Bagel from which country

French Toast with Eggs Platter. Cheese Omelet Platter. Vegetable Omelet Platter. Western Omelet Platter. Southwestern Omelet Platter. Country Omelet Platter. Fresh Baked Bagels. Bagel with Spread. Bagel with Butter.

Bagel with Jelly. Bsgel wtih Peanut Butter and Jelly. Bagel with Cream Cheese. Bagel with Lox. Container Cream Cheese. Plain Cream Cheese. Flavored Cream Cheese. Big Country Bagel Sandwiches. Bagel with Eggs Sandwich. Bagel loyalties can run deep and fierce.

Balinska describes the horror with which some New Yorkers greeted the advent of frozen bagels: "How can that be a bagel? A doughnut dipped in cement and then frozen? A truly good bagel, wrote one critic, should be "a fairly small, dense, gray, cool and chewy delight that gave jaw muscles a Sunday morning workout," not the pillowy monstrosities now preferred by "a public too lazy to chew. Personally, I've become a bit of a bagel snob, after spending a year in Manhattan for grad school and discovering the joys of fresh, chewy bagels.

I still get nostalgic and cave in to those squishy grocery-store bagels from time to time, but they really only taste good as a canvas for cream cheese. Also, he takes issue with my comment that he never cooks -- he claims he once created a casserole called the Sugar Pops Tuna Wiggle.

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. Log out. US Markets Loading H M S In the news. Tech News. Melia Robinson. Sign up for notifications from Insider!

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