Salt Spring Bagels

Salt Spring Bagels has been making authentic, traditional, boiled bagels here on Salt Spring Island for over twenty years now. The bagels are now baked at a rural wholesale bakery and sold at local coffee shops, or are available to purchase by the bag at grocery stores.  Starting in 2014, Salt Spring Bagels have also been available at select stores in the Victoria and Southern Vancouver Island areas, and in Vancouver since 2019.

Bags of Salt Spring Bagels can also be ordered for delivery or personal pickup.

Organic Bagels?

Most of the stores carrying our bagels feature our organic bagels, both traditional and vegan.

What is a Bagel? (editorial)

By definition, bagels are made from a boiled dough.  When squished they do not feel like a bread, but are firm.  If it squishes like bread, and is round like a bagel, then it is a “round bread,” and not a bagel.  Salt Spring Bagels also have more flavour ingredients than bread.  When toasted, authentic bagels develop a satisfying light crust while retaining a chewy centre, not like toast.  Salt Spring Bagels are authentic bagels with traditional chewy texture and a firm feel.

Bagel Revolution: In the 1960’s a Canadian-born inventor started to sell a machine that could automatically form bagels.  These machines put most bagel makers out of work within ten years – and changed the bagel itself.  Large bagel bakeries now produce uniform, soft objects that, in my opinion, taste and chew more like round bread than bagels.  Many people buying bagels today have never had a chance to taste real (traditional dough, traditional process) bagels.

Random Note: Bagels were first developed in Poland around 1600.  The first bagels were taken into space by Canadian-born astronaut Gregory Chamitoff in 2008.