Dictionary:
ba·gel (bā'gəl) 
|
[Yiddish beygl, from Middle High German *böugel, diminutive of bouc, ring, from Old High German boug.]
| How Products are Made: How is a bagel made? |
Background
The bagel is a dense ring of bread, often rather bland, raised with yeast and containing almost no fat. In fact, the average bagel is about 4 oz (113.4 g) and 200 calories and contains no cholesterol (unless it is an egg bagel) and no fat (unless it is a specialty bagel such as cheese). The bagel's peculiar crustiness and density results from regulating the amount the yeast is allowed to rise so the bagel does not become too bready (not a desirable trait in a bagel). Whether handmade at home or with the aid of machinery in a bagel bakery, bagel dough is always boiled in water then baked until it is golden brown.
The popularity of the bagel is staggering. The appetite for bagels has increased 37% since 1994, and it is estimated that in the near future sales may increase as much as 7% over the previous year's figures to reach $840 million by the year 2000. Bagels are purchased by 46% of all consumers—and most purchase frozen bagels from their local supermarket. However, the fresh bagel market is expanding and the bagel bakery is visible in most communities. Once the product of small specialty bakeries in ethnic communities, the bagel is now seen on the menus of donut and cake bakeries and baked by restaurants all over the country.
Bagels are made in three different places. These include the large commercial bakery that bakes bagels then freezes them for transport across the region or country in plastic bags, the local bagel bakery that bakes fresh bagels for immediate consumption (from dough made there or made else-where), and at home. The fresh bagel bakery's traditional flavors-salt, egg, poppy seed, onion, plain, and rye-are now sold alongside new flavors like chocolate chip, spinach and cheese, cinnamon raisin, dried tomato and herb, and maple walnut. The cream cheese (the schmear in Yiddish), which often imparted the bagel with some pizzazz, now comes in many new varieties, including jalapeno and vegetable.
History
The history of the bagel is not clear. Bagel folklore tells us that the roll was devised as a tribute to Jan Sobieski, a Polish general, who saved Vienna from the invading Turks in 1683. As the triumphant hero rode through town, the grateful townspeople clung to his stirrups—called breugels. The king had a baker fashion bread in the shape of Sobieski's stirrups as a tribute. Eventually the stirrup-shaped breugel became round and was known as a bagel. Other stories indicate that the name comes from beigen, the German word for to bend, and could be a descendant of the pretzel. Still others believe the round hole was perfect for Russian and Polish bakers to skewer them on a long pole and walk the streets hawking their fresh bread.
Eastern European immigrants brought their skills as bagel bakers to the New World—by 1915 a bagel bakers union #338 had formed in New York City. Some of these bagel bakers and their apprentices began baking bagels in parts of the country—particularly the East Coast—when they moved out of the city. Harry Lender, a Polish immigrant, saw interest in the bagel and he and his son Murray baked bagels in quantity and packaged them for sale to supermarkets. In 1960 Dan Thompson invented the first machine for making bagels. Until that time, all bagels were hand rolled. By 1962 the Lenders were baking and freezing their bagels and distributing their goods nationally. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, bagels made a slow trek across the country via bagel entrepreneurs.
Now bagel bakery chains ranging from New York state to Colorado have sprung up to accommodate the needs of bagel connoisseurs. There are cookbooks devoted to making homemade bagels, including recipes for making bagels in bread makers.
Raw Materials
Ingredients for bagels vary tremendously according to who makes the bagel, whether it is made at home or in a commercial bakery, and the flavor of the bagel. Generally, all bagels must contain at least the following: water, salt, flour, and yeast. Water is needed to both soften the dry yeast and add moisture to the batter. Salt must be present to slightly inhibit the action of the yeast-without salt, yeast can rise too much. The flour the bagel baker uses matters little-various recipes call for bread flour, regular flour, bromated flour, whole wheat flour, and rye flour. Some call for a pinch of sugar to assist the yeast in rising.
Of course, the flavor of the bagel determines the remainder of the ingredients. This can vary from maple syrup, to jalapenos, to walnuts. The flavors are only as limited as one's imagination.
Design
The design and marketing of commercial bagel bakeries is extensive. Many bagel bakeries bring in competitors' bagels for blind survey by the general populous. These guests are served a variety of bagels and asked as series of questions regarding important characteristics of bagels including texture, chewiness (density), flavor, value, and fat and nutritional content. Answers to these questions help the bagel bakery determine the direction of product development. These bakeries cannot produce an infinite number of flavors within their facilities. Thus, these taste surveys help the bakeries determine the bagel flavors they will offer to the public. Customer surveys and continual blind tastings insure that the companies can offer the consumer what he or she is looking for in a bagel.
The Manufacturing
Process
The bagel franchises prepare bagel dough and bake them in a variety of ways. Essentially, the dough must be created with the raw ingredients, the yeast must rise, the bagels likely stored for some period of time before baking (as it is unlikely a new batch is made each time bagels are baked), and the then the bagels boiled and baked.
Some bagel bakery chains make the dough in regional commissaries in very large quantities-they mix the ingredients, form the bagels, activate the yeast, then cool it for storage until it is ready to be transported to small bakeries which produce the fresh, hot bagels. Thus, all but the baking of the bagels occurs at the regional commissaries. Here we'll look at this method of fresh bagel baking in which bagels are mixed and formed in one place and then sent to the store for baking.
Mixing the ingredients at the regional commissary
The mixing can occur with a machine purchased for mixing bagel dough, such
as a spiral mixer. Mixing takes about 10-12 minutes and is carefully timed.Dividing the dough
Forming the bagel shape
Proofing the yeast and stopping the proofing
Ready for transport to the stores
Distribution to the store
Kettling
Baking
Quality Control
Perhaps most important for quality control is that all ingredients are up to the minimum standards required by the franchise or bakery. Good quality flour and yeast are of the utmost importance. Second, temperatures for water, for the proofer, the cooler, and even the temperature of the flour before mixing must be precisely monitored or yeast will not activate properly. Third, the life span of the yeast must dictate handling priorities. As one baker put it, bagels just mixed and proofed are like "teenagers" with robust yeast waiting to rise; however, bagels that were proofed nearly 48 hours prior are like "90-year old grandpas"—they have little "zing" in them and may not make the best bagels. Thus, it is imperative to know the age of the raw product as indicated on the tags attached to the boards. Lastly, the bagels are only as good as the experienced bagel baker who must pull inferior or malformed bagels off moving belts or who monitors baking regardless of what the timer reads.
Where to Learn More
Books
Bagel, Marilyn and Tom. The Bagel Bible. Old Saybrook, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1992.
Mellach, Dona Z. The Best Bagels are Made at Home. San Leandro, CA: Bristol Publishing Enterprises, 1995.
[Article by: Nancy EVBryk]
| Food and Nutrition: bagel |
A circular bread roll with a hole in the middle, made from fermented wheat flour dough (including egg), which is boiled before being baked. A Jewish speciality; the first recorded mention of beygls was in Krakow (Poland) in 1610, in regulations that stated they were to be given as a gift to women in childbirth.
| Food Lover's Companion: bagel |
[BAY-guhl] A doughnut-shaped yeast roll with a dense, chewy texture and shiny crust. Bagels are boiled in water before they're baked. The water bath reduces starch and creates a chewy crust. The traditional water bagel is made without eggs and, because it doesn't contain fat, is chewier than an egg bagel. Bagels are the cornerstone of the popular Jewish snack of bagels, lox and cream cheese. Miniature cocktail-size bagels can be split, topped with a spread and served as an hors d'oeuvre.
| Food & Culture Encyclopedia: Bagel |
A specialty of East European Jews, the classic bagel is a small ring of dough made of white flour, yeast, and water. The dough is first boiled and then baked.
The Bagel in Europe
According to Mordecai Kosover in Yidishe maykholim, the earliest mention of the bagel is in the 1610 statutes of the Jewish community of Cracow, which state that it is permissible to make a gift of bagels to the woman who has given birth, the midwife, and the girls and women who were present (Kosover, p. 129). Even earlier sources indicate that the father would send pretsn, or pretzels, which are historically related to the bagel, to everyone on the occasion of a circumcision. Legends that trace the first bagel to the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 are apocryphal. The very same story is told about the origin of the croissant, the pretzel, and the coffeehouse.
A relatively affordable treat, the East European bagel was portable and small. According to a Yiddish proverb, only by the third bagel would one feel full. Bagels made with milk or eggs were known from at least the nineteenth century, and almond bagels were among the prepared foods exchanged on the holiday of Purim. Bagels and other round foods were eaten before Tisha B'av, a fast day commemorating the destruction of the Temple, and in the twenty-first century bagels are served after a funeral and during the seven days of mourning that follow. The round shape symbolizes the round of life. The beuglich described in Israel Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto (1892) as "circular twisted rolls" suggest the obwarzanek, a twisted, fresh ring pretzel dating from the Middle Ages and still sold by street vendors in Poland and the large twister bagels sold in Toronto in the twenty-first century.
The Bagel in the United States
The bagel arrived in the United States with Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. From the 1890s until the 1950s bagel bakers struggled to form their own union, a process that began in 1907 with the establishment of a benevolent society for bagel bakers. With the influx of younger and more radical immigrants after World War I, the process of converting the benevolent society into a union intensified. Local 338, the International Beigel Bakers Union of Greater New York and New Jersey, coalesced in 1925 and was finally recognized as an autonomous local in 1937. Thanks to the union, bagel bakers in the New York metropolitan area won the best working conditions in the baking trade.
While radical in their politics, these bakers were conservative in their craft. Bagel bakers resisted technology because mechanization of the rolling process would eliminate jobs. As a result the bagel industry in the New York metropolitan area was one of the last of the baking industries to become fully automated. As late as the 1960s bagels were still made by hand in small bakeries by Jews for Jews, and Local 338 controlled the industry. Water bagels plain or salted were the basic varieties.
From 1955 to 1984 bagel bakeries outside New York and outside the jurisdiction of the bagel bakers' union found ways to distribute this highly perishable product far beyond the freshness radius of the bakery. They modified the dough, introduced flavors, packaged bagels in plastic bags, froze them, and shipped them to groceries and supermarkets across the country. Frozen bagels were marketed primarily to non-Jews. Once the bagel was packaged, it could be branded. The bagel began its shift from a generic product to a branded commodity.
With distribution channels in place and demand growing, the bagel industry was ready to increase production. Thompson Bagel Machine, which had been in development since World War I, was patented in 1960 by the Thompsons, an East European Jewish family in Los Angeles. In 1963 the first automated bagel-forming machines were introduced in New Haven, Connecticut; Buffalo, New York; and St. Louis, Missouri. As the growing bagel industry outside New York started penetrating the New York market, the union weakened and automation entered, thereby transforming the bagel baking business and fueling its exponential growth. By 1984 Lender's Bagels, which started as a family bakery in New Haven in 1927 and was the first to use a bagel-forming machine, had become so successful that it was acquired by Kraft and then Kellogg, who saw the bagel outpacing and even supplanting croissants, doughnuts, cereals, and other breakfast foods.
The Bagel Boom
The bagel has become one of the fastest-growing sectors of the food industry. The bagel industry, with relatively low barriers to entry, has attracted a wide range of people. H&H Bagels, the icon of the New York bagel, has been owned by Herman Toro, who was born in Puerto Rico, since the 1970s. Hand-rolling is largely a specialty of Egyptian and Thai immigrants. During the 1980s, with growing national awareness of the bagel and the introduction of bagel-steaming equipment, the developing bagel category became dominated by rapidly expanding chains, franchises, and privately held as well as publicly traded bagel companies. By the mid-1990s the bagel boom peaked, and a shakeout followed. Some of the companies that grew fastest showed the most serious losses. Meanwhile the bagel had spread to such places as Germany, Turkey, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and Bali.
The Bagel As Icon Food
After the Holocaust American Jews came to identify the bagel with the Old World and with immigrant Jewish culture. The bagel became a lightening rod for their ambivalent feelings. While Irving Pfefferblit declared in "The Bagel" that "the Jewish bagel stands out like a golden vision of the bygone days when life was better," upscale Miami hotels during the 1950s served lox on English muffins or tartines rather than on lowly bagels (Pfefferblit, p. 475).
With the suburbanization of Jews and secondary migration of Jews to California and Florida during the postwar years, the bagels and lox brunch became a Sunday morning ritual with its own equipage, including bagel slicers and decorative bagel platters with compartments for smoked salmon, cream cheese, butter, olives, radishes, and slices of onion and tomato. So important did this meal become that "bagel and lox Judaism" became a metaphor for the gastropiety of suburban Jews.
The close identification of the bagel with New York City arises in no small measure from its labor history, though some claim the secret to the New York bagel is the water. Paradoxically the further the bagel traveled from New York, the more it became identified with New York and with all that is metropolitan and cosmopolitan. However, other cities with large Jewish communities also have long bagel histories and distinctive bagels. The Montreal bagel has a narrow coil and a big hole. It is rolled by hand, boiled in water sweetened with honey, sprinkled with sesame seeds, and baked in a wood-fired oven, which gives it a slight smokiness.
Bagel Innovations
New bagel eaters with no prior loyalties are a prime market for bagel innovations. With but a few concepts (size, shape, flavor, topping, stuffing, and carrier or platform), it is possible to produce combinations, permutations, and improbable hybrids. The early Lender's frozen bagels weighed two ounces. Bagels in the twenty-first century range from three to more than five ounces. There are cocktail minibagels and overstuffed party bagels the size of a tire. Cosi recently introduced the squagel, a square bagel. Where there were once only a few varieties (poppy seed, pumpernickel, and eventually cinnamon raisin), by the twenty-first century there were unlimited flavors (from cranberry granola to piña colada), toppings (everything from poppy seeds, sesame seeds, caraway seeds, and garlic to streusel), and fillings (from cream cheese to bacon and eggs).
At bagel shops offering twenty types of bagels, which is not uncommon, and even more varieties of spreads and fillings, customers can create hundreds of combinations. Bagel eaters from birth tend to be disdainful of what might be called the random bagel effect. "Turkey, tomato, sprouts, avocado, and cream cheese on a peanut butter and chocolate chip bagel" at Goldstein's Bagel Bakery in California is an ungrammatical culinary sentence for those fluent in the language.
The bagel replaces bread, pizza, croissant, and tortillas as the preferred carrier or platform for their fillings and toppings. New hybrid bagel products include the bagelwich (bagel plus sandwich), bragel (bagel plus roll), bretzel (bagel plus pretzel), fragel (fried bagel), and flagel (flat bagel) as well as the Bageldog, pizza bagel, UnHoley Bagel (ball injected with cream cheese), bagel chips, bagels for birds and dogs, and bagel bones for people. The bagel is distilled into a flavor of its own for bagel-flavored rice cakes and matzoh.
The bagel has become not only a platform for other foods but also a carrier for meanings and values as diverse as those who eat them. For many it is an icon of East European Jewish culture, for others it is quintessentially New York, and for many around the world, including in Israel, it is American.
Bibliography
Kosover, Mordecai. Yidishe maykholim: A shtudye in kulturgeshikhte un shprakh-forshung. New York: YIVO, 1958.
Pfefferblit, Irving. "The Bagel." Commentary 7 (May 1951): 475–479.
—Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
| Nutritional Values: The Nutritional Value for: bagels |
| Description | Quantity | Energy (calories) |
Carbs (grams) |
Protein (grams) |
Cholesterol (milligrams) |
Weight (grams) |
Fat (grams) |
Saturated Fat (grams) |
| egg | 1 bagel | 200 | 38 | 7 | 44 | 68 | 2 | 0.3 |
| plain | 1 bagel | 200 | 38 | 7 | 0 | 68 | 2 | 0.3 |
| Wikipedia: Bagel |
A bagel is a bread product, traditionally shaped by hand into the form of a ring from yeasted wheat dough, roughly hand-sized, which is first boiled for a short time in water and then baked.[1] The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with a browned and sometimes crisp exterior. Bagels are often topped with seeds baked on the outer crust, with the traditional ones being poppy or sesame seeds. Some also may have salt sprinkled on their surface, and there are also a number of different dough types such as whole-grain or rye.[1]
Bagels have become a popular bread product in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, especially in cities with large Jewish populations, many with different ways of making bagels.[2] Like other bakery products, bagels are available (either fresh or frozen, and often in many flavour varieties) in many major supermarkets in those countries.
The basic roll-with-a-hole design is hundreds of years old and has other practical advantages besides providing for a more even cooking and baking of the dough: the hole could be used to thread string or dowels through groups of bagels, allowing for easier handling and transportation and more appealing seller displays.[3][4]
Contents |
Contrary to common legend, the bagel was not created in the shape of a stirrup to commemorate the victory of Poland’s King Jan Sobieski over the Ottoman Turks in 1683. It was actually invented much earlier in Kraków, Poland, as a competitor to the obwarzanek, a lean bread of wheat flour designed for Lent. In the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries, the bajgiel became a staple of the Polish national diet.[5]
There was a tradition among many observant Jewish families to make bagels on Saturday evenings at the conclusion of the Sabbath. Due to Jewish Sabbath restrictions, they were not permitted to cook during the period of the Sabbath and, compared with other types of bread, bagels could be baked very quickly as soon as it ended.
That the name originated from beugal (old spelling of Bügel, meaning bail/bow or bale) is considered plausible by many, both from the similarities of the word and because traditional handmade bagels are not perfectly circular but rather slightly stirrup-shaped. (This, however, may be due to the way the boiled bagels are pressed together on the baking sheet before baking.) Also, variants of the word beugal are used in Yiddish and Austrian German to refer to a round loaf of bread (see Gugelhupf for an Austrian cake with a similar ring shape), or in southern German dialects (where beuge refers to a pile, e.g.: holzbeuge, or woodpile). According to the Merriam-Webster's dictionary, 'bagel' derives from the transliteration of the Yiddish 'beygl', which came from the Middle High German 'böugel' or ring, which itself came from 'bouc' (ring) in Old High German, similar to the Old English 'bēag' '(ring), and 'būgan' (to bend or bow).[6] Similarly another etymology in the Webster's New World College Dictionary says that the Middle High German form was derived from the Austrian German 'beugel', a kind of croissant, and was similar to the German 'bügel', a stirrup or ring.[7]
In the Brick Lane district and surrounding area of London, England, bagels, or as locally spelled "beigels" have been sold since the middle of the 19th century. They were often displayed in the windows of bakeries on vertical wooden dowels, up to a metre in length, on racks.
Bagels were brought to the United States by immigrant Jews, with a thriving business developing in New York City that was controlled for decades by Bagel Bakers Local 338, which had contracts with nearly all bagel bakeries in and around the city for its workers who prepared all the bagels by hand. The bagel came into more general use throughout North America in the last quarter of the 20th century, at least partly due to the efforts of bagel baker Harry Lender and Florence Sender, who pioneered automated production and distribution of frozen bagels in the 1960s.[8]
In modern times Canadian-born astronaut Gregory Chamitoff is the first person known to have taken a batch of bagels into space on his 2008 Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station.[9] His shipment consisted of 18 sesame seed bagels.[10][11]
At its most basic, traditional bagel dough contains wheat flour (without germ or bran), salt, water, and yeast leavening. Bread flour or other high gluten flours are preferred to create the firm and dense but spongy bagel shape and chewy texture.[1] Most bagel recipes call for the addition of a sweetener to the dough, often barley malt (syrup or crystals), honey, sugar, with or without eggs, milk or butter.[1] Leavening can be accomplished using either a sourdough technique or using commercially produced yeast.
Bagels are traditionally made by:
It is this unusual production method which is said to give bagels their distinctive taste, chewy texture, and shiny appearance. In the context of Jewish culture, this process provided an additional advantage in that it could be followed without breaking the no-work rule of the Sabbath. The dough would be prepared on the day before, chilled during the day, and boiled and baked only after the end of the Sabbath, therefore using the Sabbath as a productive time in the bagel-making process (as the dough needs to slowly rise in a chilled environment for a time before cooking).[citation needed]
In recent years, a variant of this process has emerged, producing what is sometimes called the steam bagel. To make a steam bagel, the process of boiling is skipped, and the bagels are instead baked in an oven equipped with a steam injection system.[12] In commercial bagel production, the steam bagel process requires less labor, since bagels need only be directly handled once, at the shaping stage. Thereafter, the bagels need never be removed from their pans as they are refrigerated and then steam-baked. The steam-bagel is not considered to be a genuine bagel by purists, as it results in a fluffier, softer, less chewy product more akin to a finger roll that happens to be shaped like a bagel.
The two most prominent styles of traditional bagel in North America are the Montreal-style bagel and the New York-style bagel. The Montreal bagel contains malt and sugar with no salt; it is boiled in honey-sweetened water before baking in a wood-fired oven; and it is predominantly either of the poppy "black" or sesame "white" seeds variety. The New York bagel contains salt and malt and is boiled in water prior to baking in a standard oven. The resulting New York bagel is puffy with a moist crust, while the Montreal bagel is smaller (though with a larger hole), crunchier, and sweeter.
Poppy seeds are sometimes called by their Yiddish name, spelled either mun or mon (written מאָן) which is very similar to the German word for poppy, Mohn, as used in Mohnbrötchen. The traditional London bagel (or beigel as it is spelled) is harder and has a coarser texture with air bubbles.
Russian bubliks are very similar to bagels, but are somewhat bigger, have a wider hole, and are drier and chewier. Pretzels, especially the large soft ones, are also similar to bagels, the main exceptions being the shape and the alkaline water bath that makes the surface dark and glossy.
In Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, the bublik is essentially a much larger bagel. Other ring-shaped breads known among East Slavs are baranki (smaller and drier) and sushki (even smaller and drier).
In Lithuania bagels are called 'riestainiai', and sometimes by their Slavic name 'baronkos'.
In Finland Vesirinkeli are small rings of yeast leavened wheat bread. They are placed in salted boiling water before being baked. They are often eaten for breakfast toasted and buttered. They are available in several different varieties (sweet or savoury) in supermarkets.
The Uyghurs of Xinjiang, China enjoy a form of bagel known as girdeh nan (from Persian, meaning round bread) , which is one of several types of nan, the bread eaten in Xinjiang.[13] It is uncertain if the Uyghur version of the bagel was developed independently of Europe or was the actual origin of the bagels that appeared in Central Europe.
In Turkey, a salty and fattier form is called açma. The ring-shaped simit is sometimes marketed as a Turkish Bagel, and is very similar to the twisted sesame-sprinkled bagels pictured being sold in early 20th century Poland. Simit are also sold on the street in baskets or carts, like bagels were then.
In some parts of Austria, ring-shaped pastries called beugel are sold in the weeks before Easter. Like a bagel, the yeasted wheat dough, usually flavored with caraway, is boiled before baking. However, the beugel is crispy and can be stored for weeks. Traditionally it has to be torn apart by two individuals before eating.[citation needed]
The pronunciation and spelling of "bagel" varies among communities. In Canada, for instance, people from Toronto and Montreal, pronounce it like bay-gel, (the correct Yiddish pronunciation) -whereas people from the smaller towns of Northern Ontario and the East coast of Canada tend to pronounce the first syllable as bag-el, as in in 'shopping bag' . In addition, some American bagel makers (particularly New England producer Zeppy's) spell the word "baigel", while maintaining the typical pronunciation.
In the UK, bagels are popular in London, Leeds, Belfast, and Manchester. In Newcastle, the most popular seller of bagels is named Bagel of the North, with reference to the Angel of the North. On Brick Lane in East London there are two long established bagel shops in which the item is spelled beigel, with pronunciation to match.
In Romania, bagels are popular topped with sesame seeds or large salt grains, especially in the central area of the country, and the recipe does not contain any added sweetener. They are sold as covrigi.
"Bagel" is also a Yeshivish term for sleeping 12 hours straight, e.g. "I slept a bagel last night." There are various opinions as to the origins of this term. It may be a reference to the fact that bagel dough has to "rest" for at least 12 hours between mixing and baking,[citation needed] or simply to the fact that the hour hand on a clock traces a bagel shape over the course of twelve hours.
Bagels can be found in Japan but often tend to be sweet rather than savory.
While normally and traditionally made of yeasted wheat, in the late 20th century, many variations on the bagel flourished. Non-traditional versions which change the dough recipe include pumpernickel, rye, sourdough, bran, whole wheat, and multigrain. Other variations change the flavor of the dough, often using salt, onion, garlic, egg, cinnamon, raisin, blueberry, chocolate chip, cheese, or some combination of the above. Green bagels are sometimes created for St. Patrick's Day.
Many corporate chains now offer bagels in such flavors as chocolate chip and French toast. Sandwich bagels have been popularized since the late 1990s by bagel specialty shops such as Bruegger's and Einstein Brothers, and fast food restaurants such as McDonald's. Breakfast bagels, a softer, sweeter variety usually sold in fruity or sweet flavors (e.g., cherry, strawberry, cheese, blueberry, cinnamon-raisin, chocolate chip, maple syrup, banana and nuts) are commonly sold by large supermarket chains; these are usually sold sliced and are intended to be prepared in a toaster.
A flat bagel, known as a 'Flagel', can be found in a few locations in and around New York City and Toronto. According to a review attributed to New York's Village Voice food critic Robert Seitsema, the Flagel was first created by Brooklyn's Tasty Bagels deli in the early 1990s.[14]
A trademarked, sweet variant of the bagel known as the “Fragel" is produced by the Ann Arbor, Michigan, based Bagel Factory, Inc. A special, bagel-based dough is fried and coated with cinnamon sugar.
A sandwich chain called Così has created square bagels, or 'squagels', as an alternative to round bagels in crafting bagel sandwiches which are often filled with luncheon meats; this was famously pointed out by comedian David Cross in his stand-up. Square bagels are also sold by several chains in North America.
According to the American Institute of Baking (AIB), Year 2008 supermarket sales (52 week period ending Jan. 27, 2009) of the top eight leading commercial fresh (not frozen) bagel brands in the United States:
Further, AIB-provided statistics for the 52 week period ending May 18, 2008, for refrigerated/frozen supermarket bagel sales for the top 10 brand names totalled US$50,737,860, based on 36,719,977 unit package sales.[19]
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| Translations: Bagel |
Nederlands (Dutch)
ringvormig ongezuurd broodje, krakeling
Français (French)
n. - (Culin) petit pain en croissant ou en couronne
Deutsch (German)
n. - hartes, ringförmiges Hefegebäck
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - μπάγκελ (ψωμάκι σε σχήμα κουλουριού)
Italiano (Italian)
ciambellani
Português (Portuguese)
n. - pão (m) em forma de anel (Culin.)
Español (Spanish)
n. - rosca de pan
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - kaka, bulle
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
硬面包圈, 百吉饼, 圈饼
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 硬麵包圈, 百吉餅, 圈餅
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) كعكه او فطيرة دنمركيه
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - כעך, בייגל'ה
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| How Products are Made. How Products are Made. Copyright © 2002 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Food and Nutrition. A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition. Copyright © 1995, 2003, 2005 by A. E. Bender and D. A. Bender. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Food Lover's Companion. Food Lover's Companion. Copyright © 2001 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Food & Culture Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Food and Culture. Copyright © 2003 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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