Why can’t one get a good bagel in Israel? To answer this question, one must understand something called the Pizza Cognition Theory, as proposed by New York Times journalist Sam Sifton. This theory states that, of the many different styles of pizza available, a person will generally prefer the style which he or she was first exposed to. This style becomes, for him or her, the very definition – nay, the Platonic ideal - of pizza.
The same can be said of bagels. Hailing from New York, that means I like bagels to have a glossy crust that crisps when toasted, and a doughy, dense yet soft, malty center. And poppy seeds, but that’s just me. Rachel’s Philadelphia kosher bagels are, in essence (as well as in name), New York Bagels. So we’re on the same page.
However, the NY bagel is not the only variety. Here in the Israel, the thinner, breadier, sometimes oval-shaped, and always sesame seed coated bagels are as much a local fixture in Arab and Middle-Eastern Jewish cuisine as their Yankee cousins. Thus, I posit that the primary reason one can’t get a “good” bagel in Israel is because most people here prefer what they’ve already got anyway.
That being said, there are plenty of places where you can get NY style bagels, usually in cities and neighborhoods populated by US expats. But any real bagel fan will tell you that the a bagel from Tal Bagels may be tasty, but isn’t the same. So the real question is: why is it so hard to recreate NY bagels in Israel?
No, the answer is not the water. It’s the flour. Israeli flour has less gluten in it, or to be more precise, comes packaged with less gluten in it. This was verified by a recent blog post I read, along with the additional information that Israeli flour is usually processed less and not bromated or bleached (although I usually bought unbleached flour in the US as well), and that US flour actually often has pure gluten added to it directly.
I could have told you that on my own after this attempt to make bagels. I was following a recipe from Peter Reinhart, whose book has so far given me a very reliable recipe for pizza dough, but I noticed that the dough was not developing as I was expecting it to. Undeveloped dough tears apart when you pull it, but proper gluten development gives you a dough that is increasingly smooth and elastic. This takes kneading and time, both of which I applied with my Kitchenaid dough hook. But the minutes went by and my dough was extremely soft, and totally lacking in smoothness and elasticity. It was still tearing.
I knew at once that there wasn’t enough gluten. The solution? Add more flour, I suppose. I kept adding, and adding flour. The dough absorbed it, but despite intense and extensive kneading, it just did not get right. Frustrated, I cranked up my already hot mixer and tried to beat the gluten into submission.
And then my Kitchenaid busted an axle.
The moral of the story is: don’t get frustrated in the kitchen (also don’t take on new cooking projects on fast days, when you are more likely to get frustrated). But although fixing the mixer will surely be an uphill battle, the bagels were not lost. After kneading by hand for a while, and seeing no improvement, I decided to shape the bagels, let them rise for the amount of time stated in the recipe, boil them and bake them. The boiling was done in water with a pinch of baking soda added to it, and the baking was done at some high temperature, with convection, with a flipping step, for an arbitrary period of time until they looked brown and tasty.
Those instructions are kind of vague, and they also leave out the sponge stage at the beginning where a thin, pancake-like dough is set out to ferment with two hours. This is because the bagels, while they tasted good, were not what I expected. The doughiness was too much, they didn't rise properly. The outsides were not smooth and too hard and thick.
But really, they were tasty. I strongly believe that this is highly independent of recipe. Google any bagel recipe, or this one, and make it. It’s probably your first time boiling bread before baking it, but it’s very easy if you just follow the instructions. It’ll taste good because it’s fresh and you made it.
Looking forward, I am going to try and find a place where I can buy pure flour gluten, which I do know is made by an Israeli company. Then it’s just a matter of either research or experimentation until I find the combination I want to recreate US bread flour and US all-purpose flour. The blog post has a suggestion, but since it is in volume measurements I can’t take it seriously. He does recommend sifting, though, which is a good tip.
And like I said before, Rachel and I really did enjoy these bagels. If I don’t find gluten soon I’m probably going to just make them again anyway.
