flour choice for bagels?

American business has a knack of coming up with trendy breakfast foods to mass produce. First it was doughnuts. Then it was muffins. Then bagels and now back to doughnuts again.

For the most part, bagels still remain an ethnic based food. Just a fact of life.

For those trying to understand what constitutes a good bagel, I should point out that there is one exception to the boil all bagel rule. In my youth, misspent and otherwise, egg bagels were not normally first boiled. This includes quite a few good spots in Jersey, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Third or fourth patent flour produced in split run milling when they take top patent (all purpose). It is higher in gluten content. Also the amount of diastatic malt flour added for enzyme activity. Check the falling number.

In a response to Mike's posting (above), I previously responded in rec.food.baking:

} Newsgroups: rec.food.baking } From: snipped-for-privacy@not-a-dot-in-this-spot.arctos.com (The Old Bear) } Subject: Re: flour choice for bagels? } Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 17:57:18 -0500 } } "Mike Avery" writes: } >

} >No, it's worse than that. They don't want to boil the bagels. Many } >people don't like things they have to chew, to struggle to eat. The } >found that if they don't boil the bagels, they rise up more, they are } >lighter, and they aren't chewy. } . . . } And, Mike, we're frequent visitors to Colorado and I recall } buying commercial packages of bagels from the Rocky Mountain } Bagel Company at Costco in Denver a couple of years ago -- and } thinking that these ranked among the best commercial bagels. I } think they were properly made with malted water. Unfortunately, } last time I was in Denver, I could not find these and I suspect } that the baking company has not survived.

Well, we just returned from the Thanksgiving holiday in Denver and discovered that the local Costco is now making their own big, puffy, bready, in-store baked bagels -- but also had bags of small "cocktail bagels" made by the Rocky Mtn. Bagel Factory -- which is the trade name use by Ace Baking Company of Denver.

I brought too bags of these little bagels back to the east coast with me.

Their crust not quite as hard as one might like, but they're reasonably chewy and have excellent flavor. The ingredients listed on the package are:

High gluten flour, water, sugar, salt, malted barley flour, calcium propiontat, yeast, mono-diglycerides, wheat gluten, ascorbic acid, calcium sulfate, dextrose, enzyme, yellow corn meal.

Note the use of high-gluten flour *and* added gluten. Also the malted barley (which is both food for the yeast and adds to the flavor). The ascorbic acid also helps the yeast and the corn meal is probably used to keep the bagels from sticking to the baking equipment. (The glycerides are for texture and moisture; the calcium proprionate discourages spoilage due to mold growing on the finished product; the enzyme is a dough conditioner.)

I checked the web and discovered that Ace Baking in Denver was acquired in March of last year by Harlan Bakers of Indianapolis, Indiana. (See:

) Harlan is a high-speed manufacturer of "authentic bagels and pita bread" and manufactures a number of wholesale products including par baked and raw dough bagels.Harlan manufactures for its own retail labels and for the Einstein/Noah Bagel chains and McDonalds.I'm not sure how much the Rocky Mountain Bagel Factory product formulation is unique to Ace Baking in Denver. In my opinion, it is different than the Einstein product. (I confess to never having tried the bagels at McDonalds and to avoiding the packages of frozen bagels sold at supermarkets.) Harlan recognizes that the chewy "New York bagel" is a different beast than the bread-like soft bagel. Each occupies a different niche in the marketplace. See: and time I am in Denver, I may try to visit the Ace Baking facility. I'd be curious how they've modified their recipe and process for baking at Denver's 5280 foot (1610 meters) altitude. Cheers, The Old Bear