s Bagels to scale up their production. However,

Quote

“it took two weeks and ‘a lot of sweat, minor adjustments and some accommodations with Sam Lender’s doughs, to finally arrive at good bagels.”

End quote.

And the rest, as they say, the rest is history.

I truly believe that if you want to have the “traditional” New York style bagel – chewy, perfect with lox and cream cheese and filling enough to last you until lunch or supper – you could find them in two main places. The first is at “Russ & Daughters,” a world-famous place that sells all the Jewish styles of fish and also has a café if you wanted to sit and have a bagel. Do also go to the shop on Houston Street which has been around for a century. The second is at “Barney Greengrass” on Amsterdam Avenue. This is particularly well known to many people on the West Side of New York City. Of course, there are many more of these bagel producers, but these two are my own favorites.

As I mentioned, bagels not only went to the United States of America, but also went to other places that the Polish immigrants began to move. So, let’s just look at a couple.

In Montreal, Canada the Montreal Bagels are very, very well known. Like New York bagels, Eastern European immigrants brought them to Montreal. But, to quote “Food & Wine” Magazine,

Quote

“Montreal bagels are smaller, sweeter, and thinner than their American counterparts, due to the cooking technique.”

End quote.

There are, of course, different stories about how these types of bagels got to Montreal. One theory is that Chaime (Hyman) Seligman began selling them from a cart and then set up his own bakery in Saint Laurent Boulevard in 1900. Another is that Isadore Shlafman and Jacob Drapkin brought the bagels to Montréal when they started selling them probably in 1919 on Saint-Laurent Boulevard.

According to writer Jason Lee,

Quote

“Compared to a ‘New York style bagel,’ what makes the Montréal bagel the far superior is that, not only is each single bagel [] made by hand, but they are poached in honey water before being baked in a wood-fire burning oven.”

End quote.

To be honest, I think that the New York bagels and Montreal bagels are very, very different types of bagel and should be treated as such. But hey, that’s marketing agencies for you.

The next part of the world will be my own hometown of London.

As one famous actor, Steven Berkoff, once said

Quote

“America … doubles the size, reinvents it, muscling up the slim European bagel and flavoring it for the ceaselessly unsatisfied Yankee palate.”

End quote.

If one was to walk down Brick Lane – now home to many Indian restaurants, run by Bangladeshi immigrants – one might be surprised to see two “Beigel” shops very close to each other on the upper side of the street. They are spelled B E I G E L, which was the Yiddish way of pronouncing the bagel when they first came to London. These come from a time when Brick Lane was predominantly Jewish area of London until the people of that area began to move to wealthier areas outside that community.

The first is known as “Beigel Bake.” The second is “Beigel Shop.” They have both been in the area in Brick Lane for many, many years. For example, the Beigel Shop has been around since 1855.

There are many of these bagel shops in London, both in the Jewish diaspora and new bakeries. But I wanted to particularly mention these two, since they are very close to my London flat, and also they get featured on TikTok so many times a week as Brick Lane is very close to Spitalfields Market and Whitechapel – where Jack the Ripper used to operate – and gets so many tourists.

Finally, let’s go and look at two of the bagels that have come out more recently.

Well, to be honest the first one didn’t really happen that recently, but in bagel history….

In the 1970s or 80s, they began to put “Everything” on a bagel. Hence the name.

There are a few people who claimed to have “invented” it.

One of them was a restauranter from New York, Joe Bastianich, who claims to have invented it in 1979 as a bagel delivery driver and was inspired when the seasonings fell on the bagel during his journey.

Another was David Gussin, a 15-year-old employee at a bagel bakery called Charlie’s Bagels in 1980 in Queens, New York. He apparently did not want to throw away the burnt seeds so he told the owner,

Quote

“Hey, put these on a bagel.”

End quote.

They did, and decided to charge more for this “Everything” bagel.

Brandon Steiner of Steiner Sports also claims to have invented it as a 12 year old in 1971 while working at night at a bagel shop by adding poppy and sesame seeds, onion, garlic, salt and more.

Hmmm, who knew?

Working as 12 and 15 year olds? That seems SEEDY to me. Get it?

Anyway, whatever the true story, many people seem to be keen on eating the everything bagel.

And, finally, we have the “Rainbow Bagel,” which went viral on social media in 2016.

It was created by Scot Rossillo in Brooklyn, New York.

Apparently – oh, deary, deary me – the “Bagel Artist” which he wanted to call himself rather than a “Bagel Baker,” oh dear – was soon charged with tax evasion and called it a day in 2019.

Don’t you think that’s a COLORFUL story?

AS:

[Laughter]

SM:

Anyway, that shows you that the bagel is still as popular as ever – from the Polish emigrants from Eastern Europe to the United States’ New York City to the rest of the USA, and across the world. It is so popular that, in 2024, we have around $5.58 billion worth of bagels every year created to sate the hunger for this rather lovely food.

Which now makes me think that I need to go and buy myself a wonderful bagel with a schmear of cream cheese, lox, capers or onions.

Or, as I would order in New York, an everything with lox and a schmear.

Take care folks.

OUTRO MUSIC

SM:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. There is also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

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Thank you and goodbye from me, Simon Majumdar, we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.”

[Ring sound]

We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help both with the editing of the transcripts and her essential help with the research.