The Bagelwolf Story
A work in progress. I’m making bagels, but not yet ready to sell or distribute except to a small test audience. Please reach out if you’re interested!
Feedback: If you’ve tried my bagels or bread, I’d love your feedback! Please provide it with this form. Thank you.
Bagelwolf is Adam Kiryk, a transplant from Brookline, Massachusetts who grew up on northeastern-style bagels. After a career in design and software development in the Boston area, Adam left for Durango to pursue his love for the outdoors and his passion for baking sourdough breads.
Every bagel is made with sourdough starter, hand-rolled, and cold-fermented overnight to develop perfect flavor and crust. My goal is chewy, flavorful bagels that taste like they should.
What’s with the name? Who doesn’t secretly want to wolf down a bagel? Who doesn’t love wolves? Isn’t the name Wolf kind of cool? Anyway, my conception of a bagel-wolf: a character who’s cerebral and sophisticated — maybe a little bit fastidious and perfectionistic — but certainly friendly and accessible (or, at least as accessible as an erudite wolf can be). Also, the name “bagelwolf” wasn’t already taken.
The Process
Every Bagelwolf bagel starts with a homemade sourdough starter, fed daily with a blend of whole-wheat and all-purpose flours. This living culture is at the heart of what gives my bagels their distinctive flavor and character.
The dough is hand-rolled using a traditional technique — a method that produces an intentionally irregular (read: perfect) shape and texture that machine-made bagels simply can’t replicate. If you’re curious how the NYC pros do it, here’s a great video. And if you want to see how I do it, there’s a slightly less polished — but very real—version here.
After shaping, the bagels undergo an overnight retard: a long, cold fermentation that develops deeper flavor and creates a crisp crust with fine micro-blistering (what the heck is micro-blistering? Look at the tiny dots all over this bagel).
Finally, the bagels are boiled and baked. The result is a bagel with a satisfying chew, a subtle sourdough tang, and a crust with just the right amount of crackle.
What I Believe
Quality
Every ingredient matters. I use high-quality flours and ingredients, and I sweat the details.
Small Batch
I bake in small batches to ensure freshness and consistency in every bagel. Also — to be honest — I can't really make more than a few dozen at a time even if I wanted to make more.
Local & Personal
Made right here in Durango, with the care and attention that only a micro bakery can provide.
Traditional Craft
My bagels are hand-rolled, boiled, and baked using time-honored techniques — mostly. It isn't actually traditional to use sourdough, but it's fun, delicious, special, and gives it a little epes (which is Yiddish and means, you know, je ne sais quoi).
The Bagelwolf workspace in Durango