The Montreal-style bagel or Montreal bagel, is a distinctive variety of handmade and wood-fired baked bagel. In contrast to the New York-style bagel, or the East Coast Style Bagel which also contains sourdough, the Montreal bagel is smaller, thinner, sweeter and denser, with a larger hole, and is always baked in a wood-fired oven. It contains malt, egg, and no salt, and is boiled in honey-sweetened water before being baked. In some Montreal establishments, bagels are still produced by hand and baked in full view of the patrons. There are two predominant varieties: black-seed, or white-seed.
History
Montreal bagels, like the similarly shaped New York bagel, were brought to North America by Jewish immigrants from Poland and other Eastern European countries; the differences in texture and taste reflect the style of the particular area in Poland in which the immigrant bakers learned their trade. Minor controversy surrounds the question of who first brought the bagel to Montreal. They were first baked in Montreal by Chaim Seligman, as verified by Montreal historian Joe King, a historian of Montreal Jewry. Seligman first worked in the neighbourhood community of Lachine and later moved his bakery to the lane next door to Schwartz's Delicatessen on Boulevard St. Laurent in central Montreal. Seligman would string his bagels into dozens and patrol Jewish Main purveying his wares, originally with a pushcart, then a horse and wagon and still later from a converted taxi. Seligman went into partnership with Myer Lewkowicz and with Jack Shlafman but fell out with both of them. Seligman and Lewkowicz founded the St. Viateur Bagel Shop in 1957 and Shlafman established Fairmount Bagel in 1919, which both still exist in the present day.
Dissemination
A substantial proportion of Montreal's English-speaking Jewish community gradually left for other locales. Catering to this population, Montreal-style bagel shops have opened in Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Calgary, and other Canadian, and even US cities, such as Burlington, Seattle, Houston, Los Angeles & Oakland, CA and Portland, Oregon. For a time this style of bagel was almost completely unknown in the northeastern U.S. despite its proximity to Montreal, mainly due to the proximity of the rival New York City bagel.. At one point in New York City there were two Montreal-style bagel locations in the borough of Brooklyn within four blocks of each other, but one is now closed and the other no longer offers Montreal-style bagels. Montreal-style bagels are currently the only style of bagel known to have ventured into space. Gregory Chamitoff, who grew up in Montreal, took three bags of sesame bagels with him on his assignments to STS-124 as passenger and ISS Expedition 17 as crewmember.
The basic bagel dough recipe includes egg and honey.
Honey is also added to the water used for poaching the bagels before baking.
The authentic Montreal-Style bagels are baked in a wood-fired oven.
Famous bagel shops
Several Montreal bagel factories are famous for their authentic Montreal-style bagels. St-Viateur Bagel, at 263 av. St-Viateur West, Fairmount Bagel, at 74 Avenue Fairmount Ouest, and , at 5452 Avenue Westminster, Côte Saint-Luc, QC H4X 2A5 are the most well-known and popular bagel shops in Montreal. St. Viateur Bagel in particular has pictures of a number of famous visitors attached to their wall. These shops often sell popular bagel accompaniments such as cream cheese spreads and smoked salmon. Some of the more popular bagel bakers have relatively recently begun to feature different flavours of bagels; Fairmount Bagel for example now offers a caraway seed bagel while St. Viateur features an 'all-dressed' variety with onion, sesame & poppy seeds and MTL Bagel offers varieties like and .
