I grew up on the East Coast, where a good bagel wasn't a treat. It was just Tuesday. Then I moved out to Seattle, and people kept asking the same question: what do you miss most about back east?
My answer was always the same two things. Bagels...and thunderstorms.
Bagels seemed like the easier of the two to fix, so I started making my own. One batch turned into a hundred, and somewhere in there it stopped being about homesickness and became a full-blown obsession. I fell for the whole thing: the process, the science, the way a long cold ferment changes everything, and weirdly emotional a great bake can bring make you.
Back East Bagels is that obsession, hand rolled, boiled, and baked the real way, here in Seattle, for anyone who wants to know what the fuss is about.