Sunday Bliss: Bagels from Madrid?

Lisa Minucci

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2 min read

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Aug 3, 2023

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The wife arrived home from a few days of work in Madrid bearing a dozen bagels. Bagels? Are you kidding me? For gawd’s sake, it’s Spain, not NYC!
Seems good friends of hers opened a bagel shop in Madrid, and not in a casual manner. They studied and researched, working with the best hands in the game (apparently found in northern New Jersey) to learn techniques and master skills before returning home to source local flours of distinction. The result is a bagel with little in common from the dense, doughy examples on which I subsisted during my early (read: broke) years in Manhattan. A crust that crunches when toasted, a light interior, and a noticeably different flour in texture and color define bagel triumph!
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Morning meditation means early hours spent in the garden with the birds; harvesting, pulling weeds, fertilizing, and watering before the blazing sun rises fully in the sky, roasting our heads as if they were cauliflowers in a wood oven, the midday heat silencing the birdsong. Ravenous and sweaty, we race inside to the cool of the stone house, pull the shutters closed, adjust the ceiling fans to their highest whirl, and toast an Everything bagel. As the smell of singed seeds fills the kitchen, we prep out the accoutrements. Left to ripen on the counter for days under a ceramic cloche, a much anticipated schmear of aged goat cheese melts into the warm bread, oozing its essence of earth and hay and goaty goodness. Next up, thick slices of first-of-the-season tomatoes are salted (generously, but don’t tell the wife) and hit with a turn of the pepper mill before being dressed with a green, Pollack-like smatter of Ligurian oil.
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Along with a steaming Moka of strong black coffee, it’s Sunday bliss.