“My grandmother doesn’t like my bagels,” Maya Black, co-founder of the bagel bakery Bread Flower in Manchester, says with a laugh. It’s nothing personal, apparently; it’s just that Black’s New York-style bagels are a different beast from the bagels – or, as they are historically called, beigels – that her grandmother grew up buying from their local Jewish deli. There’s no salt beef, and rather than sandwich fillings, NYC bagels come with “schmears” – variations of cream cheese mixed through with anything from herbs, olives and horseradish, to honey and blueberries. Topped with seeds, they are larger, chewier and tangier. Some might even say they are tastier, though that feels sacrilegious given the hallowed place traditional bagels occupy in the hearts of the Jewish community.
What can be said with some certainty is that New York-style bagels are becoming something of a trend in Manchester, London, Leicester and Edinburgh – cities that have long been home to Jewish diaspora communities. It’s a trend that, in London at least, seems to have kicked off in lockdown, when many who could took to baking. Expat New Yorkers, or those who had lived in New York and fallen in love with the bagels there, missed their distinct flavour and texture and decided to recreate it.
