Bulletin E-Edition:
Bend bakeries make bagels
Many methods for making beloved bread for Central Oregon bagel lovers
By Lillian Mongeau / The Bulletin
Last modified: August 29. 2010 6:26AM PST
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Bill Kurzman, owner of The Village Baker in Bend, forms a bagel. Although the bakery doesn't follow traditional bagel baking practices, the owner has faith in his shop's product. As proof, he offers the story of a customer who came into the bakery to sing an ode to its bagels. “I think it's the customer who gets caught up in the labels,” Kurzman said. “I don't like to get into those rules. If you like it, you like it. We make what we like.”
Lillian Mongeau The Bulletin
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Many people think of bagels as yet one more coffee shop option. They may pick up a bag of Thomas brand bagels at the grocery store now and again or order one for lunch at Big-O Bagels in Bend.
But for some people, a bagel is more than a roll with a hole; it is a delicacy, meant to be cooked, served and consumed with a reverence normally reserved for far fancier foods.
“I'm really a traditionalist,” said Alan Eisenberg of Bend, a self-proclaimed connoisseur of bagels. “I like the old-fashioned varieties: onion, sesame, poppyseed. That, with chive or lox cream cheese, that's Jewish nirvana.”
Eisenberg has lived in Bend for four years, but was born in the Bronx, in New York City, where bagels are serious business. He holds tightly to the notion that a traditionally prepared bagel — boiled and then baked — is the only round bread that deserves the name. He is not the only one to take this hard-line view and state that there are simply no bagels worth having in Bend, maybe even the whole West Coast.
“I think that the longer you live on the West Coast the more complacent you become with the bagels they have out here, but the bagels from back East are the only bagels worth having,” said Mona Mensing, who also grew up in New York City. “I think being Jewish is connected to a love of good bagels. We need more Jews.”
Despite the lack of faith in West Coast bagels from these East Coast transplants, there are a few bakers in Bend, many from the East Coast themselves, who are working hard to create the best replica of a traditional New York City bagel they can manage. And as the local population of both East Coasters and Jews has grown, so has the number of shops trying to unlock the bagel magic.
Bagels in history
Bagels have been around since as early as the 16th century, according to “The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread” by Maria Balinska. Balinska reports that high grain yields at the time had more to do with the advent of the bagel than much else, but the legend crediting bagel-invention as an honor to King Jan III Sobieski of Poland in the 17th century persists in popular folklore.
In any case, by the 1880s when Jewish Eastern European immigrants began arriving in large numbers on the East Coast of the United States, the bagel had become a fixture in their homelands.
By 1907 the bagel was such a desired commodity that Jewish bakers in New York City formed the International Bagel Bakers Union, according to Joan Nathan, author of many Jewish food cookbooks, in an article for Slate.com. Union membership was tightly guarded, Nathan wrote, as was the recipe for the unique bread.
Many people claim that the step that makes bagels different from other kinds of bread is boiling the dough before baking the bagels. To quote from “The New Food Lover's Companion”: “the water bath reduces starch and creates a chewy crust.”
David Cohen and Dave Flier, of east Bend's Rockin' Daves Bagel Bistro, are two locals who subscribe wholeheartedly to this view. “When you don't boil the bagel, it has the consistency of bread, rather than a bagel,” Cohen said.
Rockin' Daves, formerly The Bagel Stop, produces between 500 and 1,000 bagels a day and delivers them around town to places such as Thump Coffee, Chow and their largest customer, Whole Foods.
“A thin crust on the outside and chewy in the middle, that's the quintessential bagel,” Cohen said.
The bagel-making machine that turns pounds of dough prepared to Cohen's specifications was inherited by Rockin' Daves when Cohen and Flier bought The Bagel Stop in 2007. The machine helps the shop produce 140 bagels in 10 minutes. Some are plain, some have raisins and other yummy things mixed in. Many are seeded or draped with cheese before baking. The result is a flavorful, thick, chewy treat that's denser than most bread but with none of the sweetness of banana bread or other quick breads.
In addition to selling the bagels wholesale, Rockin' Daves serves them at its breakfast and lunch shop on Greenwood Avenue, often with other traditional Jewish deli foods such as pastrami and pickles. That's not to say Cohen and Flier shy away from new-fangled and even slightly ironic concoctions, such as a pulled pork bagel sandwich (bagels are a traditionally Jewish food, but Jews, traditionally, do not eat pork). Three of the bakers in town who make fresh bagels said they come from Jewish roots. All said this is only tangentially related to their love of bagels.
For the love of bagels
Rabbi Jay Shupack, of the Jewish Community of Central Oregon, said he thinks loving bagels is more of a New York thing than a Jewish thing. He grew up in Pennsylvania, he said, and though he remembers the deli a few towns away where his family bought bagels, Shupack said it was his uncle Morris, who lived in New York City, who made bagel loving an art.
“My uncle Morris lived for bagels,” Shupack said. “On Sunday morning he couldn't wait. He would get up at 5 in the morning to get to the bakery at 5:30 to get hot, hot bagels.”
Bill Kurzman, who owns The Village Baker in Bend with his wife Lauren, has his own childhood memories of delicious bagels, but they are based on his hometown of Detroit, Mich., not New York City. Kurzman said the Montreal-style bagels served in Detroit's Jewish community were nothing like the Manhattan-style bagels that Eisenberg, Mensing and Shupack remember so clearly from their youth. Montreal-style bagels are thinner and crunchier than New York-style.
“Just because in tradition they boil bagels, doesn't make them good,” Kurzman said. “In many cases it's just a soft, doughy roll. In my opinion, that's not what a bagel is supposed to be.”
Kurzman and his staff hand shape their bagels by rolling carefully weighed portions of dough into a cylinder shape and then curling it around to connect the ends. The specially prepared dough then rises for 72 hours. Finally, the bagels are baked in The Village Baker's special oven. Upon loading a new tray, the baker in charge pushes a big black button to send a blast of steam into the oven. Kurzman said this gives the extra shine and crispness to their more bread-like bagels.
“It's a kind of technology they didn't have when they started boiling bagels,” Kurzman said.
Ramona Riener, who owns Big-O Bagels with her husband Steve, agrees.
“Steam jets get the moisture infusion,” Riener said. Without the added moisture, he said, bagels could be hard and unpalatable by the end of the day.
Local loyalty
Big-O cooks up 1,500 to 2,500 bagels a day, distributing them wholesale to places like the Dutch Bros. coffee shops, Newport Avenue Market and Strictly Organic Coffee Co. They also serve the bagels at their two Bend shops along with cream cheeses they mix themselves, and as sandwiches.
Two other bakeries in town, Nancy P's and Sparrow Bakery, make much smaller batches of bagels each day. Both bakeries strive for a traditional New York-style bagel, boiling and all. None of the bakers denigrated the others' methods, while still all being sure that their products are the best.
As proof, each offered reports of customer testimony about the deliciousness of their bagels, including a story Kruzman told about a customer who came into the shop and sang an ode to The Village Baker's bagels.
“I think it's the customer who gets caught up in the labels,” Kurzman said. “I don't like to get into those rules. If you like it, you like it. We make what we like.”
Mensing thinks there's more to it than that. Growing up Jewish, she said, meant that freshly baked bagels served with capers and lox (cured salmon) were a part of every major family milestone.
“You know, if somebody dies, it would be bagels and schmear, lox and capers,” she said. “A bris? The same. It's just there. It's part of our genetic code.” (A bris is a Jewish ritual circumcision.)
Like some other die-hard bagel lovers in town, Mensing even sometimes breaks down and orders a dozen bagels all the way from Zabar's or H&H Bagels, which are well-known bakeries in New York City. The cost of such an order, $30-$45, is far more than it would cost to buy a dozen local bagels, but Mensing said she sometimes does it anyway. “It's ridiculous,” she said, “but it's worth it.”
Mensing said she knows a lot of local bakers are working hard to get the bagels right, but she isn't sure they can do it no matter how hard they try. She doesn't blame them, she said, just their location.
“It's in the (New York City) water,” she said. “I swear I think it's the water.”
Lillian Mongeau can be reached at lillian.mongeau@oaklandnorth.net.
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