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}}</ref> Generously sprinkled with sesame seeds before baking, ''ka'ak'' may be still purchased in the streets of Arab and Israeli cities.
Let's go back the Apennine Peninsula. It was in the port town of Puglia (pronounced ''{{small|POOL}}-yah'') in what is now southern Italy that ''taralli'' were being boiled and baked as early as the 14th century. That's right, it's a kind of bread that is first boiled and only then baked. Why? Because when the starch on the surface of the dough comes into contact with boiling water, it gets gelatinized, giving the ''tarallo'' its shiny and crunchy crust. The stiffened crust also prevents the dough from rising further during baking, which helps keep the bread in shape. And this, in turn, means that you can make bigger ring-shaped breads than you could without boiling them first.<ref>Balinska, ''op. cit.'', sp. 2–6</ref> Clever, huh?
[[File:Ponti, Carlo (ca. 1823-1893) - Venditore.jpg|thumb|left|upright=.5|A boy peddling ''ciambelle'' in 19th-century Italy]]
Modern Polish cuisine is often described as combining two historical strains: on the one hand, the peasant cuisine, the poor, simple fare based on local and readily available ingredients; and on the other, the lordly cuisine of the nobility, sumptuous, abundant, exotic and following the rule, "pawn yourself, but show yourself". This view is somewhat oversimplified, though. Firstly, what people ate and drank had more to do with their actual income than the estate they were born into (for example, a relatively well-to-do peasant could eat just as well as a medium-income nobleman). And secondly, believe it or not, there were other social groups in Poland than just the peasantry and the nobility. Polish townsfolk, for instance, used to eat too, but they tend to be forgotten when historical Polish cuisine is being discussed. One reason for this may be that Polish towns were mostly populated by ethnic Germans and Jews, so their culinary heritage hasn't been included in the canon of ethnic Polish cuisine, which is mostly rural as a result. But there are at least two domains in which the culinary legacy of Polish towns has survived; these are beer brewing and bread baking. Sure, breweries and bakeries existed in the countryside as well, but it was the urban ones that were famous throughout the nation. The importance of urban bakers is still reflected today in the popularity of Poznań crescent rolls, Toruń gingerbread and yes, Cracovian ''obwarzanki''.
The oldest known mention of the latter comes from the 14th century. A royal-court book of accounts from the times of Queen Hedwig and King Vladislav Jagailo has the following expense recorded under the date 2 March 1394: "'''pro circulis obarzankij'', for the Queen – one penny." The Latin word, ''"circulis"'', shows that the breads in question were already round at the time. And the Polish word (''"obwarzanki"'' in modern spelling), shows that they were parboiled (''obwarzane'') before baking. Just like pretzels, these were lean and luxury goods at the same time,<ref>Balinska, ''op. cit.'', sp. 14</ref> which made them the perfect choice for the royal table during Shrovetide, which happened to include the 2 March that year. The Shrovetide was a pre-Lenten period of optional fasting. According to the ledger record from that particular day, Queen Hedwig, who would be later declared Saint Hedwig, ate one penny worth of ''obwarzanki'' and three pence worth of salted herrings, while the visiting Duchess of Masovia, who wasn't that keen of fasting, was served chicken instead.<ref>{{ Cyt
| nazwisko r = Przezdziecki
| imię r = Alexander
[[File:Narodziny Maryi.jpg|thumb|upright|left|A postpartum meal for a Jewish mother (in this particular case, for Saint Anne, who has just delivered the Blessed Virgin Mary) as depicted in a panel from the Gothic altarpiece sculpted by Veit Stoß for Saint Mary's Basilica in Cracow.<br>Is it bagels in this bowl or some other kind of bread rolls?]]
So how has a Cracovian invention got to be a New York speciality? Because there's no doubt that Cracow is the bagel's original hometown. The first known mention of bagels comes from sumptuary laws issued in 1610 by the Jewish community in what was then Poland's capital. The purpose of sumptuary laws was to prevent members of the community from overspending on luxury goods lest they provoke their gentile neighbours with their ostentatious wealth. As for what the law was actually saying on the topic of bagels, there are conflicting interpretations. Some say the the regulation allowed only those Jewish women who had just given birth to buy bagels. Others argue that bagels were allowed only on special occasions such as the circumcision of a newborn boy.<ref>Balinska, ''op. cit.'', sp. 44–46</ref> Whatever the case, one thing is sure: the bagel, just like the ''obwarzanek'', was luxury.
With the legend about how the bagel was invented in honour of King John III Sobieski's victory at Vienna, [[What has the Battle of Vienna given us?|we've already dealt in one of the previous posts]]. Let's just recall here that Jewish bakers were indeed indebted to King John, as he was the first Polish monarch since the end of the 15th century ''not'' to confirm the Cracovian guild of bakers' monopoly on white bread.<ref>Balinska, ''op. cit.'', sp. 35</ref> What this meant for the Jews was that they could finally bake their own bagels and sell them within the wall of Cracow. So how exactly did the bagels differ from the ''obwarzanki''? Well, it seems that at the time the only difference was that ''obwarzanki'' was a Polish word and ''beygl'' is Yiddish. It was only later that two different bread products would evolve from the same common ancestor: the gentile ''obwarzanek'' and the Jewish bagel. The former had remained relatively thin, but braided from two strands of dough; the latter has evolved into a roll with a little hole, plump enough to be cut in half and fashioned into a sandwich. The former isn't made anywhere outside Cracow and the two adjacent counties, the latter has spread to all places reached by Cracovian Jews.
In the Russian Empire, for instance, bagels would become the Jewish equivalent of the ''bubliki''. You best see it the chorus of the Yiddish version of a Russian song written in Odessa during the New Economic Policy (1921–28), when for the first time since the Great October Revolution one could legally sell privately baked rolls with holes.
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[[pl: Bajgle, precle, obwarzanki]]
