How the Simple Bread Became America’s Favorite Nosh
Who doesn’t love bagels, whether toasted or not, with cream cheese, lox, butter or nothing at all? It seems that everyone has an opinion about where to get “the perfect bagel,” just as everyone has a different theory about the origins of the humble bread.
Where Did the Bagel Originate?
There’s no definitive evidence of exactly when the first bagel was consumed, but scholars have a couple of theories:
- The most likely scenario comes from Poland as a part of a mass Jewish migration from Germany in the 14th At the time, pretzels were a staple food item for Germans, having been introduced to the general population from the local monasteries. They were thick, bread-like items, though, nothing like most pretzels available in the United States today. The Poles embraced them, but gradually changed them into the round rolls we now recognize as bagels, with the hole in the middle.
The Polish version of the pretzel, known as an “obwarzanek,” became immensely popular among the wealthy in Poland when the Jadwiga, the queen, chose to make it part of her Lenten discipline. At the time, because of the high cost of wheat, compared to rye and other flours, obwarzanek was almost exclusively the food of princes and people of means.
- A competing theory holds that bagels were first introduced in the Austrian empire in the late 17th century, by a Viennese baker, as an homage to the King of Poland. According to this story, the King of Poland had just successfully defended Austria (which included Poland) from attack by the Turks. The baker, knowing the monarch’s passion for horses and riding, crafted his dough to resemble a stirrup, known in German as a “beugel.”
How Did the Bagel Become a Traditionally Jewish Food?
So how did a bread born of Lent or the Austrian empire become the staple of Jewish food culture worldwide? Scholars say it arose out of what is known historically as the “Nobles’ Democracy.” Throughout Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, Jews were actually prohibited from baking bread. This prohibition stemmed from perceptions that bread was a holy sacrament of the Christian church, as well as notions that the Jewish people were “enemies” of the Christian church. Jews could make bread in their homes, but were banned from commercial baking—everywhere, except in Poland. Combine the popularity of the obwarzanek in Poland with the legal right of Jews to engage in commercial baking and it’s easy to understand how the humble bagel became synonymous with Jewish cuisine and culture.
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