Everything you want to know about bagels

BAGEL TOWN

The best bagels in the Los Angeles area

Following is a list of the best bagel makers in the Los Angeles area and iconic delis:

November 12, 2008

BAGEL TOWN

L.A.'s Brooklyn Bagel Bakery owner tells how to spot the real deal

"When I taste a competitor's bagel," says Richard Friedman, owner of Brooklyn Bagel Bakery in Los Angeles, "I taste a plain, water, hearth-baked. That is the best test."

November 12, 2008

BAGEL TOWN

The bagel: an L.A. story

"Most people choose the bagel they grew up with," says Richard Friedman, and for most Southern Californians, whether they know it or not, that means the choice is bagels made either by Friedman or his oldest competitor.

November 12, 2008

BAGEL TOWN

Bagel-making secrets for home bakers

What I am about to explain could get me barred from the Lincoln and Holland tunnels or any other routes into Manhattan. But as a baker who loves bagels and all the things that can go on them, I am duty-bound to dispel urban legends and to tell you that anyone can make great bagels at home, no matter where you live.

November 12, 2008

COOKSTUFF

Sierra Nevada Farmhouse Cream Cheese

Handcrafted cream cheese is making a comeback.

BAGEL TOWN

Bagels, OK, girda nan, are a hot commodity in China too

A bagel is one of the last things you'd expect to find in the kind of isolated regions where I travel in my work as a photographer of indigenous peoples -- which is a problem, because I love bagels and suffer if a week goes by without one. But on a recent expedition, I was driving through remote northwestern China photographing the Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who for centuries have lived on their land, oblivious while international borders changed around them. I pulled the car over at a street market in a rural village outside the city of Kashgar near the Pakistani border. As I stepped out of the car I couldn't believe my eyes or nose -- before me was a pushcart piled high with fresh, hot bagels.