Tompkins Square Bagels
- Casey Choung
- Mar 24, 2022
- 3 min read
Before analyzing the video, it’s important to characterize what makes a bagel unique. A bagel is a type of bread that is unique for its hard shell and extremely chewy and almost gooey interior. Often, there are seasonings on the bagel like sesame, poppy seeds, dried onion, or all of the above.
Video from the YouTube channel James and Karla
The video depicts the typical bagel making process at Tompkins Square Bagels in Manhattan’s East Village. To start, the ingredients they use are malt powder, salt, yeast, brown sugar, flour, and water. All of these are dry ingredients with the exception of water. In other recipes, malt syrup may be used to replace the brown sugar and malt powder. These two ingredients are meant to help caramelize the bagel to give it that distinct crust, as well as give a slight sweetness to the dough. The mixing process utilizes a commercial mixer with a dough hook attachment. During this step, kneading also occurs, which is supposed to develop gluten to give the bagel its signature chewiness. This step may also include the addition of add-ins for specialty bagels.
After the dough has been mixed, it appears smoother and tackier. There are no lumps as the ingredients have been thoroughly combined. It’s likely the dough was allowed to rest prior to shaping, allowing the dough to rise and puff up a bit. The shaping process consists of cutting a strip of dough, forming a ring by connecting the ends, and solidifying the connection by rolling it out on a board. The bagels are again allowed to rest to continue rising and developing a yeasty bread flavor.
The bagels are then boiled and baked. The boiling process is extremely brief, which contributes to the bagel's crunchy crust and toothsome interior. Sometimes the bagels are boiled in malt syrup or baking soda to enhance these effects. Boiling distinguishes bagels from a usual loaf of bread. It’s a unique process that definitely scales fairly well to allow for multiple batches of bagels to be churned out with ease. The bagels are scooped out of the kettle using a spider strainer, and then dumped onto a set of boards and sprayed down with water.
The oven is a deck oven with rotating platforms, which lends itself well to commercial applications. According to the narrator, the oven is set at 550 degrees. Prior to baking the bagels, toppings are added while the bagels are still wet and somewhat sticky from boiling. Instead of baking the bagels directly on the deck, the bagels are placed onto burlap covered planks and slid into the oven. It could be that the burlap absorbs some excess water and prevents the bagels from burning during the initial bake. The bagels are later pushed off the board, and allowed to bake directly on the metal deck. The bagels are pulled out of the oven in batches with a pizza peel-like tool and then dropped into a wire bin to cool. The end result is a nice thick and browned bagel.
The process for making bagels is like any other breadmaking, but with a few minor tweaks that make it unique. It may be interesting to dive into each of the unique ingredients or techniques and how they came about. However, ultimately I am interested in the bagel’s commercialization. The replicability and scalability of the process has allowed for bagels to become a staple food in not only dedicated artisan shops around New York and the tristate area, but also American supermarkets. Bagel making also slowly evolved, with the changes and variations on what equipment is used or what ingredients are used. I hope that these changes can give insights into whether or not the process affects the “authenticity” of the New York bagel. With my paper, I hope to explore the differences between the artisan and factory bagel, and look at whether or not these differences lead to something different than the New York Bagel, or something that can be considered authentic.
Like many others, I was quite surprised that the bagels were boiled and then baked. Makes sense considering the fluffy inside texture as compared to the crunchy outside. I’m also interested in how the bagels are commercialized as compared to the New York originals and what might be considered authentic vs inauthentic. Are industrial bagels rip offs of artisan bagels or are they simply siblings?
Honestly I had no idea they boiled bagels before they baked them, I was wondering about commercialism and bagels, because there's big nation wide stores, but there's also bagel chain stores limited to a town or city, do they decide to go factory to make the bagels or would they still be artisan?
Your focus on researching about the process of making a bagel is so interesting. What caught my eyes the most was the process of boiling the dough before it is baked in order to make the inside fluffy/chewy and the outside crunchy. I wonder if there is another way to make this texture without boiling the dough first and I also wonder if you can just boil all the dough and then create its shape and the bake it and come out the same way? I also wonder for blueberry bagels if the blueberries are in the dough while the it is getting boiled. This is such an interesting topic and I am excited to know about more!
I was very interested in the multi-step process that was required to make these New York style bagels. I knew about most of the steps already as a bagel shop back in my home town allowed for customers to see into their kitchen. However, I never realized that there was a boiling step to help with the texture and addition of toppings onto a bagel. How important do you think toppings are to a bagel? Do you think it's a vital element or rather just a garnish?
I love the focus on the production of the bagels rather than just the food itself. From the video you showed it is apparent that there is a lot of hard work that goes into making bagels in this traditional way. That being said, your exploration of different types of manufacturing of bagels from factories or other commercial companies will be a very interesting concept. Maybe looking to see if these larger scale production methods have taken away from the true identity of a bagel.