Bagels

A bagel is a round yeast roll with a hole in the middle. A true bagel is completely plain and is made with white wheat high-gluten flour, then boiled in water and baked. Boiling the dough reduces the starch content and gives the bagel its outer sheen and hard crust. The word “bagel” possibly derives from beigen, German for “to bend,” or the Middle High German bougel or buegel, meaning a twisted or curved ring or bracelet.

In ancient Egypt, there was a hard cracker with a hole in the middle called ka’ak that can be seen as an ancestor of the bagel. From Egypt, ancestry can be traced to classical Rome and to what is now Italy and then to France, where there is a boiled and baked anise-flavored bread, similar to a bagel. Eventually, precursors of the bagel made their way to Russia and Poland. The first Jewish community in Poland, established by invitation and charter in the thirteenth century, probably brought with them biscochos, a ring-shaped cookie or cracker, dating from the Roman period.