The legendary bakery that bashes out a joyous mishmash of kosher, modern and made-to-order bagels
I went to Edinburgh on the promise of some of Britain’s best bagels. That’s a notion bound to cause ructions, because almost everything about the humble bagel is contentious. For a start, I’m possibly spelling it wrong. “Stop Americanising beigel!” you may be harrumphing, pronouncing that “ei” as in “Einstein”. Likewise, if you’re a fan of those soft, yielding, handily freezable bagels available in multipacks from supermarkets, many will kvetch that those are merely ring-shaped imposters. Soft? Yielding? Pghhh.
A good bagel, some believe, should be an arduous task. The dough must be boiled before baking, in a bid to create a genre of jaw-taxing chewiness that requires a midpoint recovery interval at the four-bites-of-salt-beef-or-chopped-herring stage. One definite is that, historically, good bagels have been found on Brick Lane in the East End of London. However, which shop there – either Beigel Bake or Beigel Shop next door – can call itself the real deal, well, that’s the start of an entirely new bun-fight.
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