The Last Best Bagel
Quote de jour
"A bagel is donut with the sin removed."
~George Rosebaum
Does something taste better when you know it's the last one? If I were on death row, my last meal would include bagels from St.-Viateur Bagels in Montreal. Handmade and baked in a wood-burning oven, these crispy, chewy bagels bear no resemblance to the bloated, bland New York style cousins.
In August, after a long hiatus, I enjoyed a pilgramage to the bagel mecca of the world, Montreal. There are two rival bagel companies there, St.-Viateur http://www.stviateurbagel.com/ and Fairmount. Both are good but on this occaison, St. Viateur won.
What makes these bagels king? Every step of the process is handmade in the same labor intensive way since 1957. Each bagel is hand-rolled, cut and shaped. The bagels or their holes are as individual as fingerprints. They contain no salt and are poached in water with added honey and then baked in a wood-burning oven.
Bagel love at the wall of fame
This same oven has been baking bagels 24/7 since my disco dancing youth. After club hopping until 3AM, nothing tasted better than a hot out of the oven bagel. They have more varieties now but back then, you either ordered black seed (Poppy) or white seed (sesame). White seed remains my favorite.
These beauties don't last long. They go hockey puck hard within a day. The best way to preserve them is to slice them as soon as you get home or in my case my hotel suite, wait until they are almost room temperature, then seal them into freezer baggies and freeze solid.
Crazy for bagels!
Before serving, you can defrost them in a microwave but I prefer a toaster oven.
With a schmear of cream cheese, wild Alaskan smoked salmon, chives from the garden and a grind of pepper. It doesn't get any better than this... except maybe dreaming of my next trip to Montreal.
"A bagel is donut with the sin removed."
~George Rosebaum
Does something taste better when you know it's the last one? If I were on death row, my last meal would include bagels from St.-Viateur Bagels in Montreal. Handmade and baked in a wood-burning oven, these crispy, chewy bagels bear no resemblance to the bloated, bland New York style cousins.
In August, after a long hiatus, I enjoyed a pilgramage to the bagel mecca of the world, Montreal. There are two rival bagel companies there, St.-Viateur http://www.stviateurbagel.com/ and Fairmount. Both are good but on this occaison, St. Viateur won.
What makes these bagels king? Every step of the process is handmade in the same labor intensive way since 1957. Each bagel is hand-rolled, cut and shaped. The bagels or their holes are as individual as fingerprints. They contain no salt and are poached in water with added honey and then baked in a wood-burning oven.
Bagel love at the wall of fameThis same oven has been baking bagels 24/7 since my disco dancing youth. After club hopping until 3AM, nothing tasted better than a hot out of the oven bagel. They have more varieties now but back then, you either ordered black seed (Poppy) or white seed (sesame). White seed remains my favorite.
These beauties don't last long. They go hockey puck hard within a day. The best way to preserve them is to slice them as soon as you get home or in my case my hotel suite, wait until they are almost room temperature, then seal them into freezer baggies and freeze solid.
Crazy for bagels!Before serving, you can defrost them in a microwave but I prefer a toaster oven.
With a schmear of cream cheese, wild Alaskan smoked salmon, chives from the garden and a grind of pepper. It doesn't get any better than this... except maybe dreaming of my next trip to Montreal.
I am SO glad you are covering the Montreal bagel. When I saw the headline, the Best Bagel in the World = I KNEW it had to be Montreal.
So how many do you buy in Montreal? We USED to buy 12 dozen, now only about 8 dozen. Reminds me to have a few more before they are all gone.
We only buy sesame. I used to buy 3 dozen every two weeks, I loved to broil them in the oven and put margarine on them.
Cream cheese and Nova Lox is great, too.
We go to Fairmount now, but used to go to St. Viateur.
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Also, the NYT had a recipe 20 years ago for these bagels. Unfortunately, I no longer have that recipe.
The fire laws in Montreal allow what no US city would allow: open flame. Of course, we also know that getting fire insurance in that neighborhood is impossible.
Yes, Kathryn that's the problem but without the wood-burning oven it isn't the same
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Damn!...Thats a HUGE bag of bagels you had there
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