Bialy is a Polish bread roll shaped like a bagel with an indentation filled with savory foods. It is softer and less chewy than a bagel and is best eaten within six hours of preparation. It originated in Bialystok, Poland, and is popular in upstate New York and the Coney Island neighborhood of New York City.
A bialy is a shaped leavened bread roll that originated in Poland. It is usually shaped like a bagel, but with an indentation instead of a hole; it can also be shaped into a figure eight, with two indentations. The indentations are usually filled with savory foods such as onion flakes or garlic. A traditional bialy has an indent which is covered in chopped onion and oil. The flavor-coated, flattened dent of the bread creates a crunchy, heavily flavored area in the middle of a soft, doughy outer crust.
Often favored over the bagel for its more delicate texture, this dish is made by shaping, flavoring, and cooking a ball of dough. The name for the ball of dough that forms into a bialy is tagel. To prepare bialy, an indentation is pressed into a slightly flattened tagel. The re-entry into bialy is called kuchen.
After the kuchen is pressed into the dough, the indentation is coated with your chosen vegetables, herbs and oil, then baked. Common types of oil include olive or canola. While traditionally made with a thin layer of greens, the range of toppings that are put on this bread is as wide as that put on a bagel. Toppings can include things like cream cheese, lox and roast beef, but many people prefer a simple butter spread on their morning bialy.
This food is considered to be a form of pletzel, a flattened, cracker-like crust covered in toppings. Unlike most pletzels, bialy dough is leavened, making it fluffy and chewy rather than flat and crunchy. While a pletzel has a flat crust like a pizza, a bialy is more like a tiny pizza surrounded by a baked bagel. This dish originated in Bialystok, Poland but has become a very popular dish in upstate New York. It is especially popular in the Coney Island neighborhood of New York City.
While it resembles a bagel shape, this bread is usually lighter than the traditional New York bagel. Some prefer bialè to bagels because they are softer and less chewy. In New York City, biali are commonly sold by bakers who also make bagels.
More often than not, it’s hard to find biali in the US outside of New York. Because the biali don’t stay fresh for long, they can’t be shipped or sold commercially. Bialy is best eaten within six hours of its preparation, after which it becomes stale.
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