Our story
A New Yorker's bagel, made in Nairobi
“I stopped looking and started baking.”
Every New Yorker knows the smell of a bagel shop at 7am: a chewy crust, a soft middle, still warm from the oven. I grew up on it.
When I moved to Nairobi, I went looking for that bagel and never found it. What I found were soft bread rolls with a hole in the middle. So I stopped looking and started baking. I learned the traditional New York method, step by step: a stiff, high-gluten dough rested overnight, every bagel shaped by hand, boiled, then baked until the crust crackles.
The Holy Bagel is the result. I couldn't go to New York, so I brought New York to Nairobi. Now you don't have to go either.
Founder, The Holy Bagel