Edan’s Bagels is what happens when someone combines passion for a hobby and turns it into something more.
Interior designer by day, baker on most weekends, Edan Maoz was faced with a big problem.
He couldn’t find a quality bagel in his college town of Flagstaff, Arizona. So, he took it upon himself to try and create a bagel that he wanted to eat. Over a decade later and thousands of hours of extensive trial, error, and research fueled by passion and intrinsic motivation, Maoz has perfected a recipe that he is proud of.
When Maoz was working at an interior design firm in San Francisco, CA, He would bring in the bagels that he was making as a hobby and experimenting with into the office for his coworkers. One day, the office manager approached him and asked if he could make some for the office and they would pay him for it.
“That was the first time that I had been told that [the bagels] were good enough to buy,” said Maoz, “That is when it got in my head that this could actually pay for the ingredients, I would not call it profitable, but it pays for itself at this point.”
Saying the word experimenting should not be taken lightly. Maoz could tell you all about the different types of flours he uses and the reason for them. He could discuss protein content percentages in certain flours and how they influence the crumb structure of baked goods for hours on end—it’s a testament to how much he loves the process.
“I didn't even know what to search for [in the beginning]. The more and more that I read about breadmaking, the more I understood how these things can affect the outcome of your bread. Not only ingredients, but times, quantities, etc. That’s when you start your journal, and you start to experiment” said Maoz. “If I use this flour versus this flour, or if I let it rise this long versus this long. You can experiment with different kinds of sugar, you can use sugar as a sugar, but a lot of people use honey. Then I started using malt syrup. If I use this much water versus this much, that's when you can kind of hone the recipe.”
Once he had a bagel he believed in and was comfortable selling, he developed a cream cheese recipe with a similar strenuous process and opened an online shop, https://www.edansbagels.com/order, where customers can place orders of half a dozen or a dozen bagels, and cream cheese.
In the future, he would like to move towards catering rather than just taking individual orders which tend to be inconsistent and do not always work with his baking schedule.
“I’m trying to move more into the catering domain, but that’s as far as I would want to take it. I want to make sure that it’s still enjoyable, and that it never becomes an obligation.”
Maoz announces his baking schedule on his Instagram, @Edansbagels, go check him out!
All photos provided by Edan Maoz
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