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See also: Quotes about Bagels
BAGELS
Bagels are formed from an eggless dough (flour, yeast, water and oil) into a donut shape, then droped in rapidly boiling water, cooked 3 - 5 minutes on one side then flipped and cooked 3 -5 minutes more on the other side. Drained, sometimes brushed with egg and then baked for 10 minutes or so.
North Carolina molecular scientist Robert Bohannon has developed 'Buzz Donuts' and 'Buzzed Bagels'- caffeinated donuts and bagels. They contain the caffeine equivalent of 2 cups of coffee. (Jan, 2007)
The derivation of the word bagel is unclear. Joan Nathan, the author of "Jewish Cooking in America" (Knopf, 1998), says it comes from the German verb "biegen," "to bend." The late Alan Davidson wrote in his "Oxford Companion to Food" that the word arose from the Yiddish "beygel," itself taken from the German "beugel," meaning ring or bracelet. One bit of bagel lore has it that the bagel was invented in 1683, when a Jewish baker in Vienna baked a hard roll in the shape of a stirrup — "bügel" in German — as a thank-you gesture to the cavalry-leading King John III Sobieski of Poland, who had saved the city from Turkish invaders.
Excerpt from Was Life Better When Bagels Were Smaller? in the on line edition of the New York Times, 1/2/04
"the first printed mention of bagels...is to be found in the Community Regulations of Kracow, Poland, for the year 1610 – which stated that bagels would be given as a gift to any woman in childbirth."
'The Joys of Yiddish' by Leo Rosten
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