Bay Area bagel boom
You know them. You might even be one of them. Transplanted East Coasters kvetching about the lack of New York-style bagels in the Bay Area.
David Korver was in that camp. The Brooklyn-raised school psychologist used to drive friends batty with his constant rants and raves. Eventually, one of his friends told him to shove it.
“It was like, ‘Shut up, let’s find out how to make bagels,’ ” Korver recalls. So they did. And they weren’t only ones. His startup, Schmendricks, is now among a half-dozen bagel boutiques that have sprouted over the last year, including Beauty’s Bagel Shop, Baron Baking, Authentic Bagel Co. and the short-lived Spot Bagel. Seeking to reclaim the glory days of New York’s chewy bagels and to introduce Montreal’s smaller,
sweeter and equally famed versions, these are hip, hand-rolled items made in tiny numbers by East Coast natives with the chutzpah to charge as much as $3 a pop on the West Coast.
And if demand is any indication, plenty of bagel aficionados are willing to pay premium prices for their slice of nostalgia.
“People have a connection to this food,” Korver says. “We’ve experienced the Mission hipster crowd, but we’ve also had Mel from Brooklyn, who is 70 and wants to talk about his childhood bagel shop.”
This isn’t to say that New York bagels don’t exist in the Bay Area. Mike Puente’s family has been boiling and baking bagels for nearly 50 years at House of Bagels in San Francisco’s Richmond District.
“A bagel, a real bagel, is an artisan food that’s really hard to make,” Puente says. “But I don’t think there’s a single person that’s tried our bagel and says there’s no New York-style bagel in town.”
Craft-style bagels
What there certainly is, though, is a renewed interest in the craft of bagel making; an extension of the DIY food movement that’s hit everything from pickles to jams.
While the Bay Area has largely grown up on Michelin Man puffballs from Noah’s and other commercial chains, history decrees that a good New York bagel must be made with high-protein flour, yeast, sugar and salt.
It must be proofed and rested overnight or longer, boiled in water and baked directly on stone. The boiling is key. Many large bagel manufacturers steam instead, but local bagel-makers say boiling helps give the bagel its chew. Adding lye or malt to the water ensures a crisp brown sheen and toppings that stick.
This bagel-making process is well-oiled at Puente’s shop, as well as at the separately owned House of Bagels in San Carlos and Izzy’s Brooklyn Bagels in Palo Alto, which have more than 20 years under their belts.
The production can be a little more challenging at the fledgling Schmendricks and Baron Baking, where kitchen space is rented and the owners are the bakers, marketers, accountants and delivery boys all rolled into one — painstakingly crafted bagel, that is.
Korver founded Schmendricks with his wife, Dagny, and another married couple, Dan Scholnick and Deepa Subramanian. Their bagels are modeled after Korver’s childhood staple, the lauded Bagel Hole in Park Slope.
Small by today’s standards, these bagels feature a distinctly browned crust contrasted with a rich, chewy crumb. It’s designed to be eaten as is — no toasting necessary — which is partly why Schmendricks is available only a few times a week at Fayes Video in the Mission.
Paying the price
But the hand-rolled beauties come at a steep price, $3 a bagel, two to three times the price of some of its competitors.
That includes Baron Baking, a months-old, one-man operation out of the East Bay.
Dan Graf, a former line cook at Saul’s in Berkeley, took a scientific approach to his bagels, isolating the qualities he wanted — a lot of crunch on the outside, a complex dough on the inside — and began formulating his recipe several years ago.
“Bite, chew, spit,” Graf says of the experimentation.
His testing eventually led to a two-step fermentation process that yields perhaps the brownest and crustiest bagel of the newcomers. He’s now the main supplier to Saul’s, which retails them for $1.50. The hand-rolled bagels can also be found at Chop Bar and Stag’s Lunchette in Oakland.
Authentic Bagel Co., meanwhile, is the brainchild of brothers Mark and Jason Scott. The Rhode Island natives use a sourdough starter, common in New England, to produce bagels that are softer on the palette.
“It’s a mix between a West Coast sourdough starter and an East Coast dense, chewy bagel,” says Jason Scott.
The brothers wholesale to about 15 cafes in the East Bay, but recently signed on to their own brick-and-mortar spot in Jack London Square, and are planning to build up to a three-day weekend retail schedule.
So far, their collective dent on the greater bagel economy has been minimal. For starters, so few bagels are being made that even finding them can be a chore.
Viable business?
And while the new bagel makers were among the favorites in The Chronicle’s blind tasting (see sidebar), turning the bagel popups into a viable business is another question.
The Montreal-inspired Beauty’s Bagel Shop will be the first to take the plunge when its Oakland brick-and-mortar opens for daily service in the coming weeks.
Owner Blake Joffe, whose father grew up in Montreal, hopes to recreate the city’s quintessential experience of watching bakers work their bagel magic in full view of customers, albeit not for 24 hours a day, like some shops do in Montreal.
Their bagels, available on weekends at Wise Sons Deli in San Francisco, are skinnier, sweeter and denser than those from New York, having been boiled in honeyed water and baked in a wood-fired oven.
“We get a few people who say it’s not a New York bagel, and they don’t even try it,” Joffe says. “But for the most part, reception has been great.”
The great bagel debate, New York versusMontreal, may never be settled. But for those who insist that you can’t get a good New York bagel in San Francisco, know that it’s increasingly tough to find a good New York bagel in New York, too.
Mimi Sheraton, the longtime New York food critic, singled out the mini-bagels from Bagel Hole, also available at Russ & Daughters in Manhattan, as the closest modern-day comparison to the classics.
“Very shiny, not too fat, not too big and puffy, with a grayishwhite, very dense inner crumb,” Sheraton recalls. “Now, people like softer things, and they’re making them large to justify the cost.”