My review of Madison bagels

When I moved to Madison in 1996 the two closest grocery stores to my apartment were the Willy Street Coop and the Jenny St Market. Neither of them sold fresh bagels so I didn't buy bagels. Between my trips to NYC to see my family and their trips to visit me in Madison, plenty of large ziplock bags filled with NYC bagels were in my freezer. During my childhood I probably had a bagel sandwich almost every day of my life, but I married into a sourdough bread making family so the loss of a great bagel didn't affect my lunch. If my freezer was empty and I had a hankering for a great bagel I simply followed the recipe from the 'Secrets of a Jewish Baker' and made my own. 

Now I know  just enough about making bagels to make me a bit dangerous as I describe it.  But there simply are some essential elements to get the right balance of crisp exterior, interior chewiness, and flavor to make a NY style bagel. Getting this right requires attention to how much flour you use, how protein-rich the flour is, how long you knead the dough, how much water you use, how  you shape the bagel, how long you cold ferment it, how long you boil it, and how you bake it.  

 I offer this layperson's tutorial to say that if any of these steps are missing, it is not a NY style bagel. It can be a fine bagel, maybe a very good bagel, and possibly even a great bagel, although I remain unconvinced on that final point. But it is not a traditional bagel, the bagel where it all started and all the fuss has been made. I get that the bagel is more than sixty years past being an ethnic specialty and is a thoroughly assimilated food.  Back in 1946 it needed to be described as “small, hard Jewish rolls with holes in the center” and in 1954 "as a doughnut with rigor mortis” to introduce itself to a goyim audience, but today it is fully introduced.  You do not need to be from NYC or Jewish to be capable of boiling and baking top notch bagels. Jenny and I have each been living in Madison for decades and have eaten plenty of bagels here. But after bagel questing to Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Minneapolis, we were ready to "officially" taste Madison bagels. 

Bagels Forever: First stop was Bagels Forever. This was fitting because these were the first Madison bagels I tried. They can be found in all the east side grocery stores in the refrigerated section, sold in bags of six. I have found these to be unremarkable bagels but I have never tasted them fresh, bought from the store, so I headed over to give it a try.  Walking into the store, I liked the feel of it. There was a nice sized crowd, a place to pull a number like a well organized deli, you could buy several varieties of cream cheese, and the bagels were being made continuously. They do sell blueberry, cranberry oat, and other types of bagels I don't approve of, which has been their thing since they opened in 1973. A Capital Times article announced, Bagel Specialist Plans 12 Types and the Madison born owner and founder said he wants to "de-ethnicise" the bagel.  

My opinions about a fruit based bagel aside, this felt like the most Jewish of the bagel shops. When I asked my Madison-born Jewish friends for their favorite Madison bagel, almost everyone said Bagels Forever.  Located near the University, Bagels Forever is in the most Jewish concentrated part of Madison, making it easy to walk over and get a hot bagel.  As I walked out of the shop with my bag of bagels I heard someone ask, "Are you on your bagel quest right now?" Turns out it was Michael Pressman, an acquaintance with a bagel history. His wife is the granddaughter of one of the bakers in Bagel Baker Union 338, the legendary NYC bagel bakers. We chitchatted about bagels we have eaten and I went home to meet Jenny to taste these.

Would I walk half a mile out of my way to eat a Bagels Forever bagel:  No. There are a couple of things I liked about this bagel. It was a good size...not overstuffed with dough. It really hit the mark with the interior being chewy and not doughy. But these were not flavorful bagels and the exterior could have been a crisper.  I am not sure why this is the case since I never did hear back from the owner to learn about their production techniques.   
Would I buy a dozen bagels for a bagel spread: YES!   First of all, the bagels are a good deal,  75 cents. Jenny described them as "a good toasting bagel." I would have my baking sheets warming up in the oven, pop in the bagels to crisp them up and serve the crowd. Load the bagel with tuna, lox, cucumbers, cream cheese and so on and the bagel becomes a vessel and its own flavor doesn't matter as much. The structure of these bagels are sound and it can withstand a pile of toppings. 

---

Click the audio to hear us discuss Bagels Forever bagels.

Gotham Bagels:  
Gotham Bagels opened about five years after I moved to Madison. Walking into the store has a similar feel to a big city bagel shop. It is in the heart of the downtown. It is always crowded and the service is very efficient, The bagels are coming out of the oven fresh all day and you can wait a for a fresh batch if you have the time.  You can buy tuna salad, pickles, lox and whitefish...so even before you bite into the bagel you know it is the real deal. Joey Gaglio, the owner, exudes New York attitude. Despite a friend of a friend text connection, we were not able to connect to get my bagel baking technique questions answered. Luckily Joey likes to boast about his bagels so I could find my answers about his bagel baking technique all over the Internet.   Going into this tasting Jenny and I were already fans of Gotham bagels and felt confident we would vote them the best bagels in Madison. But we lined them up next to the other bags of bagels  and got to tasting.

Would I walk half a mile out of my way to eat a Gotham bagel:  YES!  First and foremost, the exterior crisp texture of a Gotham bagel is perfect. I am not saying that is enough, but sinking my teeth into a Gotham bagel makes me very happy. The flavor of the bagel is delicious, the salt level is perfect. My quibble with the bagel is the large size of it, which might be why the interior is a bit doughy for my taste. Bonus: The pumpernickel bagel. I am a fan of a pumpernickel bagel and very few bagel shops do it right. Gotham's pumpernickel bagel is great.
Would I buy a dozen bagels for a bagel spread: YES!  I already do. Even with the significant price point difference between Bagels Forever and Gotham, when I was buying several dozen bagels for my kid's bar and bat mitzvah, I went with Gotham.

---

Click the audio to hear us talk about Gotham bagels.​

A Midrash on Bagel Shops, Bagel Pop-ups and the Pandemic:  
Tasting Madison's bagels really underscored for me something I had noticed throughout this quest. Whether I was in Chicago or Milwaukee or Ann Arbor or Minneapolis or Madison...a hell of a lot of people started making bagels in their kitchens during the pandemic. These kitchen made bagels turned into larger pop-up operations often selling bagels at a farmers market, where you can not control for mother nature and her humidity...which  impacts the bagel.  Most of these pop-up bagels taste delicious, but the exterior is almost never crisp, One of my two judging criteria is 'will I walk a half a mile out of my way to buy this bagel.' My point with this criteria is whether the bagel is so tasty and tempting that I will pull one out of the bag and start eating it as I walk out the door.  Every single pop up bagel I have tried needs to be put in the toaster before eating, so it does not pass this specific test. (This reminded me of the conversation I had in Milwaukee with public historian Adam Carr, about how publicly judging people's bagels was more uncomfortable that I anticipated. The audio of that conversation is below.)

---

Listen to the audio of our 'Am I The Asshole'  conversation 

​Mermaid Bagels:​
In the 'Madison can be a small town' category, I kinda know Lisa Jacobson of Mermaid Bagels. Our sons went to school together and she used to own Mermaid Café, a very tasty local Café. She started making bagels during the Pandemic when two of her kids were living at home. Wanting a fun family project, she did endless experiments with bagel variations. Once she got the bagels where she wanted them, she took advantage of the commercial kitchen spaces in Madison before landing in the Madison Enterprise Center. Years ago I served on the board of Commonwealth Development, and this business incubation space is one of their initiatives, so I have spent time in this interesting building. I pre-ordered six bagels, walked over to the Enterprise Center, followed the bagel signs to the second floor and picked up my bag of bagels, which were sitting on a table with my name on it.

I noticed three things as I removed the bagels from the bag: They were beautiful and chock full of gourmet seeds, the bagel hole wasn't really discernable to the human eye, and the exterior of the bagel was soft. I asked Lisa about the hole situation and learned that the bagels with the bigger holes do not sell well at the Madison farmers market. I appreciated her facts on the ground reporting that "A bagel boob will sell and a bagel frisbee will not."  

Would I walk half a mile out of my way to eat a Mermaid Bagels bagel: NO. The bagel had a squishy exterior, with no crispness to it.  You can see my finger indent on the left side of the bagel, showing how soft it is. Lisa described her process of bathing the bagels in water, changing the alkalinity of the water and then steaming the bagels, but she no longer boils them. Not to get all sciencey about it -  but it is the boiling that sets the crust before a bagel goes in the oven. As pretty as this bagel is, a soft exterior is a deal breaker for me.
Would I buy a dozen bagels for a bagel spread: YES  First of all these bagels are beautiful, so my bagel spread would  be lovely. The seeds are flavorful. Ten minutes in the oven would crisp the bagels up and cream cheese and lox would add to the flavor.

---

Click the audio to hear our discussion of Mermaid bagels.​

Barrett's Bagels:  
Last month about 20 friends of the bagel quest sent me a link to a Madison Magazine article titled, 'Handmade bagels are having their moment in Madison,' referring to Barrett's Bagels. I looked through their webpage and the baker, Ben Anderson, clearly knows what he is doing and describes in detail his bagel making process.  So on an exceptionally hot and humid Sunday morning I biked over to the Monroe Street farmers market to buy some bagels. I am a fan of farmer's markets - I appreciate local farmers, bakers, and artists can sell their products to their community without the expense of a brick and mortar store. But I do prefer buying a bagel were there are bagel accoutrement to purchase as well. Barrett's was clearly the most popular stall, with a long line of bagel buyers. Most were there to buy a labor intensive bagel sandwich.  I did have one of my least favorite exchanges with a stranger who decided to aggressively lecture me on kindness when I pointed out that we did not need to stand in the 'sandwich buying' lane and we could move past people to the left to get in the 'buying loose bagels' lane. I can't imagine a line of people in NY not adding their commentary on her kindness lecture.

Would I walk half a mile out of my way to eat a Barrett's bagel:   MAYBE. I am torn on this because of the exterior. The bagels are beautiful, it has good flavor and nice chewiness. But there was no crispness to the bagel. My husband, the sourdough bread maker who understands science better than me, thinks I should factor in the hot humid morning. His point is that there is no way a bagel out in those elements can sustain crispness. Fair point. But this is why I wouldn't walk out of my way to buy a single bagel to eat at the Farmers Market. It needs to have all the bagel elements for me to do that.
Would I buy a dozen bagels for a bagel spread: YES!  ​These are beautiful bagels and tasty.  These bagels pack in more dough than I need in a bagel and they also do not have a discernable hole, which I think impacts the bagel cooking evenly. But sliced in half and toasted, these bagels would be great.   ​

---

Click the audio to hear our discussion of Barret's Bagels.

 

---