McLean Bagels in Fairfax County, Virginia is a father-daughter pastime turned into a bakery.
Stuart Hoffman and his daughter, Niki, started making bread together a few years ago, and then, they transitioned to bagels.
They don’t recall whose idea it was, but they have reflected on the struggles.
Some criticized the bagels as deformed and inquired about whether they’re supposed to be “plump.”
But Hoffman used the comments as motivation, hoping to perfect the recipe.
Meanwhile, during her sophomore year at McLean High School, Niki said other parents often catered hundreds of bagels from a nearby shop. One time, Stuart offered to bake them instead.
It became a “continuous thing,” Niki said.
Because he seemed to enjoy baking in large quantities, she encouraged him to start selling the bagels at local farmers’ markets, and he agreed, launching McLean Bagels and making hundreds each week.
His goal is to transition the small startup into a reliable business.
“I grew up loving bagels,” Stuart said. “The key, at least from my perspective … you want it to be chewy. You want it to be the right density. To me, it’s got to taste like good bread.”
During the day, he’s a government contractor, and when the idea to make bagels started, he used his home’s convection oven and traditional kitchen mixers. But now, he’s using a commercial kitchen and has some people to help.
Last weekend, he made 300 bagels to sell at the Mosaic District farmers’ market and over 400 to sell at the Dupont Circle market.
“They’re sourdough with a long ferment,” Stuart said. “That’s how you develop flavor.”
He avoids putting too much seasonings on top of the bagels, “because I want them to taste like the bread.”
He’s selling plain, poppy, sesame and everything, and pumpernickel is on the list “because it’s old school, and I think it shows the devotion to the original flavors.”
He makes cinnamon raisin, blueberry and honey whole wheat, too. Bagels cost about $3, and it’s another $2 for cream cheese.
It’s not difficult to balance a contracting job with the baking demands, he said, because baking isn’t “a lot of continuous work.” But it does come with its share of headaches.
Once, his refrigerator’s power went out and he lost dough, but he still had to show up to a farmers market. Last week, the mixer in the commercial kitchen wasn’t working.
He sells the bagels at the Oakton and Fresh Farm Mosaic markets, and he’s scheduled to be at the Dupont Circle market again in March.
As a student at Cornell University, Niki has been watching her father’s success from afar, sometimes frustrated at the lack of quality bagel options in Ithaca, New York.
Stuart, meanwhile, values his conversations with customers, including those encouraging him to bake varieties he doesn’t currently offer.
And even though bagel preferences could sometimes be a polarizing topic, “if we can show people what a bagel can taste like, that would be sort of gratifying. People always want to talk about bagels. They want to talk about the process. They want to know the behind the scenes.”
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