Bagels: A History
Created | Updated Mar 6, 2002
<P><B>Rise of the tasty torus.</B></P>
<P>Cut to Poland, 400 years ago, where no one was having a lot of fun. Nor were they enjoying a lot of <A HREF="http://www.h2g2.com/A86591">
bagels</A>. The country was a sitting duck for the Russians and Swedes, who kept invading and then screwing around with the elections of the Polish kings. The Polish were teed off and took out their frustrations on the Cossacks, the Hell's Angels of the 17th century. The Cossacks, in turn, shared their concerns with the Jews, and by shared their concerns I mean "went around slaughtering people and burning down their homes."</P>
<P>But the greatest deeds are done in the darkest times, and it was in Poland around this time that an unsung hero rolled malt, salt, yeast, flour, and water into a sort of proto-bagel – a distant, chewier ancestor of the multitudinous bagels we know of today. Early in its history, this bagel became popular as a gift for women undergoing the pangs of childbirth. "Bite the bagel," husbands would tell their wives. Among the other horrific deeds committed during raids by Cossacks, they would slit open the bellies of pregnant women. Perhaps they were looking for the bagels.</P>
<P>The bagels lived on. Back then, of couse, every bagel was a hand-rolled bagel, and every hand-rolled bagel was a plain bagel – not the torus-shaped springboard of infinite possibilities that we take for granted today. If you were to suggest to a Polish bagelsmith of the 1600s that he add poppy-seed or raisins to the dough of a bagel made by human hands, he would probably think you had flipped. The resulting dough would just be too hard to mix.</P>
<P>Even when the Industrial Revolution brought coal-fire hearths and
mechanical mixers, the "plain bagel barrier" was considered as
unshatterable as the speed of sound. But in the early '60s, with the advent of bigger, more cost-efficient ovens, it suddenly became feasible to add poppy seeds, onions, sesame, and garlic to the bagel. Somewhere in New York, a bagelmaker realized that this new technology could allow salt bagels to efficiently serve as the platform for any of these extras.</P>
<P>It took decades for bagelologists to realize the range of possibilities that had been sprung open by the ability to add things like poppy seed, although by the end of the Bagel Millenium the full potential of the bagel would prove to be as dizzying as opium (that other poppy seed derivative), allowing for everything from jalapeno to chocolate chip to find its way into our tasty torus. Empires have risen and fallen. The bagel has only gotten stronger.</P>
<P>Topologically speaking, by the way, a mathematician is unable to distinguish a torus from a cup with a handle.</P>
<P>Cut to Poland, 400 years ago, where no one was having a lot of fun. Nor were they enjoying a lot of <A HREF="http://www.h2g2.com/A86591">
bagels</A>. The country was a sitting duck for the Russians and Swedes, who kept invading and then screwing around with the elections of the Polish kings. The Polish were teed off and took out their frustrations on the Cossacks, the Hell's Angels of the 17th century. The Cossacks, in turn, shared their concerns with the Jews, and by shared their concerns I mean "went around slaughtering people and burning down their homes."</P>
<P>But the greatest deeds are done in the darkest times, and it was in Poland around this time that an unsung hero rolled malt, salt, yeast, flour, and water into a sort of proto-bagel – a distant, chewier ancestor of the multitudinous bagels we know of today. Early in its history, this bagel became popular as a gift for women undergoing the pangs of childbirth. "Bite the bagel," husbands would tell their wives. Among the other horrific deeds committed during raids by Cossacks, they would slit open the bellies of pregnant women. Perhaps they were looking for the bagels.</P>
<P>The bagels lived on. Back then, of couse, every bagel was a hand-rolled bagel, and every hand-rolled bagel was a plain bagel – not the torus-shaped springboard of infinite possibilities that we take for granted today. If you were to suggest to a Polish bagelsmith of the 1600s that he add poppy-seed or raisins to the dough of a bagel made by human hands, he would probably think you had flipped. The resulting dough would just be too hard to mix.</P>
<P>Even when the Industrial Revolution brought coal-fire hearths and
mechanical mixers, the "plain bagel barrier" was considered as
unshatterable as the speed of sound. But in the early '60s, with the advent of bigger, more cost-efficient ovens, it suddenly became feasible to add poppy seeds, onions, sesame, and garlic to the bagel. Somewhere in New York, a bagelmaker realized that this new technology could allow salt bagels to efficiently serve as the platform for any of these extras.</P>
<P>It took decades for bagelologists to realize the range of possibilities that had been sprung open by the ability to add things like poppy seed, although by the end of the Bagel Millenium the full potential of the bagel would prove to be as dizzying as opium (that other poppy seed derivative), allowing for everything from jalapeno to chocolate chip to find its way into our tasty torus. Empires have risen and fallen. The bagel has only gotten stronger.</P>
<P>Topologically speaking, by the way, a mathematician is unable to distinguish a torus from a cup with a handle.</P>
