Everything Bagels

Oakland Baker Now Making the Perfect New York Bagel

Armed with the confidence of a brash upstart and a mountain of experimental data, an Oakland baker is now making bagels that his website claims “are better than most places back East.” Twenty-seven-year-old former genetics student Dan Graf traded strands of nucleotides for cords of dough some time back, and in the effort to build a better bagel, the self-taught baker assembled a basement laboratory in his apartment, scoured the texts of bread gnostic Peter Reinhart, and even hit up Modernist Cuisine in lieu of heading to New York for a hot and steamy internship in one of the city’s remaining classic oven rooms. Now producing a specimen “that combines a uniquely crisp and blistered crust with a rich and chewy interior,” Graf’s Baron Baking is growing and getting raves. No matter how these bagels actually taste, it’s a truly blessed day when someone advances past the old “only New York water makes real bagels and pizza” claptrap and into the real science of baking. Kudos to Graf for doing the hard science. Now, all we really want to know is what Mimi Sheraton would say? [Wired, Earlier]

Oakland Baker Now Making the Perfect New York Bagel