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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 that 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.'', p. 44–46</ref> Whatever the case, one thing is sure: the bagel, just like the ''obwarzanek'', was a 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.'', p. 35</ref> What this meant for the Jews was that they could finally bake their own bagels and sell them within the wall walls 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 was 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 can 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.

In 1993, a statistical American was already consuming two bagels per month. What's more, by that time, the bagels had become thoroughly Americanized. In America, big is beautiful, so bagels, which weighed only 2–3&nbsp;oz. (70&nbsp;g) back in the times of Local 338, have been supersized to an average weight of 7&nbsp;oz. (200 &nbsp;g).<ref>{{ Cyt