Bialy – My New Bagel

My coffee guy now has bialys and I’m loving them!

A bialy is like a bagel, but smaller, is baked rather than boiled and instead of a hole, has a depression filled with a little mixture of fresh soft onions. Bialys have less calories than bagels – 240 vs 300 calories according to the H&H website, though some websites say the calorie count is even lower. Bialys don’t need cream cheese, so there’s another calorie saving. (Unless of course, you add a very tiny pat of butter, which is what my coffee guy does for me…)

I mostly love that Bialys are from Bialystok, Poland.* This reminds me of Max Bialystock in the Producers, which reminds me of his whacky secretary Ulla who answers the phone “Bialystock and Bloom, got dag pa dig!”, so everytime I get a bialy that’s what I say to myself.

These are the little joys of my morning….

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I’m not the only one who loves bialys …

• Educated Tastes tries the bialys at Kossar’s
• Smitten Kitchen tries her hand at baking bialys
• Lost Pasta Remembered tells us that bialys are also called Pletzel
• The Schmear Factor gets their bialys in Brooklyn
• Jane makes a gorgeous bialy whose filling also has poppyseeds!
• Eagle Eye Breakfast reviews the bialys at Zaro’s
• OnSandwiches likes the egg and bacon sandwich on bialy at Top Grill & Deli in Bayside, Queens
• Golden Pineapple uses Smitten Kitchen’s recipe with instructions from an online video and ends up with a gorgeous bialy!
• Saavyeats makes whole wheat bialys

* The Bialy Eaters: the Story of a Bread and a Lost World is Mimi Sheraton’s history of the bialy and the lost community of Jews from Bialystock. It’s on my to-read list.