Bagel Oasis Owner Shares Bagel Secrets With FareStart Students

"I like a plain bagel with a little butter and jam," says Miller. "A cup of tea, and I'm in heaven."

East Coasters never tire of griping about Seattleites' bagel misunderstandings. This week, Bagel Oasis owner Peter Ryan tried to stem the problem at its source by teaching 40 FareStart students how to make a proper boiled bagel. He hopes the students will take their newly-acquired bagel knowledge to the local restaurants which eventually employ them.

"I got the sense they didn't know what a bagel should be, but it can be taught," he said after the hour-long session.

Miller, who's halfway through the 16-week program for homeless and disadvantaged individuals, describes the perfect bagel as "fresh, with a nice crust that kind of melts on the tongue." She'd never made a bagel before Ryan showed up on Monday with a recipe calling for brown sugar, salt, yeast, water and five pounds of high-gluten flour. At Bagel Oasis, Ryan told the students - many of them antsy from having spent the previous six hours in the kitchen - bakers mix up to 300 pounds of flour.

But no matter the size of the batch, he said, "bagels are simple."

"You can always adjust, but it's a simple process," Ryan said. "I don't like to add sun-dried tomatoes and basil, but you can add jalapenos if that's your cup of tea. You can add pesto if you like. It's not my style, but I see it done."

Ryan explained the importance of using the right flour; double-checked students' ingredient measurements; tested the consistency of their bagel dough and demonstrated how to roll a perfect o-shaped bagel.

"You making doughnuts?," a staffer who wandered into the kitchen asked a few students near the rolling table.

"Yeah, old Jewish doughnuts," one of the students told him.

Many of the students' first bagels were lumpy and lopsided. According to Ryan, a photogenic bagel begins with a rectangular patch of dough.

"You just want to cut yourself out a strip, wrap it around your fingers, snap it, lock it, and - as we say in all the best cooking schools -- voila," Ryan said.

Ryan concedes many students will never be required to make bagels.

"But you never know," he adds. "Maybe one of these folks will be in my bakery."

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