Book Inspiration :: Making Bagels

The book, "Where on Earth is My Bagel?", written by the Park sisters and illustrated by Grace Lin, has found its way into our library bag on numerous occasions. Each time we bring the book home and read it Grace says, "We need to make bagels". So that is what we finally did.

In the story Yum Yung, who lived in Korea, was in search of a tasty New York bagel. He tied a letter to a pigeon's leg and sent the bird off to New York to find a bagel for him. After not hearing back from the bird he began searching on his own. On his quest he encountered a farmer, a fisherman, a beekeeper and a baker but unfortunately none of them had heard of a bagel. Just then the pigeon returned with a response from Joe, a bagel shop owner from NY. On the reverse side of the letter from Joe was a recipe for none other than bagels. The recipe called for wheat flour, sea salt, honey, water and a pinch of yeast - all which could be provided from the other charters he met in story. In the end, Yum Yung declared, "At last I have my bagel".




In case you were wondering, we used the recipe found (here) as it most closely resembled the ingredients mentioned in the book (the only change we made was substituting honey for the sugars). The end result was quite tasty. In fact over the course of the day Grace and I each ate three bagels - yes, you're reading that correctly, three each. Thankfully they were much smaller in size than the gigantic bagel Yum Yung made!