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Heart to Heart

The 'Holey' Bagel

By Gert Thaler
San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage, January 3, 2003, page 17

The bagel was created in 1683 by an unknown Jewish baker in Vienna.

That's a bit of food trivia I have just come upon while watching the Cooking Channel, one of my favorite TV obsessions. Do me something!
On the other hand, in reading through The Joys of Yiddish by the late humorist Leo Rosten, a resource book in which I never tire of losing myself,
I find a notation that in 1610 Russian Jews were eating bagels. Do me something more.

One of my favorite hosts is Dr. Stephen Steinberg. Not that he doesn't have a charming personality, for he does. Not that his wife, Stephanie, doesn¹t
set a "good" table, for she does. My reasoning is that Steve's mother, Dora Edelstein, consistently sends him bagels from New York, fully convinced that
in the wilds of California her Brooklyn bagels cannot be matched.

They are not exactly "her" bagels, for she buys them in her favorite deli and claims that they are unmatched for flavor. And I agree. I should know,
just look at me, the result of Steve and Stephanie sharing such treasures.

I am not a great deli fan, though I eat at Herschel's in Encinitas and at D. Z. Akin's on Alvarado Canyon Road in the San Diego State College area.
Herschel's chopped liver is as good as I make. And I make good. D.Z.'s matzoh ball soup exceeds all expectations. Heritage's co-publisher, Norm
Greene, dotes on their cheese blintzes and stuffed cabbage, although with barely an arm twist he has to admit he rates my cabbage rolls at the top of
the ratings.

"Bagels are known as doughnuts with a college education, and the college is probably Yeshiva University," said Leo Rosten. What I have yet to figure out
is that once the actual "invention" of the round yum-yum caught on, what did our ancestors do to enhance the joy of actually eating it? There are times when I settle for a plain buttered bagel, but that goes against most well-cultivated (and cultured) Jewish appetites. To most Jews, a bagel without lox and cream cheese just ain't any kind of bagel at all.

That doesn't mean one cannot come up with our own concoctions. Peanut butter can do it with a glob of jelly to satisfy youngsters, who clomp their teeth
into the crisp outer crust before getting a grasp on the soft inners.

Life was so simple in 1683. Some dough with a couple of other things added, a mixture, a pounding on a table top, a roll-up, a boil and a bake and
voila! the Viennese baker had something new to sell his customers. Little did he realize he was at the jumping off place of an industry that would
know no bounds.

I gagged the first time I saw a jalapeno bagel, or a cinnamon and raisin one, or any of the new concoctions. I know from only a plain, an onion or a
rye bagel. And, of course, my favorite, the bialy. You can keep your chocolate bagels and never have a fear I might want to make off with them.

I browsed through a couple of favorite books for some culinary knowledge. New York Cookbook by Molly O'Neill tells about the sale of lox in the Big
Apple and the various types of the cured, smoked fish on display in the hundreds of delis that flourish in the five boroughs. Tons of lox are sold
throughout the year. There is no season for it.

As a native Californian, I could not believe that a bagel could have a different taste or quality from coast to coast, or that there could be a
different taste to the lox. I remained in that state of euphoria until I went to Manhattan six months after I was married and was introduced to what
was then the reigning noshers' paradise, the Stage Deli. I am not the judge concerning the economic status of the Stage, but for me it has long been
replaced by Carnegie Deli.

Remember, I am not a refugee from the eastern metropolis, can count on one hand how many times I have been to Brooklyn or The Bronx, and have fonder memories of a Montreal holiday and discovering their version of a super deli, Schwartz's on St. Lawrence Boulevard. Sylvia Shoenfeld, now a La
Jollan, reminisced with me about their chutzpah-style service that keeps customers coming back year after year. The good food helps, too.
But New Yorkers must know something. They alone, according to a 1999 survey, consume nearly 10,000 tons of lox per year, most of it on top of a bagel or with scrambled eggs and onions. And a wise shopper should be aware of the different kinds, whether Atlantic or Pacific, the color and, of course, the flavor. O'Neill's book even suggests a pre-purchase taste as well as buying the best available. In the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, Marshall's, the
oldest and largest salmon smoking house in America, will arrange a tour of its plant.

Most connosieurs will insist that the difference in taste is due to the quality of the water used in a New York bagel versus a Pacific Coast
variety. It's an argument that¹s been going on for years. My complaint is that supermarket bakeries should stick to selling cinnamon buns and forget about thinking that they know how to make their bagels taste like a true bagel. Few local bakers will garner prizes for bagel production. Like my mother's personally chopped gefilte fish, a bagel should be the creation of someone with Old World blood in their system. Outside of New York, there are only a handful of Ashkenazic bakers left, but fortunately their technique and recipes were passed on to hired hands who probably grew up on thinking that everybody ate tortillas as their bread mainstay.

Machines replace baker's fingers these days, and by the end of a working shift a bagel baker doesn't want to look at his product, let alone slice,
schmear the cream cheese and lovingly lay the slice of the pricey lox on top as a morning treat.

I love the way Alan King tells the bagel story in his new Jewish Joke Book of a Jewish couple in Brooklyn who won a $20,000,000 lottery and lived life
to its fullest. They flew to London, hired a butler and brought him back to serve their needs in their new mansion. Promptly, they requested the butler to set up the dining room table for four, explaining they had invited the Cohens for dinner. Returning home at the end of the day, they found the table set for eight and asked the butler why eight when they had instructed him to set the table for four.

"The Cohens called and said that they were bringing the Bagels and the Bialys, sir."

Nu?