BAGELS - HOT DESIGNER FOOD.

Byline: Pat Dailey Chicago Tribune 

Tough on the outside, chewy on the inside and perhaps capable of pulling out teeth.

For long-time fans, that's a great bagel.

But bagels, once a holy symbol of Jewish cuisine, the doughy platform for an endless supply of lox and cream cheese, have gone soft - too soft for those who affectionately call them doughnuts with rigor mortis.

They've entered the American mainstream, shedding their ethnicity and becoming enormously popular along the way. A decade ago, less than 20 percent of Americans had heard of a bagel, much less cut their teeth on one. Now, Americans are eating them up, lock, stock and bagel. Per capita bagel consumption is just more than 3 1/2 pounds annually - or as many as 30 bagels per year, according to Information Resources Inc., a Chicago-based market research firm.

And their potential is enormous, says Bill Donohue, publisher of Modern Baking, a trade magazine. ``Bagels are pretty hot, indeed, easily the biggest (growth) item in the baking industry.''

Bagel shops dot suburban strip malls and city street corners, drawing customers in with ``designer'' bagels that are a far cry from the plain, pumpernickel and poppy seed varieties of bubbe's day.

``Those numbers are moving so fast that no one has a handle on it,'' Donohue said.

Flavored bagels, including pumpkin, cranberry apple, banana nut, jalapeno cheese, sun-dried tomato, pesto, hummus, salsa and blueberry, might make a purist sigh, but they're dealing other breads a hard blow at the morning meal. Croissants, those buttery French darlings of a decade ago, are being nudged aside along with muffins, victims of their fat content. (But doughnut sales remain unscathed by rampant bagelmania, Donohue says).

Bagels are generally free of the fat burden, at least until butter and cream cheese enter the picture. That they've expanded to about twice their intended size, doubling up on calories, seems not to matter in a culture where bigger is usually thought to be better.

The Great American Bagel in Chicago boasts that its bagels are among the largest available - at least 4 1/2 ounces each, soft rather than chewy and steamed instead of boiled before baking. But Dana Ross, director of marketing for the chain that has 25 stores across the country, insists that they're bagels just the same.

The girth, she says, is due to the steaming, which is a response to the insatiable hunger for variety.

``You can't put something like chocolate chips or Cheddar cheese in bagel dough, then boil it. It would dissolve right out into the water,'' she said, adding that steaming puffs up all 20 varieties they sell.

Although Schapiro says he doesn't want fruit or vegetables in his bagels, he thinks all the diversity is probably a good thing.

Bagels helped define Jewish culture in this country for much of the century. Underneath the cliche of not being able to find a good bagel outside New York City stood a universal truth: Bagels were well-kept in Jewish communities. But bagels now are fairly well Americanized.

George Greenstein, author of ``Secrets of a Jewish Baker'' and for 35 years the owner of several Jewish bakeries in Queens and Long Island, N.Y., says that in the early part of the century, Jewish bakeries were an amalgam of European immigrant culture.

``Germans, Italians, Jews all worked together in bakeries as new immigrants,'' he says. ``Little by little, each group absorbed influences from each other. But then, just as pizza lost its Italian-ness, bagels became less Jewish.''

The ethnic ties loosened quite a bit when Lender's, once a family-owned bagel bakery founded by Murray Lender, was bought by Kraft. The company built a huge bagel plant in Mattoon, Ill., and if the locals there hadn't heard of a bagel before, that changed pretty quickly: Bagels were rolling off the lines and into supermarkets at the rate of 1.5 billion a year.

Mimi Sheraton, a former restaurant critic for The New York Times and the author of a cookbook on traditional Jewish cooking, says that popularity is the downfall of many things, bagels included.

``I've pretty much given up on them,'' she says. ``Bagels have gotten too big and pouffy. All that soft dough in the middle you could take out and use for cleaning wallpaper.''

Mark Talisman, a consultant from Washington, D.C., doesn't share Sheraton's disapproval of the new American bagel. Talisman, who once won a contest for homemade bagels, says their evolution is a good thing, an American metaphor.

``They're a cultural ambassador for Jews,'' he says. ``They've bridged an important gap between cultures. Few things are quite as effective as food in gaining new friends.''

Simple recipe, great taste SOURCE: By Pat Dailey

Chicago Tribune

Here is a simple recipe to follow for making great bagels.

CLASSIC BAGELS

2 tablespoons unsalted butter OR margarine

1 cup milk, scalded

2 tablespoons active dry yeast

Pinch sugar

2 cups warm water (105 to 115 degrees F)

8 cups unbleached flour, about

1 tablespoon salt

3 quarts water

2 tablespoons kosher salt 

2 tablespoons malt syrup (optional)

Sesame, poppy OR caraway seeds

Stir butter into scalded milk until melted. Stir yeast and sugar into warm water; let stand until foamy, 5 minutes.

Combine milk and yeast mixtures in a large bowl. Gradually mix in enough flour and 1 tablespoon salt to make a soft, sticky dough. Turn onto a floured board and knead until smooth, supple and elastic, 5 to 8 minutes. Place dough in a bowl, cover and let rise in a warm spot until doubled, 1 hour.

Put water, 2 tablespoons kosher salt and malt syrup, if using, in a large kettle and heat to a boil.

Turn dough onto floured board and punch down. Knead lightly to remove air bubbles. Remove a piece of dough about size of a small plum and roll into a rope, about 6-inches long. Form a circle with a well-defined hole in center; pinch ends together. Place on floured board. Continue shaping remaining dough. Let stand uncovered until they begin to puff, 10 minutes.

Carefully drop bagels into boiling water, adding them in batches so as not to crowd them. When water resumes to a boil, turn with a slotted spoon and cook 2 minutes. Transfer from water to greased baking sheets or baking sheets lined with parchment.

Sprinkle with seeds as desired.

Bake in preheated 400-degree oven about 35 minutes until golden. Makes 32 bagels.

NUTRITION INFORMATION PER SERVING: 125 calories; 1 gram fat; 3 milligrams cholesterol; 605 milligrams sodium; 24 grams carbohydrate; 4 grams protein.

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Photo

Photo: (Color) The bagel has gone mainstream, shedding itsethnicity and becoming very popular along the way.

Bob Fila/Chicago Tribune