Plural of bagel; ring-shaped bread rolls that are boiled before baking, traditionally associated with Jewish cuisine but now popular worldwide.
From Yiddish beygl, possibly from Middle High German böugel meaning 'ring' or 'bracelet'. The word entered English through Jewish immigrant communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The distinctive ring shape and boiling process distinguish bagels from other breads.
Bagels represent a fascinating example of how food and language travel together - what started as a Jewish bakery staple in Eastern European shtetls became a quintessential American breakfast food. The boiling-then-baking technique creates their distinctive chewy texture, and their ring shape supposedly symbolized the eternal cycle of life.
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