Lender’s Bagels burst on the scene in 1960 with frozen bagels

Harry and Rose Lender brought their family from Lublin, Poland, to New Haven, Conn., in the late 1920s and set up a bagel bakery. All four sons – Hyman, Sam, Marvin and Murray – joined the business. They enjoyed great success, as Lender’s Bagels grew to become a national brand.

 

Murray Lender ascended to lead the company after his father’s death in 1958. He was a marketing guru, and by 1960, Lender’s Bagels was selling frozen bagels to supermarkets, a completely revolutionary approach. The company fully automated the manufacturing process to mass produce consistently uniform bagels.

 

All the consumer needed to do was pop pre-sliced Lender’s Bagels into a toaster. When done, schmear them with butter, cream cheese or jam…and enjoy. Murray Lender became a television advertising celebrity in the 1970s, injecting comedy into the company’s commercials.

 

Up until this time, bagels were a “best kept secret” of urban markets. Murray Lender’s stated mission was to “bagelize” America, riding a trendy wave toward “ethnic foods.” He sought to popularize the bagel all across the land as “the Jewish English muffin.” 

Commercials that paired Lender’s Bagels with Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese “showcased a delicious marketing opportunity.” One thing led to another and corporate courtship. In 1984, when the Lender family agreed to sell the bagel brand to Kraft Foods, “the event was billed as the mock wedding of the century.” The bride was “Phyl,” and the groom was “Len.”

The sale of bagels began to outstrip the sale of another product with a hole in it – the doughnut – in the battle for “breakfast food supremacy,” said food writer Jonathan Rowe of Brooklyn, N.Y.

 

Many voices in New York City, the “capital of America’s bageldom,” rose up to protest against the advent of frozen bagels. Someone asked: “How can that be a bagel? A doughnut dipped in cement and then frozen.” 

The thought of toasting bagels also gets bagel purists riled up. “You should ‘almost never’ toast a fresh bagel,” reported freelance journalist Taylor Tobin of Austin, Texas, “because doing so can mess with its flavor and texture.” 

Two exceptions are: “If you plan on loading your bagel with toppings, you’ll want to toast it, so it doesn’t get soggy, and if your bagel is not fresh-out-of-the-oven, toasting can actually help it,” she wrote.

Chef Melissa Weller, master baker at High Street on Hudson in New York City, says a bagel “begins to stale two to three hours after it comes out of the oven.” From that point on, “you should always toast a bagel” before serving or consuming.

The key to a better Southern bagel, wrote Rebecca Jackson of Bedford County, Va., is to schmear it with a glob of “‘menta cheese.” She echoed the late Bill Neal, former owner and chef of Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, N.C., who dubbed pimento cheese the “pâté of the South.”

“Everyone’s mother or grandma seems to have a special recipe for ‘menta cheese,” Jackson said.

 

So does Rossi Anastopoulo of King Arthur Baking Company, which is headquartered in White River Junction, Vt. She offers her “Peppy Pimento” recipe as the perfect topping for a bagel and a super-cheesy breakfast.” Go to the King Arthur website.

Marc Fintz, director of business development at Davidovich Bakery in New York City, said that he advises customers who are seeking a bagel “zest-fest” to try Davidovich’s pimento cheese – “a creamy blend of mayo, mini red peppers and cheddar.”

Efforts to ‘bagelize’ America: A tough road to hoe

Bagels weren’t served at the family breakfast table when I was growing up in Adrian, Mich. Toast or English muffins were the typical choices from the “bread food group.”

In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing a bagel in the bakery department at the local A&P Store. We went there often. My dad was the store manager. We would go every Sunday when the store was closed, so he could “check the refrigeration.” 

My first encounter with a bagel came when I went off to college at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Bagels were on the menu in the snack bar. Try one, suggested my roommate Rich Kopec, whose family lived in Redford Township near Detroit. 

My first bagel was sort of crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside, but kind of bland in flavor. “You’ve got to schmear it with cream cheese,” Rich advised.

 Much better. (I may have invented the “triple schmear.” I’ve since tapered back to become a “double schmear” guy who prefers strawberry-flavored cream cheese on mini blueberry bagels.) 

The ultimate bagel experience, considered a traditional part of American Jewish cuisine, is “lox and a schmear.” That’s a bagel crowned with lox (thin-sliced, cured and cold-smoked salmon), cream cheese, a sliver of tomato, a dotting of capers and raw red onions.

 

As a result of schmearing, the center holes of bagels are shrinking – and even disappearing – in order to accommodate the weight of the toppings. 

Rittika Dhar, a contributor to historycooperative.com, said bagels are known as the “humble bread of Poland,” and the distinguishing characteristic is “boiling the bread before baking it.”

 

Polish bagels developed as a cousin to Bavarian pretzels from Germany in the 1300s, most food historians agree. Bagels became a “common street food in Poland, sold on sidewalks everywhere,” Dhar wrote. 

“As Polish people began to emigrate to the United States in the 1900s, they brought their traditions of making bagels with them,” she said. Bakers employed people to sell bagels from pushcarts on the streets of New York City. 

Traditional bagel dough contains wheat flour (without germ or bran), salt, water and yeast leavening. Most bagel recipes call for the addition of a sweetener to the dough, often barley malt (syrup or crystals), honey, high fructose corn syrup or sugar, with or without eggs, milk or butter. 

Marc Fintz of Davidovich Bakery in the borough of Queens said the excellence of New York-style bagels begins with strict adherence to a “proofing period,” where the dough rests at least 12 hours and is allowed to experience a second rising prior to the “mandatory boiling-before-baking process.”

 

Locals believe the taste of the bagel is favorably influenced by New York City’s soft tap water that contains certain nutrients, including low magnesium and calcium levels. Add salt and barley malt to the water before boiling.

 

Bagels are also big in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, but they are slightly different. The dough contains malt and sugar but no salt. The bagels are boiled in water sweetened with honey before being baked in a wood-fired oven. Thus, they are sweeter than the New York bagels and are usually only topped with white sesame seeds.

 

Bakeries in Chicago, Ill., reduced the baking time for bagels by steaming, rather than boiling, the bagel dough while in ovens that are equipped with a steam injection system. 

Slowly but surely, bagels began to ripple out from urban markets across the land. Murray Lender set out to “bagelize” the country in the 1970s with Lender’s Bagels – pre-sliced and frozen.

Hard pretzels were invented in 1861

Over the years, the pretzel emerged as a symbol of good luck, prosperity and spiritual fulfillment.

Bakery owner Julius Ferdinand Sturgis of Lititz, Pa., experienced “all of the above” when he developed the first hard pretzels in 1861. His “invention” was revolutionary, according to freelance journalist Sarah Pruitt of Portsmouth, N.H.

 

“The crispy snacks lasted longer in an airtight container, allowing them to be sold farther away from the bakery itself and to stay on shelves longer,” Pruitt said. “Eventually, hard pretzels would come to be arguably even more popular than their soft counterparts.”

“Until the 1930s, pretzels were still manufactured by hand. But in 1935, the Reading (Pa.) Pretzel Machinery Company introduced the first automated pretzel maker, which enabled bakers to put out 245 pretzels per minute, compared with the 40 per minute an individual worker could make by hand.” 

“Today, Pennsylvania remains the American pretzel-making capital, as a full 80% of U.S.-made pretzels come from the Keystone State,” Pruitt wrote.

The Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery is still open in Lititz, serving about 9,960 residents as well as loads of curious visitors. The bakery staff offers tours and provides hands-on experiences in rolling and twisting pretzels. Tasty pretzels and souvenirs are available in the gift shop area.

 

Pennsylvanians also eat the most pretzels, followed by folks from the neighboring states of Delaware, New Jersey and New York. Nationally, pretzels rank as the second most-popular salty snack, positioned between potato chips (#1) and popcorn (#3). 

The most popular U.S. brands of pretzels are Rold Gold, which originated in Philadelphia, and Snyder’s of Hanover, which began as a family bakery in Hanover, Pa.

 

(Rold Gold was acquired by Frito-Lay in 1961 and continues as a unit of PepsiCo. Snyder’s of Hanover merged with Lance Inc. in 2010, forming Snyder’s-Lance, based in Charlotte, N.C. Campbell Soup acquired Snyder’s-Lance in 2017.) 

Since 1983, National Pretzel Day has been observed annually on April 26. The idea originated with U.S. Rep. Robert S. Walker of Pennsylvania.

 

In 2004, Manayunk Park in Philadelphia was renamed “Pretzel Park.” It features pretzel-like looped pathways and a pretzel-shaped sculpture by Warren C. Holzman.

 

“The Pretzel” is a swing dance move that is best left for professional dancers to perform. Pretzels without salt are called “baldies.”

 

Freeport, a city in northwestern Illinois with a population of about 22,915, claims title to being America’s “Pretzel City,” as a tribute to German immigrant John Billerbeck, who established a pretzel bakery in town in 1869 (albeit eight years after Sturgis).

The Freeport community celebrates “pretzel festivals” on several occasions, often pairing the tasty snack with beer and wine. High school athletic teams proudly wear “Pretzels” on the front of their jerseys.

 

Don’t get them confused with the other high school team of “Pretzels,” who hail from the village of New Berlin, Ill., (population 1,340), located about 215 miles south of Freeport. The two schools once battled on the baseball diamond in 2015. Freeport traveled to New Berlin, and the visitors claimed a special pretzel trophy, winning 10-4. 

These are the only two high schools in the country with the nickname “Pretzels.”

 

Dr. Jeffrey Miller, an associate professor of hospitality management at Colorado State University, said: “Pretzels have long been thought of as the perfect accompaniment to beer. With the rise of the craft beer movement, artisan pretzel shops are opening up to give customers the opportunity to pair creative brews with funky pretzels.”

 

He has some ideas about beers and ales to go with honey mustard pretzels, bacon and cheddar pretzels and peanut butter pretzel nuggets.

Rubber bands were invented March 17, 1845

St. Patrick’s Day is March 17. Consider wearing a green rubber wristband…in honor of the invention of the rubber band on March 17, 1845, in London, England.

Industrialist Stephen Perry was granted the patent to produce elastic bands from vulcanized natural rubber on this date. 

Hence, Perry is considered to be the true inventor of the rubber band, according to authors Markus Weber and Guido Deussing. 

(Their essay on the history of the rubber band promotes the upcoming 2025 international plastics and rubber industry trade show in Düsseldorf, Germany.) 

“The English-speaking world still continues to dominate the headlines where rubber bands are concerned: the biggest manufacturer in the world is based in the United States” – the Alliance Rubber Company of Hot Springs, Ark.

 

Weber and Deussing say rubber bands “are used to keep bank notes, letters and newspapers together, to make bunches of herbs, to braid hair into pigtails or to tie it into ponytails.” 

“Rubber bands of varying length and thickness, with the basic shape of an uninterrupted ring, hold everyday things together reliably. Their versatility and ubiquity mean that they are taken for granted almost as much as natural objects that are simply there without anyone having to invent or make them,” wrote Weber and Deussing.

 

“One of the reasons for this is that rubber bands have been in common use for many generations now and it is already almost 180 years since the patent for producing them was granted,” the authors said. 

Stephen Perry’s father was James Perry, a schoolmaster who became dissatisfied with the quality of existing writing pens. He decided to make his own steel pens by hand, creating James Perry and Co. in 1824 in Manchester. The business later moved to London. 

Soon, the “Perry pen” became the international synonym for excellence in steel pens. The company also sold a wide assortment of stationers’ supplies When James Perry died in 1843, Stephen took over management of the company.

 

After the introduction of rubber bands in 1845, the company became known as “Messrs. Perry and Co., Rubber Manufacturers of London.” 

Weber and Deussing said that “Perry made his ‘rubber rings’ by slicing hollow vulcanized rubber tubing into narrow strips. In the beginning, rubber bands were used almost exclusively to hold loose sheets of paper, newspapers and other paper products together.” 

Stephen Perry died in 1873, and little is known about the fate of his company. 

The story picks up again with William H. Spencer, who was born in 1891 in the small village of Schweizer, Ky., near Franklin. He became the founder of the Alliance Rubber Company in Alliance, Ohio, in 1923, while working a regular job with the Pennsylvania Railroad.

 Spencer’s first rubber bands were cut by hand from factory-reject bicycle inner tubes.

His first customer was the Akron Beacon-Journal newspaper as he convinced the circulation manager to secure newspapers with rubber bands for home delivery. Next, he solicited green grocers and produce markets to switch from string and twine to rubber bands.

For the first 14 years of Alliance, Spencer continued “to moonlight on the Pennsylvania Railroad to make our payroll and expenses and was finally able to quit the railroad in late 1937.” 

Spencer died in 1996 at age 94. His daughter, Bonnie Spencer Swayze, is now president and CEO.

Bonnie Spencer Swayze (right) and Misty Smith

 

Alliance Rubber Company observed its 100-year anniversary in 2023 and clings to its slogan: “Holding Your World Together.”

 

The key to success has been “elasticity,” commented Misty Smith, creative director. “We have doggedly stretched and flexed to meet the needs of our customers.”

Pretzel history has a few interesting twists

Eat more pretzels. They are good for your soul…especially during Lent, which continues through March 28 this year.

 

The Rev. Johann Roten of the University of Dayton (Ohio) said the tradition of eating pretzels during Lent goes back to the 5th century. “Apparently, there is even a manuscript in the Vatican Library dating from that period, which shows a Lenten pretzel,” he said.

The soft pretzel was “invented” around 610 by monks near Aosta in northern Italy, said the late Galen Haar, a historian with AIB International (formerly the American Institute of Baking), based in Manhattan, Kan.

 

The pretzel was “created by monks as a way to use leftover unleavened communion bread dough. It is believed the monks originally gave pretzels as treats to children who had successfully learned their prayers,” Haar said.

“The typical three-loop shape may have been created as a way to show how the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) interact and overlap in Christian theology. It also has been proposed that this shape represented the typical posture of people in prayer at that time in history (arms crossed over their chest with head bowed),” Haar said.

 

“During the Middle Ages, Christians were forbidden to prepare foods that contained eggs, milk, butter and lard during the season of Lent. This tradition made the pretzel – made only of flour, salt and water – a popular pre-Easter food,” Haar added. 

According to the CatholicCulture.org website, “Lent is a period of fasting, self-denial and prayer, in imitation of our Lord’s fasting, 40 days and 40 nights, and in preparation for the feast of Easter.” It was also customary for churches to give pretzels to needy townspeople during Lent, as a way of providing them with both spiritual and literal sustenance.

 

In 1510, pretzels helped save the nation of Austria. Historians said that when Ottoman Turks attempted to invade Vienna, by digging tunnels beneath the city’s walls, monks baking pretzels in the basement of a monastery heard the noise. By alerting the rest of the city, the monks aided in thwarting the Turkish attack. The monks were credited with shielding all of Europe from invasion by the Turks. 

As a reward, the Austrian emperor commissioned a coat of arms for the pretzel bakers, featuring two fierce lions holding a crowned pretzel. (Pretzels are still used to this very day as Christmas tree toppers in Austria.)

 

Eventually, the pretzel’s form became a symbol of good luck, long life and prosperity. The archivist at Invermere Bakery in Invermere, British Columbia, Canada, said: “It is speculated that the term ‘tying the knot’ originated in Switzerland in 1614 when couples wished for happiness with a pretzel forming the nuptial knot.” During the ceremony, the new couple would make a wish and break the pretzel, eating the pieces to signify their oneness.

 

In the 1700s, German immigrants brought the popular snack to America, with many pretzel bakeries opening in Pennsylvania. 

From the website of Pretzels.com of Delray Beach, Fla., we learn the story about a male itinerant baker who deboarded the train in Lititz, Pa. The man followed his nose to Julius Sturgis’ bakery to ask for a job and a meal. Sturgis had no work for the man but fed him dinner. 

To express his gratitude, the man gave Sturgis a recipe for hard pretzels before he moved on. Sturgis tried out the crispy pretzels with his family.

 

“A hit, Sturgis began selling pretzels in his bakery in 1861, where they became such a popular snack that he couldn’t keep up with as many pretzels as people wanted.”

Iced tea drinkers invited to raise a glass on June 10

Drinkers of iced tea get their day in the sun on Monday, June 10, when America observes “National Iced Tea Day.” 

One of the cloudy mysteries associated with the beverage that deserves further exploration, however, is: Who invented iced tea? 

Englishman gets a lot of votes. He was a tea grower and merchant who was assigned by the British government to promote English teas at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Mo.

 

On a sweltering August day, not a soul was interested in stopping by his booth for a cup of hot tea. Belchynden reportedly dropped ice into his tea, and the drink became an instant success. Ta da. It’s a nice story, but Belchynden wasn’t the first. 

The earliest cookbook reference to iced tea is found in “The Kentucky Housewife,” compiled in 1839 by Lettice Pierce Bryan of Lincoln County, Ky. 

Her recipe for “Tea Punch” packed a punch. She wrote: “Make a pint and a half of very strong tea in the usual manner; strain it, and pour it boiling hot on one-and-a-quarter pound of loaf sugar. Add a half pint of rich sweet cream and stir in gradually a bottle of claret or champagne.” Serve entirely cold, in glass cups.

 

A nonalcoholic recipe for iced tea came from the 1876 edition of “Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping,” a collection of recipes from the women of the Marysville (Ohio) First Congregational Church. The editor was Estelle Woods Wilcox. 

She said: For a perfect tea without the least trace of bitterness, put tea in cold water about eight hours before it is to be used. “The delicate flavor of the tea and abundant strength will be extracted, and there will be not a trace of the tannic acid, which renders tea so often disagreeable and undrinkable.”

 

“Housekeeping in Old Virginia,” a cookbook compiled in 1877 by Marion Fontaine Cabell Tyree of Lynchburg, Va., is another early source. 

Tyree was a great granddaughter of Virginia’s Patrick Henry, who helped organize the “Boston Tea Party” rebellion in 1773. Her iced tea recipe specified: Pour one quart boiling water and two teaspoonfuls green tea into teapot. Let stand about four hours. Strain, without stirring, pour into pitcher. 

At teatime, Tyree said, “Fill goblets with ice, put two teaspoonfuls granulated sugar in each and pour tea over ice and sugar. A squeeze of lemon will make this delicious and healthful, as it corrects the astringent tendency.” 

The rise of sweet tea in the South was fueled by William B. Reilly of New Orleans, La., who launched the Luzianne brand of coffee in 1902. Thirty years later, Reilly Foods Company developed one of the first teas ever specially blended for pouring over ice. 

“Luzianne was proud to help popularize iced tea as a cool way to beat the Southern heat,” said a company spokesperson. “Our reputation for clear, smooth-tasting, refreshing iced tea was soon established across the South.”

 

Access the family-owned business recipe for sweet tea at luzianne.com. All you need are four family-sized tea bags, a gallon of spring water and a cup of sugar. The trick is knowing which ingredients to combine when. 

For a kick, add lemon or orange zest, lemon juice or lemonade while the tea is warm – or spike it with fruit juices or bourbon, tequila or vodka. Douse with a sprinkle of sparkling water to make a refreshing party punch. 

Yes. We think Lettice Pierce Bryan was on the same page with her Tea Punch in 1839. Bless her heart.