Twin City Bagels
I visited Minneapolis and St Paul to see about some bagels. I tasted bagels at four first-generation bagel shops, discovered the Twin Cities toaster issue, and learned about a historic bagel club.
Last June, before I started writing about the quest on Substack, the bagel quest went to Minneapolis. My daughter had just moved there and I was looking for a reason to visit her. I heard great things about the city — and also Rhoda, my favorite fictional Jewish woman left the Bronx in the late 1960s to become Mary Tyler Moore’s best friend in Minneapolis, so what’s not to like.
I entered ‘bagel’ into the search engine of the digital archives of the Twin Cities’ American Jewish World newspaper. The earliest mention of bagel was a 1922 announcement that bagels and kugel would be sold at a fundraising bazaar…so someone was selling bagels in the Twin Cities early in the twentieth century.
THE BAGEL CLUBS
I found a 1947 article about the “Bagel Club”, a group of Jewish WWII aviators that would fly together to go fishing a few hours from the Twin Cities. Two years later they changed their name to the “bagel squadron”, which is definitely the better name for the group. I found a very different type of bagel club that Ruth Lipschultz founded in the mid 1970s, this one gathered to eat bagels. Mrs Lipschultz was so well known for her bagel making prowess that a few newspaper articles about her bagel club referred to her as the bagel queen. The bagel club met every Sunday morning and its main purpose was to fundraise for local Jewish causes.
THE TOASTER ISSUE
Proving my high school self wrong, there is always a reason to understand basic science. That has certainly been true for me as I try to understand how exactly a great bagel is made and what distinguishes it from a good one. Chemistry is involved. Learning about microbes is involved. Casually saying 'cold fermentation' is involved.
I have read many things that can get a bit technical on the science front, but here are some essential facts. How much flour you knead into the dough matters. Refrigerating the bagels for at least 24 hours is key to slow down the yeast to make the flavors more complex and flavorful. Boiling the bagels to set the crust before it goes into the oven is essential. Without these you are eating round bread and not a bagel.
Now I get that bagels are an assimilated food and every baker and eater gets to do what they want to do with a bagel. But if your goal is to make a traditional bagel, then that bagel should come out of the oven fully actualized - it should not need to be toasted upon arrival. I think the Twin Cities writing was on the wall when I found all these toaster related 1970s bagel ads in the American Jewish World newspaper, because for three-quarters of the bagel shops I visited, the bagels could use some time in the toaster.
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF MY BAGEL FINDINGS
I visited Rise Bagel Co, Mogi Bagels, Asa Bagels, and St Paul Bagelry and noticed a few things they had in common. First, all these shops are fairly new...and by that I mean these are first generation bakeries. They opened in 2007, 2014, 2018, and 2023. Second, all three of the bakers I talked to got their start selling bagels at a farmers market. Third, each of the bagels I tasted cleared the not insignificant hurdle of my considering them worthy of the bagel name. These were not mass produced bagels. For the three bagel bakers I talked with, they all made their dough from scratch and use some version of traditional NYC bagel making production techniques. Fourth, the bagels all have seeds on the top, bottom, and in some cases on every inch of the bagel. Fifth, we did not find a Jewish-owned bagel shop or Jewish baker history in the Twin Cities.
My daughter Tamar joined us for part of this leg of the quest. She shared her thoughts on being a Midwest born Jewish bagel eater with a mother who has lectured her for her whole life on what constitutes a great bagel. (Audio below the photo.)
BAGEL CLUB POSTSCRIPT
My first request for a bagel quest presentation was for the Madison Lechayim seniors group a few months ago. I very much appreciated following yoga from a chair, blood pressure screenings and brisket. In my talk I mentioned the 1970’s bagel club and turned out someone in the room knew the granddaughter of Ruth Lipschultz and by that evening we were connected by email. Two weeks later I was back in Minneapolis visiting my daughter and we meet up with the granddaughter, who shared the coveted “Grandma Ruth’s Bagels”recipe with me. I have not yet made them because I want to do it exactly as Ruth did and that requires making the bagels throughout the night. She starts with the bagel dough in the evening and then set her alarm to wake up and knead and shape the dough two times during the night before baking them first thing in the morning. I know I can just start the process twelve hours earlier…but for the first time trying the recipe I want to be authentic. But I also don’t want to mess with my insomnia….so I am waiting for the right moment.
