My search for a great London bagel took me to bagel bakeries on Brick Lane and in areas of north London – Golders Green, Hendon, Finchley, Stamford Hill – with large Jewish communities.
I was not seeking something as tough, doughy and bloated as a New York bagel, nor was I expecting a lighter ring of dough with the old-world character of a Montréal bagel. If a London bagel meant middling size, sweetness, chewiness and crispness, so be it. But to be truly great a London bagel needed to have something more at its core than a hole. It needed to show a baker’s pride and craft.
