Music: Spacey
Rachel: Here at Don’t Drink the Milk we don’t shy away from a hefty story. So, to round off season one, we were on the lookout for a nice dense topic. Something you can really sink your teeth into. Something… profound.
Maria: It has no beginning, it has no end. In so many cultures, the ring shape has symbolized eternity. It's symbolized birth, but it's also symbolized death.
Rachel: Something... complicated.
Josh: Food is always embedded in place. And it’s always embedded in history. And it evolves.
Rachel: Something... intergalactic?
Chris: Every galaxy has a black hole. There's pictures of 55 million light years away of a galaxy and it is the exact shape of a donut or a bagel.
Rachel: Bagels. I'm your host Rachel Stewart. And this is Don't Drink the Milk.
JINGLE
Music: Quirky investigation
Rachel: Um...Yeah, 5 – Dietla 5?
Sam: Yep.
Sound of door code beeps, door opening buzz, laughter
Sam: Are we staying in a bagel hotel?!
Rachel: Look at the decorations! I'm seeing bagels everywhere but that's just round windows...
Sam: That's just a circle.
Rachel: I think we're on the third floor. That's definitely a bagel-shaped mirror. Oh my god, Sam, look at the wifi code.
Sam: "Apartamenty Bagel."
Rachel: And the password?
Sam: "Bagel555."
Rachel: Can I just get you to turn around...
Sam: So, we have bagel artwork on the walls. These are interesting shaped bagels though – the hole is very large. They're like wreaths, but bread wreaths.
Rachel: Yeah. Well, we're gonna find out more about that tomorrow.
Sam: Oh, great.
Rachel: Once I saw a bagel-themed apartment online, I couldn't not book it for producer Sam and I. After all, we are in the city that is thought to be the original home of the bagel. And nope, it's not New York City.
Music ends
Maria: The first mention that I was able to find of the Jewish bagel was in 1610 in Krakow.
Rachel: Krakow, Poland. That’s Maria Balinska. She's the author of the book: "The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread."
Maria: I discovered bagels in my 20s as a graduate student in the United States. This was back in the 80s. And then I went to Poland on a scholarship to learn Polish.
Rachel: Maria didn't set out to become the go-to person on bagel history. But an exploration of Jewish-American foods led her deep into the backstory of the bagel. It also helped her to reflect on her own heritage.
Maria: I'm Polish-American. My Polish family is part Catholic, part Jewish, and this history of Poland being based on Catholics and Jews and where they came together, as indeed my family came together, can be told through food.
Rachel: So, back to that bagel reference from 1610. It was in something called the sumptuary laws, made by Jewish elders in Krakow.
Maria: They were meant to give guidance to how certain things that were in short supply were to be consumed. So you had actually such laws around jewelry. But anyway, the bagel found its way into these laws…
Rachel: Back then wheat was a scarce ingredient, so Maria says anyone who got their hands on a bagel would have been pretty lucky.
Maria: This was a precious bread! And it was very clearly stated that it would be consumed after at the bris, so the circumcision of a male infant.
Music: Jewish dance folk
Rachel: The bagel's Jewish roots, may not come as a surprise. Just think of some bagel vocabulary – the "schmear" of cream cheese, the salmon topping known as "lox" – these are Yiddish words. Even the word bagel itself – it's thought to come from the Yiddish "beygl" or "beigel," meaning ring.
Music ends
So what makes a bagel different from your average piece of bread? A bagel is only a bagel if it is briefly boiled before baking. And, of course, it must have a hole.
Maria: On the one hand, it makes them easy to store. Traditionally bagels were carried on a rope or on a pole. Going back a step further in the production of them, having a hole in the middle means that you have more surface area. The heat will cook the dough more evenly.
Rachel: There are plenty of ring-shaped breads around the world – in Turkey, Belarus, Finland...
Maria: ...among the Uyghurs in northern China. In Italy, the ciambella, which you can see on paintings from Renaissance paintings, there's even a little baby Jesus holding a bagel. Well, it's not a bagel, it's actually a ciambella.
Rachel: But of all these possible precursors to the bagel, one of the oldest examples brings us right back to Krakow in Poland.
Sound of streets in Krakoe
Rachel: I think I see an Obwarzanek stand!
Sam: That looks like it's got paprika. Maybe we should try that.
Rachel: Hello! This one – yep.
Sound of coins on counter
Rachel: Thank you!
Sam: Mmm! I know we've had a lot of bread today, but that's legit. It's like everything bagel taste but a different consistency.
Rachel: Yeah.
Rachel: Excuse me, do you speak English? Do you know where the bagel museum is – Obwarzanek museum?
Man: Bagel museum?
Rachel: Yes.
Man: Okay.
Rachel: Ah yes, perfect. Thank you!
Rachel: Okay, here we are.
Sam: Is this it?
Rachel: Yes.
Sam: Wait, so this is the word you've been saying? How do you say it?
Rachel: "Obwarzanek."
Sam: Krakow bagels!
Sound of door opening
Veronika: And now it's time for the fun part so you have to braid your Obwarzanek. So, one in front and then another, so you will be having, I don't know, something that looks like Italian fusilli or DNA...
Rachel: Remember those bagel decorations Sam described earlier, the ones on the walls of our apartment? Well, those were actually "Obwarzanki." And now Veronika is giving us the inside scoop on how to make them.
Veronika: Ok, so the most traditional Polish Krakow Obwarzanek should be, of course, round. So now we have to connect two edges of your twisted, Obwarzanek snake together.
Rachel: This twisted round bread pops up in the financial accounts of Queen Jadwiga of Poland way back in the year 1394. She spent one whole Grosch on the treat.
Veronika: Today one Grosch from Jadwiga's times would cost about 70 Polish złoty, so it would be pretty expensive. Maybe Jadwiga was that hungry, maybe she had some kind of a feast to attend to, we don't know that today, but we know that she did buy Obwarzanki back then.
Sound of turning on oven
Veronika: We have here three toppings to choose from, the most traditional ones. So first we have salt, second poppy seeds and third sesame seeds...
Rachel: Do you want to do salt and I'll do poppy, so we'll have two different ones?
Veronika: They need to take a bath in the very hot water. And the process will take about 10 seconds for each Obwarzanki.
Rachel: Krakow is clearly proud of its Obwarzanki. I mean, we're in a whole museum dedicated to it right now. There are Obwarzanek souvenirs in every tourist shop. But what about the bagel?
Veronika: I think not every Krakowian knows even that bagels came from Krakow. I think it's the fashion that is coming now and bagels today are becoming more and more popular. But we think of them as like American thing, not Polish. We don't even know that bagels are part of our tradition!
Music: Polish waltz piano
Sound of Jewish quarter walking tour
Tomasz: The first synagogue was called the Old Synagogue. So, the second one was called?
Crowd: New?
Tomasz: The new, of course, super short version. Long and proper would be "New Synagogue of Blessed Memory of Rabbi Remuh." … Small Popper Synagogue. Let's go in... And there was another synagogue right there. And because that synagogue was on a hillock, it was called the Synagogue on a Hillock... And there was another synagogue here, and another one just around the corner...
Rachel: I’m in Kazirmiez, Krakow’s Jewish quarter. Historian and tour guide Tomasz is taking us through the narrow streets, with their wonky cobbles and, yes, lots of synagogues.
Tomasz: Look at those balconies. Whenever you see the courtyard like that, you're absolutely sure, right away you know, once upon a time the place was Jewish.
Rachel: We’ve ducked into a side alley, with narrow balcony walkways above us and a small central courtyard. It feels familiar. In fact, it is familiar. This is one of the many parts of the city where "Schindler’s List" was filmed. Steven Spielberg’s Oscar award-winning, historical movie was about one man who saved the lives of more than 1000 Polish Jews during the Holocaust.
Tomasz: People are queuing right there, usually holding their things, suitcases or whatever they had. And then every ten people, you can find a German officer usually taking the suitcase, opening it and throwing that down, right?
Rachel: The film is based on a true story, and Tomasz tells us other tales of real people from this area. People who were banished to a Jewish ghetto on the other side of the river before being sent to Nazi concentration camps. Camps like Auschwitz, which is actually just an hour from here.
Music ends
Rachel: In the centuries leading up to the Holocaust, Jews had been expelled from one country after another in Europe. Many ended up here in Poland, which became known as the center of Jewish European life. In the 17th century, it was home to three-quarters of all Jews on the continent. But what brought them here?
Maria: Starting from the ninth century, you had people being invited into Poland, from Germany, and that would mean gentiles and Jews coming into Polish cities to develop the artisanal life, and that would have included bakers. There were all kinds of regulations around Jews and bread because of the significance of bread for Christians, right? Because of the communion bread. But in the case of Polish cities, the regulations were less strict.
Rachel: So Jewish communities began to grow in Poland, and at some point, bakers start making bagels. By the 19th century, they were pretty commonplace. More wheat was being cultivated in Europe and machines were developed to make it into flour.
Maria: Ironically enough, it's also American flour that starts coming into the European market. And therefore the price of wheat flour goes down dramatically. Bagels become much more cheap to make.
Rachel: By the 1920s, Maria explains that bagels have kind of become synonymous with poverty and a low social status. She came across this study from the era, which included first-hand accounts from bagel-peddlers in the capital, Warsaw – most of whom would have been Jewish.
Maria: And it's just a litany of horrible stories. You needed a license to peddle on the streets of a city. And many of these people couldn't afford it. So, they would be chased by policemen. One of them had fallen under a tram and lost their leg. You know, there was a lot of poverty in Poland in the 1930s and this was one of the best examples of how difficult life was for certain people.
Rachel: Facing economic hardship and growing antisemitism, huge numbers of Jewish immigrants left Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They headed across the Atlantic – with the bagel in tow.
Sound of ocean
Music: Manhattan 1920s jazz
Maria: To begin with, you had of course a concentration of Jewish culture in Manhattan, in New York, on the Lower East Side. And bagels were very much an ethnic food alongside things like rye bread, and limited to the Jewish community, but also important to the Jewish community. So, you see things like advertisements telling Jewish potential immigrants back in Europe that you know: “You'll be able to drink coffee and have bagels when you get to the United States!”
Music ends
Rachel: But for some of these immigrants, their dreams of freedom and prosperity would be sadly far from reality.
Sounds of bakery, ovens, metal utensils, coughing
Maria: The conditions in which bakers in general were working were pretty terrible conditions. They would have been in the basements, people working 12, 13 hours a day. The air, you can imagine because it was either wood or coal, fired ovens, lots of flour – bakers were actually collapsing quite early in terms of their health.
Music: Tense, time passing
Maria: They were frightened of going on strike because they were saving up money to get more people to come over from their home village back in Europe to the United States, and so that would have jeopardized their plans.
Rachel: But eventually the Jewish Bakers' Union was born, and in 1909 they went on strike.
Music ends
Sound of oven closing
Rachel: It was a success – they managed to secure shorter working hours, better hygiene...
Maria: And many people see this 1909 bakers' victory as actually a precursor to the victory of the garment workers - which is usually what is hailed as the great sort of turning point in labor union fortunes in the United States. But, you know, I think there is a good case to be made that the bakers led the way.
Rachel: By 1937, the bagel-bakers had formed their own breakaway union, with the power to bring bagel-baking to a halt in New York City, which they did. Here's a front-page headline from the New York Times in 1951:
Newspaper voice: "Bagel Famine Threatens in City; Labor Dispute Puts Hole in Supply."
Rachel: Interestingly, this same article describes the bagel rather coldly as:
Newspaper voice: "...the doughnut with rigor mortis.”
Rachel: Oof. So, the bagel wasn’t an immediate hit with everyone. Initially it was mostly enjoyed within the Jewish community. And it also got a bit of a makeover over the years: smaller hole, softer dough, sliced in half and topped with delicious fillings. Here's why New Yorkers today love their bagels.
Vox pops
There's something to the texture. There's like a moistness, chewiness, and crispiness.
I think it's partly the history of New York that makes them so good, too.
The fluffiness and the outside of the bagel when it's a little crispy is very good. I just love bagels, yeah.
A person just doesn't feel whole if they've gone through, you know, a few days without having a bagel.
Bagel and pizza is good things that New Yorkers know how to do.
Because we love to eat food on the go. If you get a bagel in like any other state, it's just usually kind of lackluster. Here they're very good. They're just superior in every way.
Rachel: Well, there's another city that might try to claim that "superior" title.
Rhonda: Our bagels are very easy to eat, they're very light. The New York bagel naturally, and designed that way, are a heavier type of bagel bread that are designed to really fill you up. The Montreal bagels are very, very light. Then they're boiled in honey – you can taste it on the outer shell of the bagel.
Rachel: Around the turn of the 20th century, Eastern European Jews weren't just migrating to the US. Many ended up in Canada, too. Rhonda Shlafmann's grandparents came over from Ukraine and her grandfather, Isadore, opened up the Fairmount Bagel Bakery in Montreal in 1919.
Rhonda: The bagels originally were like a horseshoe, they weren't closed. And for transportation and delivery, it wasn't very convenient. So, my grandfather started closing them like a circle. He used to take string and string 12 bagels together and he would deliver them hanging from the string.
Rachel: Most bagel connoisseurs I've spoken to for this episode have made it pretty clear that the flavors should be messed with too much. And the only acceptable sweet variety is the cinnamon-raisin. But Rhonda, who is the fourth generation of her family to run the bakery, is more open.
Rhonda: ...the blueberry and the all-dressed and the pumpernickel. You know, it's quite interesting, it's fun. Now we have a new one called cranberry pumpkin. It's my favorite flavor. But a lot of people get really upset. "They say it's not a real bagel. What are you doing? You shouldn't do that. Shame on you." But they're really good. So I don't agree.
Rachel: What about the methods – are the traditional methods still the same or have things changed a lot over the years?
Rhonda: 100% the same. Yeah, nothing's changed in our bakery. It's like a step back in time. We still boil the bagels. We still have the same brick oven that was built way back in the day for my grandfather. We still use the hardwood utensils for manipulation of the bagels in the oven. All the new bakeries use stainless steel, we still have the old-fashioned copper pots. The only thing over time that has changed for us is having the dough mixer.
Rachel: Ah the mixer – which brings us back to the United States...
Music: USA 1950s rock 'n' roll
Rachel: It's the mid-20th century. You know those baking unions we heard about before? Well, they're losing power in the face of a new threat: industrialization. Hand-made bagels did survive a little longer than other goods, simply because of the challenges of making a machine that could cope with such a dense dough.
Maria: What brought success, was collaboration between an engineer and an ambitious family of bagel bakers.
Rachel: That's Maria again. She's telling me about Harry Lender, who had moved from Poland and set up a bagel bakery in West Haven, Connecticut in 1927.
Maria: And his three sons were very ambitious about getting more people to eat bagels. And they decided they wanted to “bagelize America.”
Rachel: In order to do that, they were gonna need a lot more bagels. And that's where the bagel-making machine came in.
Maria: The other thing that happened was they realized that they could freeze bagels and ship them to places.
Rachel: So, the bagel logistics were in place.
Maria: And then they just had to figure out, well, how do you get people in, let's say, I don't know, Kansas, where there's no Jewish community to eat bagels? They decided to use humor. And they did all kinds of crazy things. The management of Lenders Bagels did a bagel ballet and all of them in tutus. Murray Lender, who was an amazing marketing, I think genius actually, he went on the Johnny Carson Show, which at the time, you know, was a was the big night late night show on American television, and talked about bagels and gave Johnny Carson a bagel necklace.
Sound of canned laughter
Maria: This came at the same time that American culture was much more open to celebrating different ethnic cultures. There were a lot of Jewish comedians on television in the theaters, people were making bagel jokes. You know, it was really a perfect storm in a positive sense for them.
Music ends
Rachel: And so, their plan worked. By the mid-70s, bagels were filling supermarket freezers from Connecticut to California. Eventually the Lender factory would crank out millions of bagels a day. The "bagelization of America" was complete.
Music sting
Rachel: The next stop on our bagel story brings us full circle – full bagel, if you will – right back to Europe.
Sounds of plane and newspaper pages turning
Newspaper voice: "Bagelmania – how it became Britain's hottest bread."
Newspaper voice: "The bagel makes its way to Spain."
Newspaper voice: "The Bagelisation Of Berlin."
Christopher: My name is Christopher De Kime and I'm from the States. And unknowingly, I brought the bagel back to Poland.
Rachel: Back in Krakow, we're sitting in a bagel cafe on the outskirts of the Jewish quarter.
Christopher: Most Americans, who definitely eat more bagels than anybody in the world, don't know that the bagel was born in Poland. I didn't know either. So, I was quite shocked, actually.
Rachel: So, you decided to open up a bagel shop here before you knew the history?
Christopher: Exactly.
Rachel: What a coincidence!
Christopher: Yes, that's the story of my life.
Rachel: Now, cast your mind back to the beginning of the episode. There was a reference to black holes, and how the bagel is kind of like the universe? Yeah, that was Christopher. He describes himself as a bit of a mystic.
Christopher: The hole in the bagel, for me, it symbolizes emptiness and fullness at the same time. I am attracted to the hole in the middle maybe even as much as I am to the bread itself and that would translate into my view of the human existence.
Rachel: I like that. We're all just like little poppy seeds in a big bagel.
Christopher: Fantastic.
Music: Spacey
Rachel: And you know what... maybe he's onto something. Did you catch the wacky sci-fi film "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once"? It won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2023. Well in this movie, the bagel, specifically the everything bagel, is a black hole. Everything, all the matter in the universe, is on the bagel and it collapses in on itself.
Music ends
Rachel: Anyway, back to this dimension and the bagel café. A sign on the counter lists seven flavors of bagels that are on sale, in English and Polish. We've got all the usual suspects...
Christopher: We have an everything bagel, a sesame bagel, a plain bagel, we have a wholewheat or a gramflour bagel, more brown-ish, we have an onion bagel, we have a cinnamon-raisin bagel, which is our only sweet bagel, and there's one more flavor...poppy bagel.
Rachel: Christopher grew up in New York. So, are his bagels a true taste of the Big Apple?
Christopher: It's really hard to get high-gluten flour here. So, ours are lighter. They're chewy, but they're not as dense as a New York bagel. I used to feeI a bit like I'm not doing justice to the bagel. But I've kind of switched my brain a bit. It doesn't need to be exactly like a New York bagel because it's a Krakow bagel, you know.
Rachel: Of course, we need to see for ourselves. Sam goes for...
Sam: Ok, I'm going to do the onion bagel please, the B.L.T.
Rachel: And I order...
Rachel: Could I please get an everything bagel, classic, but with no smoked salmon please?
Rachel: My first ever everything bagel. Which is basically most of the other toppings all on one bagel, with some added garlic and onion granules for good measure.
Rachel: The everything bagel is amazing! How have I never had this before?
Sam: It definitely is a little bit lighter, like he was saying. It's not quite as dense. Which is good. And so nice to have a BLT. I feel like this is recharging my American battery a little bit.
Rachel: A trip to Poland is recharging your American battery.
Rachel: Christopher thinks this Americanness can actually explain the bagel’s recent comeback in Europe.
Christopher: I just think it's another manifestation of people's interest in American, you know, whether it be Hollywood, whether it be food, junk food or non-junk food, culture in general. And this happens to be the place where the bagel was born. So that's quite unique.
Montage of TikTok clips about bagels
Rachel: The simple bagel hashtag has 2,4 billion views on TikTok. Then there's #bageltok, #bageltime #bageladdict and… #rainbowbagel. That bagel took Instagram by storm a few years ago – a multicolored creation topped with "funfetti cake cream cheese."
Josh: I have never seen it. I love bagels. I buy my bagels at Costco, I'll be real.
Rachel: One more trend, the scooped bagel?
Josh: Tell me more.
Rachel: This one apparently comes out of, surprise surprise, LA and the idea is you scoop as much of the bready doughy stuff out so that you can have all the joys of the bagel with fewer carbs.
Josh: That's great. I lived in LA for years. That doesn't surprise me in the least.
Rachel: I'm chatting to Josh Sbicca, associate professor of Sociology at Colorado State University. His work focuses on things like food justice, food politics and gentrification.
Josh: Food is always connected to people and place. And so, you have to look at specific contexts in order to understand, for instance, why something like bagels would be entangled in gentrification.
Rachel: The bagel made its way to the US very much as a working-class immigrant food. And yet these days, it often pops up in fancy new cafes with a fancy price tag to match.
Josh: Should every food serve a working-class budget? No, not necessarily. But in the context of a gentrifying neighborhood where a neighborhood is historically working class and then a food of any kind, bagel or not, comes in and is more expensive than what people are used to paying – that prices people out and it reflects a larger change in ground rents, both for retail and for residential.
Rachel: So, traditional immigrant food going mainstream can have unintended consequences.
Josh: You definitely see that happening in, for example, Mexican American neighborhoods. All the Mexican food that's in those neighborhoods. Maybe some of it becomes attractive to gentrifiers, because it's quote unquote authentic, they start visiting those neighborhoods, those neighborhoods become attractive, those people get priced out, and then 20 years down the line, you have a hipster taco shop instead of the family-run taqueria.
Rachel: Josh says food is of course always evolving, and there are always gonna be food trends.
Josh: The bagel moment is perhaps like the kale moment, right? The savvy restaurateur or the savvy cafe owner or whoever is going to capitalize on those trends because they're a business owner and they need to make money. And if that leads to pricing people out, you know, that's one of the ravages of capitalism.
Rachel: But what about the bagel’s identity? Has it completely lost its Jewish-Polish roots?
Josh: On the one hand, maybe it's lost some of its identity. But if a food retailer is wanting to actually highlight the sort of authentic nature of that food, the exact opposite could be happening, where its identity is centered for the consumer in a particular kind of retail space that wants to sell it in that way, regardless of whether or not the purveyors are Jewish themselves, in this case.
Rachel: So, what should the consumer do then if they don't want to be a part of that? Is there anything they can do apart from just say don't have a bagel?
Josh: I'm not saying don't buy bagels. I think bagels are delicious. But understanding the context within which we make consumer choices does matter. Make an effort to patronize locally owned businesses of longstanding community members. Find those people who have deep attachment to that place and support those people.
Music: Quirky, investigative
Maria: That's what's so interesting to me about the bagel, that it's sort of riches to rags to riches.
Rachel: Maria sees the bagel's story as a resoundingly positive one. From the chosen snack of a Polish queen to a symbol of poverty and strife on both sides of the Atlantic, then reelevated to something special, a treat, both tasty and Instagrammable.
Maria: What's hopeful about the bagel is that it has been along this journey, which is a multicultural journey. It's adapting to different cultures, it's adapting to different places, it's adapting to different ingredients, it's adapting to different technologies and it's still something that makes people smile.
Maria: A ring is something perfect, right? It's like a halo is something perfect. But the bagel is the human interpretation of that. It's sort of funny, it's sort of lumpy, it's sort of, you know, and at the same time it tastes good. So, we love to meet over bagels.
Music ends
Voxpops
The best bagel order, I think in New York, um, is gotta be, like, Lox with red onion and scallion cream cheese. That's my number one.
I'm a plain bagel with cream cheese kind of girl.
I get the cinnamon with butter.
I like an everything bagel toasted with tofu, scallion cream cheese, lox, capers, and tomato.
My favorite bagel is Unicorn.
Lox and cream cheese on a toasted everything. Whole wheat, because I like to make it a little healthy.
Pumpernickel is my go-to bagel. There probably isn't much really any bagel that I would turn down.
Music: Jewish folk dance
Rachel: And I reckon you just can't beat a classic cream cheese bagel. Thank you for following the bagel around the world with me. This episode was hosted and produced by me, Rachel Stewart. It was edited by Sam Baker and fact checked by Katharina Abel. Thanks to all our guests today, Walkative Tours and the Obwarzanek museum in Krakow, Trina Mannino, David Levitz and Erika Marzano. Our team also includes Charli Shield and Chris Caurla, and a big thanks to our friend and colleague Cristina Burack for the idea for this episode.
If you have an idea for something you'd like us to follow around the world and through time, drop us a line at dontdrinkthemilk@dw.com – no apostrophe. Maybe your idea will feature in season 2!
Don't worry, while we're on a short break, we'll still be dropping some content in the feed. So don't go anywhere, and make sure you're subscribed to our show on whatever podcast platform you prefer. A huge thank you to everyone who has listened, liked and shared our episodes this season. If you enjoy what we're doing here, do leave us a review! It really helps us get seen and spread the word.
Music ends
TRALER – AFTER DARK