An Homage to Izzy Cohen, Bagel Baker Extraordinaire

By the time my publisher asked me to write an entire cookbook on bagels  in 1997, I was too tired to disagree. I was at the end of writing a 48-part series on everything from soup to nuts. Literally. I was clean out of ideas. But that same year, a new store called Noah’s Bagels had opened in Berkeley, and students were lined up for blocks to grab a nosh.

The publisher saw dollar signs. I thought he was meshugana. “Who bakes bagels at home?” I thought. Like croissants and strudel, some baked goods are best left to the professionals.

Nonetheless, I put the word out that I was looking for bagel ideas or, even better, someone who could teach me how to bake bagels. I lucked out when I met Izzy Cohen, former head of the Hebrew Bakers Association and Master Bakers Society biggie.

A spry, slightly stooped gentleman, Izzy was in his late seventies when we met. He had started his career at 16, during the Great Depression, training in his Uncle Harry’s Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh bakery. In his prime, Izzy had been a macher in mid-century Los Angeles baking circles. He had operated his own place, Pic-Son, at the corner of Pico and Robertson, from 1948 to 1971. Back then, the neighborhood bustled with its own movie theater, Ma Gordon’s deli and the small Conservative Temple B’nai David. He was a big deal in the local Lion’s Club.

Although more religious Jews shopped at kosher shops on Fairfax, Izzy Cohen ruled in the broader Southern California Jewish baking category. His was the shop for challah, corn rye, egg bagels, bialys, Kaiser rolls, salt sticks and horns. On the pastry side, Pic-Son had butter cookies, mini Danishes, rugelach, pound cakes, cheesecakes, babkas and its signature “mistake” cake — a sheet marble cake with giant chocolate chunks. Cohen did not cut corners, proud of using only pure butter and cream.

But when it came to New York-style bagels, Izzy turned to the experts. He ordered them from Western and Brooklyn Bagels rather than try to replicate a real water bagel. As Seymour Friedman, wise guy and founder of Brooklyn Bagels, once told Izzy regarding his egg bagels, “This is not a bagel. This is a cake.” The proud Cohen had to concede that émigrés from the East Coast wanted to hear the snap of a crisp crust and chew extra hard at breakfast.

When we met in 1997, Izzy was enjoying a media moment in his semi-retirement. A small artisan bakery had just opened on La Brea Avenue and he decided to drop in one day and nose around. “Can an old Jewish baker see your operation?” he asked 36-year-old Nancy Silverton, founder of now-legendary La Brea Bakery. She invited him in. Then the flour started to fly.

He taught her how to make bagels the old-fashioned way: boiling for 30 seconds before baking to seal the crust, adding malt syrup for flavor and color and gluten for the all-important chew. “I am a firm believer that foods develop flavor in the chewing,” he emphasized on the day we spent together. Can you picture Larry David in a crisp white apron?

Love, of course, is a two-way street. As the relationship grew, Nancy passed along a few tricks to Izzy. She taught him the slow sourdough starter method that gave La Brea breads their distinctive flavor and texture. Nancy and Izzy enjoyed spending time together so much so that Izzy arrived at the bakery Sundays at five in the morning to bake dozens of sourdough bagels for the neighboring restaurant Campanile’s brunch. During the week, he would drop in to fix the bread slicer and kibitz before heading home. This was after finishing his day job decorating cakes at Brown’s Bakery in the Valley, a job he held until his death at 88.

Izzy and Nancy shared the wonder of truly finding their métiers. “Their remarkable relationship grew out of mutual respect,” his daughter remembers. They were so simpatico that Nancy dedicated her definitive cookbook, “Breads From the La Brea Bakery” to him. “When I’m 70 years old and retired, I want to be just like you,” wrote Silverton. “Who’s retired?” the cantankerous Cohen might reply.

I also dedicated a book to Izzy, my “Totally Bagel Cookbook.” After spending a day in his cozy apartment kitchen, watching him turn flour and water into something delicious, I translated his recipe for cooking at home. Of course, I had to bake a batch or two at home to get the recipe right. And then I did what Izzy had done. I went back to buying from the experts — Brooklyn, Clark Street and the Yeastie Boys being current L.A. favorites.

Los Angeles food writer Helene Siegel is the author of 40 cookbooks, including the “Totally Cookbook” series and “Pure Chocolate.” She runs the Pastry Session blog. During COVID-19, she shared Sunday morning baking lessons over Zoom with her granddaughter, eight-year-old Piper of Austin, Texas.