FAQ
-Are you kosher?
We are proud to be working with the Vaad of Northern California to provide Kosher supervision for our bagel, bialy, and challah dough production and baking on site at our new wholesale facility in Berkeley. This allows our wholesale production to be kosher. Bagels bagged in our new facility will bear the Vaad's symbol on bag tags and will be sold all over the Bay Area. Bagels baked there are also available for catering pickup.
We sincerely thank East Bay Kosher for working with us for the last four years.
Our menu is not changing, the base cream cheese will still be kosher, and the packaged lox will still be kosher. But the retail stores will not have supervision.
All delivery orders will be coming out of the factory by default.
Please contact them with any questions, https://www.sunrisekosher.org/
Our other retail stores receive this same dough and then bake off on premises which are not supervised.
Many pre-packed items that all our stores carry, such as packaged lox, bottled drinks, and vegan cream cheese are certified kosher.
-Are your bagels vegan?
Yes! All our bagels and bialys are vegan except for egg and eggything.
Also, we are proud to offer Kite Hill vegan cream cheese, on sandwiches and to go.
-Are you shipping water from NY?
No! That would have a ridiculous carbon footprint. Actually our tap water is chemically similar to NY's, enough so that it is really not a critical factor.
-But don't you have to have NY water?
Please taste our bagels and judge for yourself.
-What makes a NY-style bagel?
In general, a barley malt sweetness, long cold dough fermentation to develop flavor, kettle-boiling, and then baking on boards in a gas-fired revolving stone deck oven to create the proper crust. Go watch at Ess-A-Bagels or Absolute to see the same process we are using.
-Do you have gluten-free bagels available?
No. We do not currently have plans to bake our own gf bagels, since the key ingredients are high-gluten wheat and malted barley.
-Will you be making blueberry, chocolate chip, asiago, or rainbow bagels?
Nope.
Please?! How about green bagels for St. Patrick's Day?
No.
-Where are you sourcing your ingredients from?
We are "importing" our smoked fish from NY.
Our white wheat flour is Organic High Mountain from Keith Giusto Central Milling in Petaluma.
The remaining bagel ingredients are all organic, except for the yeast, which is tricky.
All other ingredients are sourced with an eye towards sustainability, local, seasonal, and organic as conditions and availability permit.
How about an ingredients list?
Plain bagel: Organic wheat flour, water, organic brown sugar, organic malt extract, sea salt, organic malted barley flour, yeast.
Egg bagels also contain egg yolk and turmeric.
Pumpernickels also contain organic pumpernickel meal, organic coffee, apple cider vinegar, cocoa powder, caraway seed, and canola oil.
Cinnamon raisins also contain organic raisins, sugar, and organic cinnamon.
Everything spice mix blend contains organic sesame seeds, organic poppy seeds, dehydrated onion and sea salt.