Montreal-style bagel

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Poppyseed (dark) and sesame seed (light) Montreal-style bagels.

The Montreal bagel, (sometimes beigel; Yiddish בײגל beygl, or sometimes in French "beguel"), is a distinctive variety of hand-made and wood-fired baked bagel.

1 History
2 Production
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

Montreal bagels, like the similarly shaped New York bagel, it was brought to North America by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe; the difference in texture and taste reflect the style of the particular area in Eastern Europe in which the immigrant bakers learned their trade. The bagel was introduced to Montreal by a baker named Isadore Shlafman in 1919. His descendants continue to make bagels today in the same neighborhood at the Fairmount Bagel Bakery. In many Montreal establishments bagels are produced by hand and baked in wood-fired ovens, often in full view of the customers.

In the wake of the political uncertainty associated with the rise of the Quebec sovereignty movement, coupled with the implementation of new laws promoting the use of French at the expense of English, for example Bill 22 and Bill 101, a substantial proportion of the Montreal English-speaking Jewish community gradually left Montreal for other locales. Catering to this population, Montreal-style bagel shops have opened in Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton^[1], Calgary, and other Canadian, and even US cities, such as Houston, Texas. However, this style of bagel is almost completely unknown in the northeastern U.S. despite its proximity to Montreal, mainly due to its equal proximity to the rival New York City bagel.

Most Montreal bagel bakeries are not certified kosher;^{[citation needed]} this does not necessarily mean that they are not kosher, only that they have not been certified as such by a paid inspector. The relatively recent establishment of a new bakery in the Town of Mount Royal has obtained kosher certification, perhaps reflecting a return to Orthodoxy among the Jews remaining in Montreal who have not left for other cities in North America and Israel,^{[original research?]} or else reflecting a trend to increasing strictness and formalism within the existing Orthodox Jewish community.^{[original research?]} However, the market for bagels is by no means restricted to the Jewish community, and bagels have become a part of the broader Montreal culture.

In contrast to the New York-style bagel, the Montreal bagel is smaller, sweeter and denser, with a larger hole, and is always baked in a wood-fired oven. It contains malt, egg, and no salt and is boiled in honey-sweetened water before being baked in a wood-fired oven, whose irregular flames give it a dappled light-and-dark surface colour. There are two predominant varieties: black-seed (poppyseed), or white-seed (sesame seed). Some purists object to any variation on this theme, though most bagel bakeries now offer many additional varieties (including Matzoh-like flat breads).

STS-124 passenger, and ISS Expedition 17 crewmember, Montrealer Canadian astronaut Gregory Chamitoff, brought the first bagels into space, 3 bags (18 sesame seed bagels) of Fairmount Bagels with him. ^[2] ^[3]

[edit] Production

Montreal-style bagels are, for the most part, manufactured by the same method used to produce a generic bagel. The Montreal-style method of making bagels builds on the basic traditional method in the following ways: