Bagel
torus-shaped bread product
A bagel (Yiddish: בײגל, romanized: beygl; Polish: bajgiel [ˈbajɡʲɛl] ; also spelled beigel) is a bread roll originating in the Jewish communities of Poland. Bagels are traditionally made from yeasted wheat dough that is shaped by hand into a torus or ring, briefly boiled in water, and then baked. The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with a browned and sometimes crisp exterior.
Bagels are often topped with seeds baked on the outer crust—traditional choices include poppy and sesame seeds—or with salt grains. Different dough types include whole-grain and rye. The basic roll-with-a-hole design, hundreds of years old, allows even cooking and baking of the dough; it also allows groups of bagels to be gathered on a string or dowel for handling, transportation, and retail display.
Bagels have been widely associated with Ashkenazi Jews since the 17th century; they were first mentioned in 1610 in Jewish community ordinances in Kraków, Poland.
Bagels are now a popular bread product in North America and Poland, especially in cities with a large Jewish population. Bagels are also sold (fresh or frozen, often in many flavors) in supermarkets.
History
Circular boiled-and-baked bread rolls (such as ka'ak, obwarzanek, taralli, and simit) have a long and diverse history across Europe and western Asia.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q272502. The Library of Congress control number is sh85010959. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1610.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bagel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.