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20 April 2004 - Memories of Montreal Yesterday the food blogging community seemed rather like a wasteland. Today seems little different thus far; I suppose everyone is nursing chocolate, sugar and butter hangovers from the Cake Walk on Sunday (thanks, again, Renee!...and Alberto for the original idea, too!). I know I'm still feeling the effects of tasting 30 cakes from so many different places. The sugar high hit me at one point yesterday morning and I started craving something not-quite-so-sweet. What to do, what to do...? Way back when (in seemingly another lifetime) I moved to Montreal to go to University. It was there that I was first introduced to the Mecca that is known as the Montreal-Style Bagel. People flock from near and far to bakeries such as Fairmount, St. Viateur, and The Bagel Place/Place du Bagel at Le Faubourg to get these delicious hunks of boiled, then baked dough. Poppy seed, sesame seed, plain, pumpernickel, marble...whatever your fancy these bagels are sure to satisfy. And they have a delectable, slightly sweet taste to them that has never been duplicated in any other type of bagel...never will be, either, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, there are a select few bakeries in Downtown Toronto where you can purchase Montreal-Style Bagels, two of whic I frequent: The My Market Bakery in Kensington Market and The St. Urbain Bakery at The St. Lawrence Market. But until yesterday I never even thought of making bagels at home. It just seemed silly, when you can trek to a market and get great bagels...or beg a traveling friend to bring you back a dozen when they next go to Montreal...leaving you craving them all winter since, who in their right minds travels there in the dead of winter?!?! Trust me, I lived there. Inspired, in actuality by Angela's venture into Rosemary Focaccia last week I went in search of an easy but accurate Montreal-Style Bagel recipe, and where better to look than Canadian Living? I had borrowed a cookbook from my mom back at Christmas time: Canadian Living Cooks: Step by Step, by Daphna Rabinovitch. In it is a step-by-step, easy-to-follow, quite good recipe for...you guessed it: Montreal-Style Bagels.
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