Building a BETTER BAGEL

The newish owners of Gryfe's are determined to hold true to the 110-yearold bakery's tradition save for a few tweaks

- DAVID SILVERBERG

After being closed throughout Passover, when eating leavened bread is forbidden, Gryfe's Bagels and Baked Goods has reignited its ovens.

And, here, at one of the city's bestknown purveyors of the breakfast staple, bagel-making is a science.

First, the bakers and kitchen managers arrive at 3 a.m. every day to heat the ovens and prepare the dough, using a precise amount of flour, water, yeast, sugar and salt. After being shaped into rings, the bagels are dunked in a vat of hot water "to give (them) some crust and a bit of shine," co-owner David Fisher said, before they're slid into one of three ovens for no longer than 20 minutes.

"It's a delicate process," he added, as the toasty smell of baked bread filled the kitchen, "and it's a juggling act, too, because our staff need to move the pans around to ensure we always keep having bagels in there, but not too long."

Eyeing a plain bagel cooling on a rack, he said, "Oh yeah, this will be a great one. It hasn't flattened too much. It's got some structure." Gryfe's bagels, he added, top out at three-and-a-half ounces each compared to, say, New York versions that may be denser and larger at seven ounces. It's a far cry from how the New York Times described a bagel in 1960: "an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis."

Fisher and another David, Granovsky, who have known each other for more than two decades, bought the shop from the Gryfe family in 2022, and they are determined to hold true to the tradition - save for a few tweaks.