BAKE AT HOME, SERVE THEM HOT.

Byline: Larry Lipson

So you can bake bread at home. Why not bagels?

You can start from scratch, or you can buy ready-to-bake bagels that can be refrigerated or frozen until you're ready to eat them. When it's time to bake the ready-mades, place one or more on a cookie sheet without grease and bake 5 minutes at 475 degrees.

Bake It Again Sam Bagel Cafe in Toluca Lake offers ready-to-bake bagels every Friday afternoon in four flavors (water, onion, sesame and cinnamon raisin), minimum one dozen. Call [phone] for information.

For those who want to do it themselves, North Hollywood-based Tunza Food Products Inc. offers "The Complete Bagel Kit," which contains a bagel mix (you add water), a yeast pack, toppings, a bagel flipper, two chef's hats, instructions and a recipe booklet.

From this kit you'll get 12 to 24 bagels, depending on the size you want. The retail price is $19.95, and additional mix refills and accessories may be purchased separately. Call [phone] or write to Tunza Food Products, 11684 Ventura Blvd., Box 700, Studio City, Calif. 91604.

The Cook's Library at 8373 W. Third St., Los Angeles, [phone], recommends any of these cookbooks for bagel recipes: "Nancy Silverton's Breads From the La Brea Bakery" ($30; Villard Press), "The Bagel Bible," second edition by Marilyn Bagel ($9.95; Globe Pequot Press), "Once Upon a Bagel" by Jay Harlow ($10.95; Harlow & Ratner), or "The Best Bagels Are Made at Home" ($8.95; Nitty Gritty Cookbooks).

Start with beugel, or Abigail ... or was it Bhagelramesis?

The bagel has a rich history, though its origin is somewhat apocryphal.

Some say the bagel replaced the kipfel, a half-moon-shaped bread, in a Viennese coffeehouse in 1683, when an enterprising coffeehouse owner shaped it to resemble a stirrup, or "beugel" in German.

It was supposedly in tribute to King John Sobiesky of Poland, who drove the Turks from Vienna, causing numerous grateful Viennese citizens to cling to his stirrups as he entered the city. A circular Austrian sweet roll called a beugel is still around today.

Then there's the story of Bhagelramesis, a High Court member in ancient Egypt who had a fondness for unsweetened doughnuts. Some were found with him when his body was exhumed. Call them bhagels if you wish.

A beautiful biblical woman named Abigail is responsible for yet another version. She supposedly took off after King David made a hit on her and packed 200 loaves of dough on the backs of burros. But the heat of the Negev desert and the rough ride formed the dough into what first was termed Abigails, then bigails, and finally bagels.

There also is a story about a baker from Crete named Bagelus who tried to cure his gout by putting dough around his toes and sitting in the sun, producing "toe-ring rolls" that eventually were named after him.

And a fellow named Zhelleck P. Bagel may have invented the bagel in 1893 when his products first were sold at the Rivington Street Bakery in New York.

According to his great-grandson, George F. Bagel, clever Zhelleck was granted a copyright on the name in March 1894.

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Photo Bernie Kaufman of West Hills finds a spot for his breakfast bagel, coffee and a book at Western Bagel in Woodland Hills. Myung J. Chun/Daily News