Bagel News

Consider the Bagel - Guardian.co.uk

The deterioration of New York's bagels – and those of everywhere else, come to that – is an inevitable consequence of their modern popularity. Mechanisation, freezers and food scientists are the enemies of flavour and heritage. Eastern European émigrés, often Jewish, brought bagel-making to New York in the late 1800s. For most of the 20th century the heavily unionised bakers turned production of the bread into a cartel – the main advantage of which, by common consent, was that quality remained high. Proper bagels are difficult to do well.