Sohla El-Waylly: In my heart, I think I'm a New Yorker, but I'm not. Born and raised in L.A., so that meant that I was deprived from like bagels for a really long time — good bagels. 

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, for the longest time, my only exposure to bagels were like those frozen bagged bagels. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Me too, it was all about the bagged bagels. My mom was a huge fan of cinnamon raisin. And we didn't have, like, our first proper, freshly baked bagel until I was, like, in high school. And my mom came across this bagel store, and it was in this really industrial part of Van Nuys. The main thing I remember about this place, and why I'll never forget it, is that there was this story about how this woman drove over her husband in front of the bagel shop. And it wasn't an accident, cause the main detail I remember from the story was that she backed up and then drove over him again, then backed up ... 

Ham El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] 

Sohla El-Waylly: And drove over him again. And that's the place where we got bagels. Now every time we went there, we would think about that story and it feels fitting because after I did a little deep dive into bagels, there's a lot of crazy stuff in the history of bagels. We're gonna see a little bit of violence.

Ham El-Waylly: Whoa. Violence? Murder? Bagels?

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] 

MUSIC

Sohla El-Waylly: Welcome to Deep Dish. This is the show where we do deep dives on the dishes we love ... 

Ham El-Waylly: And them we eat them. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Hi, I'm Sohla … 

Ham El-Waylly: And I'm Ham.

Sohla El-Waylly: And we're married … 

Ham El-Waylly: And we're chefs. 

Sohla El-Waylly: We nerd out on food together all day long.

Ham El-Waylly: And we love learning about the stories behind different dishes and ingredients. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Now, we’re gonna do all that nerding out on this podcast. 

Ham El-Waylly: In each episode of Deep Dish, we’ll deep dive into a story behind a food. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Then we’ll head home to our kitchen and see what we feel inspired to cook up. Today’s story: Bagel Bosses and Death Threats.

MUSIC

Sohla El-Waylly: Ham, what’s your favorite bagel order?

Ham El-Waylly: Okay, so I have two bagel orders. One is like your everyday chill bagel order. My other is your special occasion splurge bagel order. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay.

Ham El-Waylly: So lets start with the basic one. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Ham El-Waylly: I like a black seed bagel which is a Montreal Style bagel. So fresh black seed bagel, scallion cream cheese. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh. 

Ham El-Waylly: Now we’re gonna get into the really fun order. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay.

Ham El-Waylly: Still a black seed everything bagel, but you pop on down the street to Russ & Daughters ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Ham El-Waylly: You get yourself some sable ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Ham El-Waylly: You get yourself some scallion cream cheese and you get yourself a whole bunch of trout roe.

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] 

Ham El-Waylly: So that is the ultimate money is no object bagel. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Wow. 

Ham El-Waylly: What about you? 

Sohla El-Waylly: It’s changed a lot over the years. So when I first came to New York, my favorite order was sliced toasted everything bagel with scallion cream cheese, but then I quickly learned that that was not okay.

Ham El-Waylly: I remember the moment where you discovered that toasting a fresh bagel was a mistake.

Sohla El-Waylly: Well, it was mostly driven by shame. 

Ham El-Waylly: It was. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Like, everyone in the line — everyone got mad at me. This is when we were fresh to New York. If you do something like that? Like, order a toasted bagel in a bagel shop, like everyone in the whole building will let you know you’re wrong. So now I no longer toast, not just because of the shame though. Initially, I switched because of that, but then I realized it tastes a lot better because these bagels are so fresh. When you toast a fresh bagel, that's just out of the oven, you really lose the magical contrast between the crust and chewy inside. Everything just gets crunchy and dry. And then I think what I didn't realize, the real, real horror with a toasted bagel is then your cream cheese gets hot.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh yeah, and gets all gooey — and just squirts all over the place? Ugh, that's the worst.

Sohla El-Waylly: It's squirts all over the place. And it squirts so bad because the bagel is too crunchy. You bite into it, you got this kinda warm cream cheese. It makes a mess. You can't eat that walking down the street. You definitely can't eat that on a subway.

MUSIC

Sohla El-Waylly: And the thing I’m seeing more and more in bagel shops is the phrase "hand rolled". This is actually a return to the old way of making bagels. Cause nowadays, most bagels are being rolled by machine.

Ham El-Waylly: It’s like a return to our bread roots. 

Sohla El-Waylly: A return to innocence. 

Ham El-Waylly: A return to innocence. 

[LAUGHING]

Sohla El-Waylly: Can we play that song?

[CLIP ENIGMA “RETURN TO INNOCENCE”] 

[LAUGHING]

Sohla El-Waylly: Rolling a bagel is actually really difficult. Ugh, I always thought you just make a roll and poke a hole in it. But actually, what you do is roll out a thin snake, and then you seal the two edges together by hand to form a bagel. 

Ham El-Waylly: Wait, so you wrap this dough rope around your hand ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Ham El-Waylly: And you press down to seal the seam? 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, that’s hard because, like if you press too hard, you squish it. If you go too light, it won’t close. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah, not that many people know how to do it. So I went to Brooklyn to find out more about it from someone who does it.

Steven Natali: Hi! how are you doing? 

Sohla El-Waylly: Hi. 

Steven Natali: Nice to meet you.

Sohla El-Waylly: Nice to meet you. What was your name? 

Steven Natali: Sorry, my hand’s a little sugary. Steve. Steven. What's your name?  

Sohla El-Waylly: And I met Steven Natali. 

Sohla El-Waylly: So how did you get into bagels?

Steven Natali: Me? 

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah. 

Steven Natali: My father owned a bagel store for 27 years. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Oh wow.

Steven Natali: Yeah, at 17, I left high school cause it wasn't for me. And I got my G.E.D., and I started working for my father. And I said, “You know, Dad, I want to learn how to roll bagels," because that's a skill. That's a real skill. I was young at the time and it probably took me six months, but it wasn't like every day I was training. You know, I was helping customers and then like, "Okay, it's dead. Go. Go in the back and learn," you know? And piece by piece, I picked it up. Now it's like, I'm a robot for bagels, you know?

Sohla El-Waylly: Steven works every day at Shelsky’s. He gets in around 4 P.M., after the store closes, and rolls bagels until around 11.  

Sohla El-Waylly: So you're just here alone?

Steven Natali: Yeah. So, I listen to podcasts or  watch a lot of video essays of like film analysis and it's — I'm a nerd. Video game analysis?

Sohla El-Waylly: No, I'm a nerd too. 

Sohla El-Waylly: While Steven’s doing all that, he’s making bagels. Bagel dough is different from any old bread dough — it’s low hydration and that's why it bakes up so chewy and dense, instead of light and fluffy. 

Sohla El-Waylly: He takes this like really stiff dough, but he manages to like, stretch it and roll it and put it together as if it was like clay. 

Sohla El-Waylly: It's gotta be at like 50 pounds of dough? 

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, wow. 

Sohla El-Waylly: It's, like you can really hold it in your arms, like a dead body. 

Ham El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] Okay? So it's like a dead body's worth of dough that he puts on this very small table. And then he starts rolling it into a snake. 

Steven Natali: Yeah. It's like cylindrical, right? It's even. It's all even.

Sohla El-Waylly: And then once he gets this, like, snaking piece that comes off of the bigger piece of dough, he wraps it around his hand. 

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Steven Natali: And so it's fitting, but it's not stretched. Right? I roll forward and I just wrap it around. 

Sohla El-Waylly: So it wraps around his hand, then he puts his palm down and pushes in one push. And then rolls it against the counter to fuse the two ends together. 

Steven Natali: And you roll forward and there's your seam. 

Sohla El-Waylly: He makes it look easy but it’s actually really difficult to fuse the two ends of the snake together just right to form a circle. 

Ham El-Waylly: It’s like Goldilocks. You push down too hard ...

 Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Ham El-Waylly: And you’ll flatten it. You push too lightly, and it won’t fuse and they'll just come apart. You gotta hit it just right. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Exactly. And then once that’s done, the bagel it goes onto a tray.

Steven Natali: My friends used to make fun of me. They're like, oh, your job is a joke. You know, it's easy. I'm like, all right, come on. Let's go. 

[LAUGHING] 

Steven Natali: I bring them in the kitchen. I'm doing like — you know, 3 minutes, basically, I could do a board. They can't make one in, you know, 5 hours, right? 

Sohla El-Waylly: That's 30 bagels, right? For one board?

Steven Natali: 35.

Sohla El-Waylly: 35. 

Steven Natali: It depends on the place, also. You have those are the places where they do the humongous one pounders. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh. 

Steven Natali: And so, you know, I can do a bag and about — I love that job. It's only 10 minutes.

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] 

Steven Natali: You're done. But those bagels are terrible. 

Ham El-Waylly: And so he's pretty much portioning, like by eye.

Sohla El-Waylly: It's totally eyeballed, but they're all exactly the same. 

Ham El-Waylly: And they're all exactly the same. Doing that with a super stiff dough, with just one roll is really tough, as well.

Sohla El-Waylly: Well Steven, the whole time he kept like — he's very humble and he's like very much like, whatever, I just roll bagels. But it kind of gave me Jiro Dreams of Sushi vibes. 

Steven Natali: You put some music on in the background, you're good. The radio ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: And nowadays, there's very few people who can do what he's doing. So it's very in demand. Here’s Peter Shelsky, the owner of Shelsky’s Brooklyn Bagels, where Steven works.

Peter Shelsky: Steve’s not your normal roller. Rollers tend to be really temperamental people. And I think ... 

Steven Natali: 100 percent. 

Peter Shelsky: You can you can speak to this.  

Steven Natali: 100 percent. Forget about it. 

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] 

Peter Shelsky: And the reason they're so temperamental is because, like he said, he wanted to learn a real skill. Well, these guys know that they've got a real skill. And they also know the bagel owners don't know how to roll. Right? I mean, I can’t roll. So they ... 

Steven Natali: They hold it over your head. 

Peter Shelsky: They hold it over your head and they can mess with you in a multitude of ways. Right? They can start rolling the bails just a little bit bigger and mess with your yield. And then ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: Oh. 

Peter Shelsky: They can get out of the store earlier, because ... You know? 

Ham El-Waylly: Whoa, that reminds me of oyster shuckers. Like really good oyster shuckers, who can just like shuck an oyster in their hand in one motion and then, and really do like dozens of oysters back to back without even blinking are like three times the cost of a line cook just because it's a skill that no one else in the building has.

Sohla El-Waylly: But I feel like he doesn't have, like, that temperamental thing about him because his dad owned a shop. 

Ham El-Waylly: So he knows what it's like to be on the other side.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah. It's also fun to meet someone who has dedicated their whole life to a skill, cause you don't see that a lot. A lot of people jump around from one thing to another, but he's been doing this like pretty much his entire adult life. 

MUSIC

Sohla El-Waylly: Even though most bagels today are made with machines, the people rolling them by hand are using a skill that’s been preserved through generations. In fact, in the early days of the industry, bagel makers literally fought to preserve the traditional ways.

Sohla El-Waylly: I talked to someone whose family has a long history in the bagel business. Jason Turbow is a journalist and author. Mostly, he writes about baseball, but a few years ago, he started getting interested in the story of his grandfather and great-grandfather, who made bagels in New York City, baby. His great grandfather’s path to bagels starts in a pretty unexpected way.  

 Jason Turbow: He was a gun runner for the Mensheviks in Ukraine, who were political opponents of the Bolsheviks. He was very politically active. He was arrested at some point. And before he could go on trial, he was absconded out of the country to a boat in Italy that took him to New York.

Ham El-Waylly: Whoa, I wasn’t expecting a side of war with my bagels. 

Sohla El-Waylly: I told you there would be violence. Anyways, a few years before Jason’s great grandfather made the journey from Eastern Europe to New York, the bagel made that same journey. 

Sohla El-Waylly: In the 1800s, throughout Eastern Europe, a lot of Jewish men became bakers. There were only a few professionals that were open to Jews at the time, and baker was one of them. Jason’s great-grandfather was a baker in Ukraine before coming to New York. 

Jason Turbow: My great-grandfather had not been a bagel baker per se, but he had been a baker, and he fell in with other bakers who were making bagels. 

Sohla El-Waylly: And in the 1880s, in the 1890s, as Jews immigrated to New York, they brought their baking and their bagels with them, and baking bagels looked a little different than it does today. 

Jason Turbow: Before the era of preservatives, the shelf life of a bagel was four or five hours. They would pop them outta the ovens, they would put them in baskets, and they would peddle them on the street. And so that's what they did. They would suffer in these basements and then they would go sell them wherever they could.

Sohla El-Waylly: They would bake these bagels in basements, no ventilation. So it was really horrible conditions and terrible places to work.

Jason Turbow: And those places were filthy. There were scathing industry safety reviews year after year after year — roach infestations, rat infestations. These bakers would work in rooms where the ambient temperature was up to 120 degrees. And they were known to strip down to virtually nothing in the dead of winter. 

Ham El-Waylly: You know, something about that … [LAUGHS] 

Sohla El-Waylly: I did do a lot of baking in a basement. I don't believe it was legal. It was completely unventilated and the heat is bad enough, but then you get all this flour in the air that never goes away. And then you inhale so much flour that you develop this cough, like this permanent cough from the flour inhalation. 

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, so if you work in a basement baking bread long enough you’re going to end up in an Iron Lung. 

Sohla El-Waylly: It's very, very bad. And I'm sure that all these guys, it must have been a hundred times worse for them. Here’s Jason again:  

Jason Turbow: And somewhere along the line, they got it in their heads that if the men baking these bagels, who had a very specific skill set, could band together, then they might actually affect some change in their workplace. And that's exactly what happened. As it turned out, my great-grandfather, Louis Friedman, one of the founders of union Local 338 in the 1930s.

Ham El-Waylly: No way! 

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah. They had a really big impact in making sure that the bagel shop owners took care of their workers and that they played by the rules and they only employed bakers who were in the union. 

Jason Turbow: If you wanted to bake a bagel in New York City, you had to be a member of union Local 338. Even bakery owners were not allowed to man their own ovens. This kept the bagel bakery owners kind of at the beck and call of the union. And the union Bakers were really the only people who know how to make, what we consider now, a real bagel.  

Ham El-Waylly: What sticks out to me was that even the bagel shop owners couldn't make the bagels.

Sohla El-Waylly: That's so scary. 

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. 

Sohla El-Waylly: To have a business, where you're fully reliant on, [Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, cause ...] on another person's skillset. 

Ham El-Waylly: Especially a small business, because when we had our restaurant  we did everything. 

Sohla El-Waylly: We baked the bread ourself. You made the cheese yourself? 

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

[LAUGHING]

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] We were — we sanded the floors, did everything from install the toilets and lighting to make the ice cream and syrups for the cocktails.

Ham El-Waylly: We didn't even buy outside sodas.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah. Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: We made our own soda. We outsourced nothing.

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hm. That's why we went outta business. [LAUGHS] 

Sohla El-Waylly: These bakers too, they were very highly skilled. Cause I don't think that we think about bagels as being like this artisanal thing, like a croissant.

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Sohla El-Waylly: But as we heard from Steven earlier, it requires a lot of expertise. At that time, these union bakers could roll one bagel per second. 

Ham El-Waylly: Wow!

Sohla El-Waylly: They were like machines.

Ham El-Waylly: Wow, that is amazing.

Sohla El-Waylly: And then they boil the bagels. This is a really important step, and it's what makes bagels different from bread with a hole in it. Boiling a bagel is what gives it it's shiny crust and chewy interior. The starch on the exterior dough gelatinize when you boil it, and this kind of seals it. So when the bagel hits the oven, it doesn't like expand as much. It stays really nice and dense.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh. So it's kind of like, if you want really good roast potatoes, you boil your potatoes first to pre-gelatinize [Sohla El-Waylly: Yes.] the starch on the outside. And then when you roast it, you get a really crusty, crunchy brown crust. 

Sohla El-Waylly: And you still maintain the fluffy interior cuz that pre gelatinization keeps the moisture locked in. So that's why you can keep that chew. And it's why they're so smooth as well. Because that boiling and that pre gelatinization means that when it goes into the oven, the surface doesn't bubble as much, and you get this really nice, smooth ... 

Ham El-Waylly: Even sheen.

MUSIC 

Sohla El-Waylly: In the 1950s, life was really good for a bagel maker. They had like secret techniques that they would keep within each other. The only way you learned how to make a bagel like that is if another union baker taught you. So it really kept their job safe. There were a lot of unionized jobs during that time: automakers, steel workers, rail workers, who built middle class lives for their families.  

Jason Turbow: They had paid vacations. They were driving nice cars. They were sending their kids to colleges and universities, and it was fine because the bakery owners were making money hand over fist. This was kind of an exploding industry. Bagel shops were popping up every place. So everything was copacetic, money was flying around, and that's the point at which the mafia decided to get involved.

[RECORD SCRATCH SOUNDS EFFECT] 

Ham El-Waylly: Wait, what? This is like a secret mob story? I did not see that coming.

Sohla El-Waylly: Bagels, plus secret mob story. Yeah, I mean, they were doing really well. I can't imagine like nowadays a bagel shop being so profitable that ... 

Ham El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] That the mob wants to get involved. 

Sohla El-Waylly: But you know, they saw good business so they wanted to get in there. So one of the biggest organized crime families in New York, the Genovese family, opened The Bagel Boys shop with non-union bakers. It was in Brooklyn, in union territory. That pissed off the union.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, the mob guys are probably like, oh, these soft doughy bakers. We can definitely intimidate them.

Sohla El-Waylly: I feel like these guys. they're not worried about [Ham El-Waylly: Yeah.] Local 338. 

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. 

Sohla El-Waylly: But the union was not having that. 

MUSIC

Jason Turbow: You know, I heard stories of bakeries that went non-union early on. These union bakers would break in the middle of the night, spike the dough with so much yeast that it literally filled up the entire room ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] 

Jason Turbow: And would harden so quickly that they would have to take chisels to it. And it would take weeks to clean that stuff up. They would steal delivery trucks. They were known to blow up delivery trucks. Not with people in them, but anything to hamper non-union bakeries.

Ham El-Waylly: The putting extra yeast in the dough is a really funny, like, baker attack.

Sohla El-Waylly: It's a good prank on so many levels. But the most common way they fought back is how unions fight now, which was to picket. And that's what they did to the Bagel Boys store.

Ham El-Waylly: Wait, they picketed the the mob store? 

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah.

Jason Turbow: They would set up tables outside the bakery. They would stock abundant free product and pass it out in whatever quantities that passersby would ask for, which decimated business. Why go into a bakery to [Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.] to buy bagels when people are giving them away on the sidewalk?

Ham El-Waylly: The way they fought back was really smart.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah. The union just wanted the bagel boys to use union bakers. They were fighting to keep that union territory sacred.

Jason Turbow: The mafia responded in mafia ways, and about a week later, a member of the union’s executive board received a phone call from an associate of Bagel Boys, issuing a threat, not only to the executive but the executive's his wife and children. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Hm. 

Jason Turbow: It wasn't enough to get the union to cave, but it was enough to inspire them to agree to a meeting. The mob made a number of increasing offers They started off by saying, we respect your right to enforce contracts with other bakeries, but we don't need to do that. The union said, no. They said, well, how about we sign your contract and you don't enforce it? The union said, no. They said, how about we give you $10,000 to make this all go away? The union said no. I mean, Local 338 wanted union bakers inside that shop and nothing less.

Sohla El-Waylly: The union kept picketing. They kept passing out free bagels. This is like a lot of dedication, you know, cause they're baking these bagels.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. It's a lot of work. You're giving away your main product. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah. Yeah. They weren't getting intimidated. 

Jason Turbow: One of the things I love about this union is that it was founded by Ukrainian immigrants who were tough as nails. Like they went through so much hatred in their homeland. That it — you know, it forced them into America. They weren't gonna take grief from anybody. They weren't about to bend for anybody. Like the mafia had encountered so many victims who just folded immediately, and these guys weren't folding. They weren't folding at all. And so, the mafia got out of the bagel industry, presenting a decided win for these Ukrainian immigrants.

MUSIC

Ham El-Waylly: Wow. That's like a great David Goliath story.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah, they won. They won that battle.

Ham El-Waylly: They won. 

Sohla El-Waylly: But there was some other stuff happening that they weren't noticing.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, no.

Sohla El-Waylly: It turned out that this run-in with the mafia was actually a small battle in the bagel wars. 

Jason Turbow: That fight distracted the union from what was happening across the river in Connecticut. 

Sohla El-Waylly: So coming up, how a Connecticut bagel company became the true enemy of the bagel union. 

Ham El-Waylly: Things are getting intense. 

MUSIC 

 

+++BREAK+++

 

MUSIC

Sohla El-Waylly: Deep Dish is back and I'm Sohla … 

Ham El-Waylly: And I'm Ham.

Sohla El-Waylly: Hey, Ham. Did you know that I've got a cookbook out? 

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. Isn't it called Start Here? And isn't it a good place for up and coming cooks to start? 

Sohla El-Waylly: And for people who've been cooking for a while but they want to know more. 

Ham El-Waylly: They do, a lot of people want to know more these days. And you know what? Start Here is a great place to start. 

Sohla El-Waylly: There's science, there's technique, and it's available where books are sold. Check it out.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay, back to bagels. By the 1960s, the bagel union had just defended their turf against one of the biggest crime families in New York. But the newest threat was coming from a totally different direction. A new bagel making machine had just hit the market. And suddenly, it became a lot cheaper to make bagels.

Sohla El-Waylly: And a bagel company in Connecticut, Lender’s Bagels, invested heavily in these machines. By the 1970s, thanks to the bagel machines, Lender’s became the largest bagel producer in the world.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh. They — because of these machines, they just took over the entire industry. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah, here again is writer Jason Turbow. 

Jason Turbow: This was the dawn of preservatives. They were able to churn out bagels in ten, hundred, thousand times faster than the union could. With the preservatives, they could then ship them across the country. The union is powerless to stop any of this.

Sohla El-Waylly: Lender’s were able to make the bagels faster, cheaper — 40 percent cheaper.

Ham El-Waylly: That's a … That's a lot.

Sohla El-Waylly: With these new machines making cheaper, longer lasting bagels more and more bagel shops began opening up in New York, using non-union bakers. It became too much for the union to keep up with. So this was really squeezing out these union stores. By 1971, the union was half its original size, so it went down to 152 members, and then they were just fighting to survive. So they ended up having to merge with another local union. And that was the end of local 338. They had to dissolve after that.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, that's sad. They beat the mob, but then ultimately the machines were the end of them.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah. The machine also changed what a bagel is. They used to be small and really hard, but with the machine it changed into this big, fluffy kind of bread with a hole. 

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. So similar to what it is now.

Sohla El-Waylly: It started to get closer to the kind of bagels we have now, for a couple of reasons. Like the dough needed to be softer to work within the machine, but also the preservatives made it softer. And because it was going to a wider market, a softer dough just appealed to more people. These machines are probably why I was able to have bagels all the way in L.A.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, and it's how I got bagels all the way in Doha, Qatar, where I grew up. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Here’s Jason again: 

Jason Turbow: It's a double edged sword. I mean, Lender's was instrumental in creating the bagel as a non niche ethnic food. I mean, it's ubiquitous to Americans now. Before Lender's came along, it was strictly Jewish. Up until the 1960s, every time The New York Times mentioned bagels, which was almost inevitably, you know, in a short item about the labor fights, they would have no assumed knowledge that the reader knew what a bagel was. They would have to explain what a bagel was every time they mentioned it. The most famous instance being when they called it a donut with rigor mortis. 

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] That’s sad for donuts and for bagels. 

Jason Turbow: [LAUGHS]

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Sohla El-Waylly: So like we said, Jason's great grandfather helped found the first bagel union. But Jason wasn't able to figure out if he was involved in any of these conflicts, you know, with the mob or with Lender's. Louis never talked about any of that with his family, but bagels became the family business. Louis brought his son, Seymour, into the union — that’s Jason’s grandfather. He worked as a bagel maker in Local 338, before moving across the country with his wife. Seymour opened his own bagel bakery in L.A., called Brooklyn Bagel Bakery. He ran it for 50 years, and it was known for a time as one of the best bagels in L.A. He was obsessed with bagels. Ge even had a license plate, that read Bagel King on his car.

Ham El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] The Bagel King.

Sohla El-Waylly: Bagel King. Bagels were a big part of his life. They were at holidays, get-togethers, and even weddings.

Jason Turbow: My mom's wedding pictures involve my father putting a mini bagel on her finger in place of a wedding ring.

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] Did he make that bagel that was on her finger?

Jason Turbow: Absolutely. And I don't think — I don't think it was bespoke. I think it came out of a big bin of existing bagels. But he did make it. 

Ham El-Waylly: That is amazing. That is really sweet.

Sohla El-Waylly: I wonder if she got another ring after. 

Ham El-Waylly: No, that's it. I made that one. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh. 

Ham El-Waylly: I made it with my hands. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah. Jason says at first, his grandfather was hand rolling all the bagels at his shop. But … 

Jason Turbow: He eventually had to make concessions. They got bagel machines simply for numbers. You know, my uncle, who I've spoken with about this quite a bit, who took over the bakery when my grandfather retired, freely admits the bagels aren't as good now as they were then.

Peter Shelsky: Bagels have gotten big and soft and squishy — that's not what the — that's not the bagel that I grew up eating. A bagel was small and dense and chewy. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh. 

Peter Shelsky: With a nice crust. Like so, we set out to make that bagel and we had no idea how to do it.

Sohla El-Waylly: This is Peter Shelsky again, owner of Shelsky’s Brooklyn Bagels. I wanted to talk to him, because he is part of this new wave of bagel culture, pushing back against the machine made bagels that are everywhere now. In some ways, they're making bagels just like they did a hundred years ago. But this is a new shop he opened in 2018 and he's doing a really cool blend of traditional and modern techniques. 

Ham El-Waylly: What are his modern touches?

Sohla El-Waylly: He's got a sourdough starter in there along with a little bit of commercial yeast. 

Ham El-Waylly: Ohh. 

Sohla El-Waylly: But it adds a little tang cause Peter was talking about how a lot of bagels, to his palate, is a little bit sweet. 

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Sohla El-Waylly: So by adding a little starter, you get a little bit of tang ... 

Ham El-Waylly: Oh wow. 

Sohla El-Waylly: A little bit of depth and that like yeasty …

Ham El-Waylly: That is so smart.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah. So he gets — he still gets that dense, chewy texture with that tang. There are places where he innovates, like with the sourdough, but he also has a pretty strong sense of tradition. 

Peter Shelsky: So cinnamon raisin took me a long time to come around on. When I first opened, I refused to sell them. I was like, no. And then, and I think it was Louis, my business partner, who's like, dude, we're in the hospitality business like you ... That's what people want. It's like, I'm fine, but I'm drawing the line there. You know? I didn't offer tomato if it wasn't in season for a while until like ...  

Sohla El-Waylly: What? 

Peter Shelsky: Yeah. I refuse to put tomato on a bagel. 

Sohla El-Waylly: No! 

Peter Shelsky: For years!

Sohla El-Waylly: People would be so mad though!

Peter Shelsky: They were so mad, and finally I caved.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, this is definitely something we can relate to. When we had our restaurant, we made business decisions like that all the time. Like refusing to serve tomatoes too when they're out of season. Strawberries was another big one.

Sohla El-Waylly: We were a diner. So people want like melon in the morning and we were like, "No melon, unless it's July or August! [LAUGHS] 

Ham El-Waylly: It's December. You want to eat ... You want a cantaloupe now?

Sohla El-Waylly: How dare you?

Ham El-Waylly: Go somewhere else. And they did.

Sohla El-Waylly: They did. [LAUGHS]

Ham El-Waylly: They did go somewhere else. They all went somewhere else. 

Sohla El-Waylly: So I was talking to Peter and watching Steven roll bagels for a while at this point. And I was getting very antsy to get in there and roll some bagels myself.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, did you get a chance to make some bagels?

Sohla El-Waylly: I did make some bagels, yeah. 

Steven Natali: You wanna try? [LAUGHS] 

Sohla El-Waylly: Can I get in there?

Steven Natali: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here, let me just ... Like when you get to the end, there's, like pieces, you know ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: So the plan was, he was gonna show me how to make one, but it was kind of tough to pull him away. 

Ham El-Waylly: Really?

Steven Natali: All right. Do you want to ... You want to try? 

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah, I want to try. 

Steven Natali: Oh, you know, what? Actually, let me just get to here because you need some room.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay. Okay

Steven Natali: I'm sorry. You need some ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay, okay. 

Steven Natali: You're going to need some ...

Sohla El-Waylly: No, no. It's okay. 

Steven Natali: You're gonna need room. 

Sohla El-Waylly: I feel like when the dough in front of him, he gets in a trance and he just .. 

Ham El-Waylly: He can't not roll?

Sohla El-Waylly: Hey, isn't it my turn? 

Steven Natali: It's totally — oh, yeah. Not now because I just incorporated ...

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] 

Steven Natali: You're not gonna be able to do this. Let me give you ... Let me get to ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: Like, oh, let me try one. And he's like, lemme just finish this chunk of dough ... 

Ham El-Waylly: This bag of flour. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah, yeah. 

[LAUGHING]

Sohla El-Waylly: You just ... You can't stop. You're so into this. 

Steven Natali: What? 

Sohla El-Waylly: Once the dough’s out, you just transformed.

Steven Natali: Oh, no. This is me all the time ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: But like, when he finally did slow down enough to show me how to do it, it's very — there's a lot of details to it. It's very difficult. 

Steven Natali: Yeah, that’s fine. It's a little small. Don’t worry about it.

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] 

Steven Natali: It’s all good. We’ll do it together, okay? 

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay. All right. [LAUGHS]

Steven Natali: So there’s your piece, here’s my piece, right? 

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay. 

Steven Natali: So here we go, we’re rolling it out, using my fingers, pressing lightly ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: One thing that I found interesting was the way he was doing it totally didn't work for my hands, cause my hands were like half the size of his. 

Ham El-Waylly: Hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Sohla El-Waylly: He has like giant hands. 

Ham El-Waylly: Good bagel rolling hands.

Sohla El-Waylly: But he has good bagel rolling hands, like very like toned, muscular hands. So he was able to roll the bagel just like even around like the fingertips, the four [Ham El-Waylly: Wow.] fingertips and then push from there. But my hands are so small that even having it around across the middle of my palm ...

Ham El-Waylly: Wasn’t enough?

Steven Natali: I'm using my fingertips like a rocking motion, right? From my fingertips to my palm, right? 

Sohla El-Waylly: So you're coming up and over the dough?

Steven Natali: Yeah, up and over. 

Sohla El-Waylly: What kept happening to me was the bagel was just like rolling all the way off my hand.

Ham El-Waylly: [LAUGHS]

Sohla El-Waylly: Do you know what I mean?

Steven Natali: Lemme see. All right, I guess we can work with that. Okay, we're going to have to work with that. 

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] 

Steven Natali: I don't think we have any other option. 

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] Can you use this bagel? 

Steven Natali: Umm ... 

Sohla El-Waylly: No. 

[LAUGHING] 

Sohla El-Waylly: We couldn't use the bagel. 

Ham El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] 

Sohla El-Waylly: When I saw Steven's bagels all baked, they've definitely have, like, an artisanal, hand rolled vibe. Like every single bagel is a little different. 

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Sohla El-Waylly: You can see the twist. There's a little seam where the two ends come together. It’s really cool. I feel like it adds a lot, the hand rolling process.

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Ham El-Waylly: What I really want to know is: How does it taste? 

Sohla El-Waylly: I’m glad you asked. Normally on this show, we cook something, but bagels are something that are better from a shop. So instead of cooking, we’re going to do a bagel taste test. That’s after the break. 

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+++ BREAK++

 

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Sohla El-Waylly: I’m Sohla … 

Ham El-Waylly: And I’m Ham. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Welcome back to Deep Dish, our collaboration with our friends at The Sporkful food podcast. Check out The Sporkful’s recent episode with Pete Wells, The New York Times dining critic. Host, Dan Pashman, goes undercover with Pete to find out what it’s like for one of the highest profile restaurant critics in the country to dine out in secret, in order to write a review later. That episode is up now in The Sporkful feed. Get it wherever you got this one.

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Sohla El-Waylly: So we’re gonna taste bagels through history. Okay, we're gonna start with the Lender's bagel — the frozen bagels that we grew up eating. I'm excited to try it now after all these years, cause I haven't had one since moving to New York.

Ham El-Waylly: Probably last frozen bagel I had was when I was, like, 14.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay. So these were frozen and you can tell they're still cold. [LAUGHS] 

Ham El-Waylly: I can’t wait to try these. Oh, they kinda look like white bread with a bit of a crust. 

Sohla El-Waylly: And they're so teeny.

Ham El-Waylly: They're really teeny. I remember them being larger, but maybe it's because was smaller. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh. 

Ham El-Waylly: I can't help but notice that these bagels are dry.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yes. We don't have cream cheese. 

Ham El-Waylly: Or butter.

Sohla El-Waylly: We're gonna do it very pure, really get a taste of the crumb and the texture of the dough and all that, but, like … 

Ham El-Waylly: We would never eat a bagel like this.

Sohla El-Waylly: I did not choose to do this. [LAUGHS] 

Ham El-Waylly: All blame falls on the production team.

Sohla El-Waylly: The production team thought that there would be more integrity and tasting dry bagels. And I think they just wanna torture us.

Ham El-Waylly: But let's do this.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay. So this is a Lender's bagel, slightly toasted, split in half. Grab a half. It's so thin and small. It really just feels like a piece of toast. 

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

[TASTING LENDER'S BAGEL] 

Sohla El-Waylly: I Don't hate it.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. It's — it does feel very nostalgic. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Ham El-Waylly: There's this weird preservative aftertaste that is very nostalgic [Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.] that is part of the bagel flavor, like the frozen bagel flavor.

Sohla El-Waylly: I don't know if it's just because of the nostalgia, but like I just — I wanna make a little bagel pizza with that.

Ham El-Waylly: Pizza bagels. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Pizza bagels. 

Ham El-Waylly: It's the perfect bagel for a pizza bagel. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah. 

Ham El-Waylly: A lot of the times if you try and make a pizza bagel with a good "good real bagel", it's too hard to eat cuz it's so chewy, and all your toppings just end up on your face. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Ham El-Waylly: Or on your lap, your shirt. Maybe it's just me, but it's what happens every time. But with this, you still get a little bit of chew and you can make a clean bite [Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.] without really making a mess of yourself.

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Sohla El-Waylly: So next, we're gonna try a bagel from a pretty standard bagel shop in Manhattan. 

Ham El-Waylly: And these bagels are not hand rolled?

Sohla El-Waylly: No. These are mechanically rolled, but they're still like the New York style.

Ham El-Waylly: That's a good bagel.

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Ham El-Waylly: Really nice chew, delicate crust on the outside. I was really skeptical about the everything flavor we would get from this bagel cause it's very sparsely topped with the seasoning. I was surprised how much everything flavor I got from that, considering how sparsely topped it is.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah, there's a really nice bit of salt and it brings everything forward. But I guess, the main thing is good chew.

Ham El-Waylly: Good chew, yeah.

Sohla El-Waylly: Nice and dense. And the outside has that, like, glossy boiled bagel look. It's so different from the frozen one we just tasted. So this is mechanically rolled and you can tell there, there really isn't a seam at all.

Ham El-Waylly: No.  

Sohla El-Waylly: It looks pretty perfect. And then when you rip into it, the crumb is really tight and pretty even all the way across.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, no air pockets. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Ham El-Waylly: No bubblage. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. I think if I hadn't gone on this bagel journey and seen how Steven rolled his bagels, I don't think I'd even noticed. It's crazy. There's no seams.

Ham El-Waylly: No. No seams at all.

Sohla El-Waylly: Machines. 

Ham El-Waylly: It's just this magical ring.

Sohla El-Waylly: Magical ring. 

Ham El-Waylly: Magical ring of chewy dough. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

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Sohla El-Waylly: Now, the final bagel. We’re gonna taste the Shelsky's bagel and it's modern but also kind of from the past. So it's representing those bagels they made in the '40s and '50s, the union bagels hand rolled, artisanal. Each one's unique, but they've got their modern twist because there's a little bit of sourdough starter in there to change the flavor a bit. So I'm really excited to try this. Like it's the future. It's the past. It's a Shelsky's bagel. [LAUGHS]

Ham El-Waylly: Wow. It's a time. We're like going through a bagel time machine.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh. Yeah. [LAUGHS] 

Ham El-Waylly: It's really cool. I'm excited to see Steven's twist.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yes.

Ham El-Waylly: The signature Steven’s twist.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay.

Ham El-Waylly: Ooh, look at that now. That's the coverage I'm looking for.

Sohla El-Waylly: Very well covered in seeds. So this is the — this is actually their Sichuan peppercorn and sesame, which I tried there, and I loved it. So I'm really excited for you to taste this. And just by looking at it, it's so imperfect. It looks very hand rolled. The outer crust isn't — doesn't have this like perfect, clean, tight sheen to it. 

Ham El-Waylly: I also noticed the Shelsky's bagel is significantly darker than both [Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.] the machine rolled and the frozen. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Just feeling the outside. It's like really nice and crusty. Okay, now I'm gonna rip Shelsky's Bagel.

[RIPPING BAGEL] 

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah.

Sohla El-Waylly: There was a really big difference.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. Huge difference. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Wow. 

Ham El-Waylly: That was a struggle.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay, let's get in there.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, and I got the piece — I got the half with the knot.

Sohla El-Waylly: Oh yeah.

Ham El-Waylly: Where it got rolled. I — it has the most pronounced chew of all the bagels we tried.

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Ham El-Waylly: Like you feel it in your jaw, which is what I really want from a good bagel. Crust is more pronounced. You hear a slight crunch when you bite into it. And I love the Sichuan peppercorn in there. It's like an un unexpected numbness that you get from Sichuan peppercorn.

Sohla El-Waylly: I was surprised even by tasting the frozen one, there's no bad bagel. Like I would be happy with all of these bagels. When you do it side by side though, you know, it's obvious. But if I was like in the middle of somewhere with no bagels and I had a frozen bagel, I would be thrilled.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, yeah. Frozen bagels are better than no bagels. 

Sohla El-Waylly: What's interesting doing this progression, starting with the frozen, going to the machine rolled, and now Shelsky's, like, artisanal hand rolled sourdough, there's more contrast in texture as you go.

Ham El-Waylly: I've — yeah, totally agree.

Sohla El-Waylly: The first one's a bit mealy and kind of the same all the way through. The second one, we have this crust and this chew. And now ,this final Shelsky's, there's a very pronounced crust. There's a very pronounced chewy middle,  but I think it's interesting when you see where bagels came from. It's very obvious that this is not just bread with a hole in it. It has its own unique characteristics. This chewy interior, this crust, you have to fight with this bread. It's a bread made by hard people. 

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Sohla El-Waylly: Thanks to Jason Turbow, and Peter Shelsky and Steven Natali from Shelsky’s Brooklyn Bagels. If you want to check out some behind the scenes photos from this episode, you can follow us on Instagram. I’m @sohlae …

Ham El-Waylly: And I’m @hamegram. You can also follow The Sporkful, that’s @thesporkful. This is our last episode of Deep Dish … For now!

Sohla El-Waylly: Woah.

Ham El-Waylly: So don't be sad. If you love this show, please go ahead and leave us a rating or review on the podcast app of your choice, and also tell all your friends about it!

Sohla El-Waylly: All of them.

Ham El-Waylly: Don't shut up about it.

Sohla El-Waylly: All ... All ...

Ham El-Waylly: Every dinner party.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: Every birthday party.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: Every workplace meeting.

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Ham El-Waylly: Interrupt everybody to bring up Deep Dish.

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