The Father of the Bagel was probably an unknown Viennese baker, who wanted to pay tribute to the King of Poland. In 1683, King Jan had just saved the people of Austria from an onslaught of Turkish invaders. As the King was an avid and accomplished horseman, the baker decided to shape the yeast dough into an uneven circle resembling a stirrup.

     Purists tend to favour this theory for two reasons. First, the traditional hand-rolled bagel  remains less than perfect in shape. Instead of the symmetry of a doughnut, good bagels skew into a "stirrup-like" shape. Second, the Austrian word for "stirrup" is beugel.

     The Canadian history of the bagel is much clearer. When Vincenzo Piazza brought the "Montreal-style" bagel to Ottawa in 1984, he was the first to have a wood-burning oven and hand-rolled bagels. It takes a roller over three months of training to reach the necessary speed of rolling 40 bagels every three minutes.

     Over the years, the "traditional" bagel flavours, sesame seed, poppy seed, and plain, have been joined by almost a dozen other varieties, from cinnamon and raisin to Muesli. But the essence of the bagel remains the same, and fresh, hot bagels have become a daily staple for thousands of people in the Ottawa region.

    View the surprising History of the Bagel in Canada. NEW! Bagel History, Part Three!