Skip to content

Where different views on Israel and Judaism are welcome.

  • Home
  • Subscribe / donate
  • Events calendar
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Israel
    • World
    • עניין בחדשות
      A roundup of news in Canada and further afield, in Hebrew.
  • Opinion
    • From the JI
    • Op-Ed
  • Arts & Culture
    • Performing Arts
    • Music
    • Books
    • Visual Arts
    • TV & Film
  • Life
    • Celebrating the Holidays
    • Travel
    • The Daily Snooze
      Cartoons by Jacob Samuel
    • Mystery Photo
      Help the JI and JMABC fill in the gaps in our archives.
  • Community Links
    • Organizations, Etc.
    • Other News Sources & Blogs
    • Business Directory
  • FAQ
  • JI Chai Celebration
  • [email protected]! video

Search

Archives

Recent Posts

  • ישראלים בקנדדה
  • חמש שנים לעבודה מהבית
  • הקוביד תפס גם אותי
  • Thirteen calls for action
  • Immersive art experience
  • Games, fun and serious
  • Welcome back, TUTS!
  • Play tackles Israeli/Palestinian conflict
  • Averbach reaches Kamloops
  • Israel’s new Ethiopian airlift
  • Remembering the Great Roundup
  • Walking tours celebrate Pride
  • Living their values daily
  • Fighting racism, terrorism
  • Diverse allies critical
  • An afternoon of music
  • Community milestones … awards, honours, weddings, releases
  • STEAM-powered schooling
  • A composer for the Queen
  • Different horror, same hell
  • Never waste life’s many gifts
  • Reuse, recycle, make anew
  • נסיעה שנייה לישראל
  • Dreamy Midsummer’s Night
  • A story of two families
  • New era in U.S. politics
  • Folk festival returns to park
  • Standing up against hatred
  • Good reads, good talks
  • Tofino mustard maven
  • Journey from prison to power
  • Ben-Gurion goes global
  • The romance of good bagels
  • Hitting the high seas & citrus

Recent Tweets

Tweets by @JewishIndie

Tag: bagels

The romance of good bagels

Winnipeg has had a bagel renaissance. It’s not exactly a bagel mecca, and these are definitely not the New York City bagels my husband was raised eating. However, the recent bagel trends here are a step forward.

In the earlier days of the pandemic, summer 2020, my kids and I were out at the park when we met another family who seemed to recognize us, I’m not sure from where. I was surprised when they struck up a conversation but we had such a nice moment. Now that we’ve all spent so much time on our own, I have come to realize how important these outdoor encounters can be to our health and well-being.

Towards the end of the chat, these kind strangers handed us a bagel, straight from a brown paper bag that contained a couple dozen, as my twins were missing snack and getting hangry (hungry angry). We divided it up and ate. Ohhh. It was good. Not exactly a Montreal bagel, more like a combination between a New York City and a Montreal bagel, but definitely better than anything I’d ever had in Winnipeg.

I rushed home to tell my husband how to acquire more of these. Bagelsmith was, at that time, almost an underground bakery with a simple website. It didn’t have an open storefront, due to the pandemic, but if you got online right at 8 p.m. Sunday night, you could get bagels delivered on, say, a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon. There were also schmears, but these all had strange things mixed in with the cream cheese, which my purist spouse could not abide even considering. Soon, we were up to ordering three or four dozen of these at a time.

It should be noted that these bagels have a hole in the centre and are properly boiled but, although we enjoy sesame, poppy or everything bagels, they have way too many seeds for our taste. In fact, we’ve collected the seeds from the bottom of a paper bag, filled a spice jar with them and used them for challah toppings. (That is way too many seeds for a house with kids in it. They get everywhere and our dog doesn’t like them!)

I clarify all this because we have been treated to all kinds of bagels over the years that, quite frankly, are not bagels. Round things with a hole perhaps, but they haven’t been boiled, or boiled things that have no hole, or varieties that are absolutely abhorrent to a purist. The Big Nope – blueberry bagels. We’ve lived in a variety of places, including North Carolina, Kentucky and Buffalo, N.Y., and had to do without, because some bagels aren’t worth the calories.

My husband spent part of his childhood getting pletzels and biales from Kossar’s on the Lower East Side in New York and bagels from Russ and Daughters. (Of course, in New York City, there are a lot of good bagel places!) His grandparents and the extended Eastern European family have strong memories of what things should taste like. He has very high standards. Years ago, on a work trip to Montreal, his colleague and good friend (who happens to be Muslim), took my husband on a tour of all the famous Montreal bagel places. Then, the friend loaded him up with so many bagels and so much Montreal smoked meat that it was hard to carry it all home on the plane. This is the kind of love they have for each other, a perfect experience – two longtime colleagues who affectionately value each other through food!

Back to Winnipeg … as the bakery grew and the pandemic situation changed, there were times when we could not get these bagels delivered. The bakery was downtown in a spot that wasn’t far away but was hard to negotiate by car. I even figured out that the bagel baker had children who went to our kids’ school. However, when everybody’s in remote school, that morsel of information is useless. When we couldn’t get them delivered, we went without. This wasn’t a life or death situation. I baked our bread regularly and, when the local bakery was open, we got sourdough bread, baked in a wood-fired oven.

You may think that I could try harder, and maybe that’s true. I bake lots of bread, but draw the line at any recipe that takes more than 24 hours or is fidgety. I leave croissant production, bagel boiling and sourdough to the experts. After one multi-day sourdough experiment in hot weather in Kentucky, we agreed that, while the pink thing I grew was definitely alive, it wasn’t likely to be edible or safe. Lucky for me that my husband is a scientific researcher, because that weird starter attempt was not worth the risk to health and safety.

OK, back to our bagels. A huge thing has happened. Our favourite, artisanal, expensive bagel bakery has opened a second shop, and it’s easy to get to and just about in the neighbourhood. Today was the grand opening. It was also our 24th wedding anniversary.

My husband went out in between work meetings and came home with two dozen – yes, 24 – bagels. No, it’s not flowers or wine or a fancy meal, but to my partner, this is as good and romantic as it gets.

Bagels are an ethnic delight for Polish Jews. To be honest, I wasn’t raised with steady access to good bagels, growing up in Virginia. Bagels weren’t my (more North American assimilated, with some Western European roots) family’s biggest food focus. However, the Talmud speaks to this, too. We have a papercut, framed in our kitchen, of this phrase. Check out Pirkei Avot 3:17 – “No bread, no Torah. No Torah? No bread.” If you don’t have food, you can’t learn properly and without learning? You can’t earn your bread, either.

So, here’s to a good bagel, and a person, a partner, with whom I can continue to learn and grow. Here’s to another 24 years. L’chaim! B’tayavon. Enjoy your meal. Eat in good health!

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Posted on July 8, 2022July 7, 2022Author Joanne SeiffCategories Op-EdTags bagels, food, Judaism, lifestyle, Winnipeg
Halifax “owns” bagel

Halifax “owns” bagel

East Coast Bakery opened in Halifax on May 14 last year. (photo by Alex Rose)

Gerry Lonergan wants to put Halifax on the bagel map. “Why do Montreal and New York own bagels?” he asked. “Two cities shouldn’t own bagels. Why can’t Halifax own them?”

Lonergan’s East Coast Bakery celebrates its one-year anniversary May 14. Since he opened last year, he’s been churning out quality bagels. The bakery came in third in a local newspaper’s poll for best new business after being open for only 45 days – and the voting had started two weeks before the store’s first day.

Although Lonergan is from Montreal, he is adamant that his bagels are their own style, which he calls East Coast. There are a few things that set them apart.

The first is sourdough: Lonergan is the only baker he knows who uses it for his bagels. The second is that his bagels are kosher, even though Lonergan himself isn’t Jewish.

With a laugh, he noted that Chabad Rabbi Mendel Feldman “said if I do become Jewish I wouldn’t be able to open on Saturday, so it works for everybody in the community.”

photo - Gerry Lonergan
Gerry Lonergan (photo by Alex Rose)

About his decision to go kosher, Lonergan explained, “If I went kosher, it was another level of auditing, of standards, of quality that I felt a lot of people would have trouble following my example, so it would give me a leg up in it from a business standpoint. But, also, I thought it was the right thing to do, it would just add that extra bit of authenticity to these bagels.”

Halifax Jewish community member Josh Bates helped Lonergan get started. The two met when a mutual friend told Bates he had to try Lonergan’s bagels, when Lonergan was still making them from home.

“In terms of becoming kosher, I also introduced him to the Chabad rabbi who kosher-izes his bagels, if that’s the word,” said Bates.

Bates works in the mayor’s office and, although he didn’t help Lonergan in any official capacity, he was able to use his knowledge to help in other ways.

“He had a few questions around building code, getting approvals, finding a location. I introduced him to the executive directors of a couple different business improvement districts in Halifax,” explained Bates.

With a background in the electronics industry, where he streamlined production processes, Lonergan knew how he wanted his bakery to function and what he would need to make it happen. The entire back of the bakery is open concept, so the customer can see as the bagels and challot are made every step of the way.

It was important for Lonergan to find the perfect place to set up shop, in part because his machines need three-phase power, which wasn’t available in every potential location. One of those machines turns tubes of dough into rings, which are then each individually hand-stretched before being boiled in a pot of honey-water. The machine churns out the rings at a rate of 3,600 an hour, or one a second.

While living in Montreal, Lonergan visited Halifax a few years ago and knew it was the place he wanted to be.

“I came for a five-day trip and I just fell in love. I just said, ‘Wow the people are so nice, the ocean is amazing.’ I just saw lots of opportunity here, and I saw there was a need for what I wanted to do here. There was a need for artisanal bread, artisanal bagels,” he said. “Within 48 hours of that trip, I said, ‘That’s it, I’m moving.’ I came home and put my house up for sale within about five days.”

In less than a year, East Coast Bakery has become something of a Halifax institution. Aside from his bagels and challot, which are based on old family recipes, Lonergan hopes to add hamantashen by next Purim. But even if he keeps the menu the same, Bates said the quality of Lonergan’s baked goods should ensure the bakery’s success.

“No matter how good a bagel is, it’s always better when it’s fresh out of oven…. I like a thin sweet bagel right out of the oven and, until East Coast Bakery opened, you couldn’t get that in Halifax,” he said.

And the challah? “Best challah I’ve ever had,” Bates said. “When I go in there and buy a bag, I have hard time not finishing an entire loaf on my walk home.”

Alex Rose is a master’s student in journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax. He graduated from the same school in 2016 with a double major in creative writing and religious studies, and loves all things basketball. He wrote this article as part of an internship with the Jewish Independent.

Format ImagePosted on May 12, 2017May 9, 2017Author Alex RoseCategories NationalTags bagels, bakery, Gerry Lonergan, Halifax, Josh Bates
Proudly powered by WordPress