BROSSARD
BAGELMaple Wood-Fired Oven

The Montreal bagel and the New York bagel have almost nothing in common. The Montreal one is smaller, thinner and has a wider hole. Its flavor is sweet (honey and eggs) while the New York one is salty (salt and malt).

The Montreal recipe never contains salt — that's the fundamental distinction. The bagels are boiled in honey-sweetened water, not salted water. And most importantly, they're baked in a wood-fired oven (never an electric one), which produces that smoky flavor impossible to replicate.

The result: a crispy crust with a smoky flavor, a dense, soft interior, and that subtle honey taste that makes the Montreal bagel a one-of-a-kind food.

The wood-fired oven is the non-negotiable hallmark of an authentic Montreal bagel. Without a wood-fired oven, it's not a real Montreal bagel. And not just any wood — maple wood is the traditional fuel.

Maple smoke gives the bagel a mild, distinctive smoky flavor that can't be reproduced any other way. The wood-fired oven was designed to both bake and flavor the bagel simultaneously.

At Brossard Bagel, our oven is fueled exclusively with Eastern Townships maple wood. A good bagel should be "slightly chewy, slightly smokey, and slightly sweet" — that's exactly what maple wood achieves.

This method follows centuries of tradition dating back to the wood-fired ovens of Eastern Europe that Jewish immigrants brought to Montreal.

Around 1900, Chaim (Hyman) Seligman sold bagels from a cart on Saint-Laurent Boulevard. In 1919, Isadore Shlafman, a Russian immigrant, opened the Montreal Bagel Bakery in a back alley — what would become Fairmount Bagel in 1949. Three generations later, the business is still family-owned.

In 1957, Myer Lewkowicz, a Holocaust survivor from a shtetl near Krakow, founded St-Viateur Bagel. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 and sent to Buchenwald, he once said: "At Buchenwald, all I dreamt of was a piece of bread."

Today, Brossard Bagel carries on this sacred tradition outside the island of Montreal, bringing authentic wood-fired bagels to South Shore residents. No need to cross the bridge!

The Fairmount (1919) vs St-Viateur (1957) debate is a Montreal classic. Both institutions are located a few streets apart in the Mile End, open 24/7. Both use wood-fired ovens, honey poaching and hand-rolling.

But for South Shore residents, there's a third option: Brossard Bagel. Same tradition, same wood-fired oven, same quality — without crossing the Jacques-Cartier Bridge or the tunnel. Plus a unique bonus: Jamaican specialties that neither Fairmount nor St-Viateur offer.