So, you want the whole story on bagels? It’s a confluence of melting pot and boiling pot. Bagels originated in Poland in the 1600s and Jewish Eastern Europeans, who settled in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1800s, brought the recipe with them. Popularity in New York surged, and for 50 years, the bakers union regulated bagel-making down to their size. In the 1970s, machine production introduced bagels to the masses, albeit as a softer “roll with a hole� version. But machine-made bagels can’t compare to those crafted by hand. The contrast of crunchy crust with dense chew is the mark of an artisan bagel. It’s the real deal that seeds and smears highlight, not hide.
Such attention to production is why Biff’s Bagels “toasts the competition.� Located in a historic building in downtown Flagstaff, the line stretches down Beaver Street as the doors open on a Sunday. Yet, they can get you in and out within 30 minutes. In fact, on those busy summer weekends, the shop turns out 76 dozen bagels. This does not include commercial accounts, like White Dove Coffee and Bookmans, or the 80 breakfast bagels bound for Woody Mountain Campground.
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