I tried Seattle mayoral candidate Katie Wilson's (husband's) bagels

If this is going to be Seattle's next First Bagel, we need to know how good it is...

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When I sent emails to every candidate running for Seattle's political office in the upcoming election, asking them about their bagel preferences, I was curious not only to see who would respond but also how they would respond.

The first person to get back to me was Seattle mayoral candidate Katie Wilson. In less than 24 hours, she’d not only replied with a full rundown of her go-to Seattle bagel place and order, but she also extended an invitation to try her husband’s bagels, which she proclaimed as “the best bagels in town.”

That’s someone who gets it.

Something to know about me is that if you tell me that you make great bagels and invite me over to your home to sample them, I will show up. And so I did.

Katie Wilson is doing the dishes in her narrow kitchen, while her husband, Scott, multitasks between two batches of bagels. Despite the cramped quarters, the two maneuver one another with an intuitiveness that only comes from spending years living with someone.

“You're going to get a sample of two different methods here,” Scott explains while pulling dough that has been fermenting for over a week out of the fridge. “I went all-out and used the boards for the first ones, and [the other batch] is on parchment. Very few people use the boards. Without boards, you can get 97% of the way there, I would say. But with the boards, they just do a few things that're hard to replicate. But you'll see the difference.”

This, I would come to learn, was just the beginning of how deeply and intimately Scott thinks about bagels. One imagines that any home baker who tries to perfect a bread item is dedicated to the craft, but his passion for perfecting the unassuming bagel seemed to border on spiritual.

“It's a very humble thing, but if you get into it, it could be considered the highest form of bread,” he said. “It's like a really low and really high. I love things that are in that tension.”

The first batch of bagels arrives at the table, accompanied by a freshly made bowl of cream cheese. They are intensely hand-rolled, golden brown, and plump. And as we eat, I get a full download of everything Scott has learned about fermentation and baking since he started toiling on bagels during the pandemic.

“I invented my own unique fermentation method,” he tells me. “These are cold-rolled bagels, which makes the shaping a little difficult. Normally, with bagels, you mix the ingredients in a mixer: yeast, flour, malt, water, and salt. Then you let it sit because it gets really tough when you work the gluten a lot. Then you cut it into strips and roll it, or you put it in a machine and roll it. Then you let it proof for maybe an hour, and you stick it in the fridge. In the fridge, it slows down the fermentation. The longer it ferments, the better the taste. But over time, the gluten will break down and do weird stuff. So there's a limitation to that.

“What I do instead is I put it in the fridge before I've shaped the bagel. It's a big mass of dough, like this big. I throw that in the fridge, and I let that ferment. It's really good after two days, but it peaks at around a week, and you can get maybe two weeks out of it. After two weeks, the gluten starts to break down.”

“Scott’s just got a driven personality where he gets into something and then he just goes for it,” Katie adds while smirking.

That drive pays off as the bagels are a delightful balance of crispiness and chew. The crackle of the crust provides a lovely textural bite, while the fluffy interior is airy yet still has a heft to it.

I tell Scott that while there are a lot of solid bagels in Seattle, it can be tough to find a bagel that gives you a little crunch in the bite (R.I.P. Little Market), which is something he appreciates and has, naturally, obsessively fine-tuned as well.

“All it takes is 17 minutes,” he says. “17 minutes with 57% hydration. Maybe a little more, a little less if you have more water in there. It's amazing.

“I did 16, not crispy. I did 18, too crispy.”

Believe it or not, bagels were not an object of obsession for Katie and Scot growing up in Binghamton, New York.

“There were a bunch of bagel places, but none of them were... I don't know. They were all fine,” says Katie. “So it really wasn't until we were adults and got interested in New York City.”

These days, however, any trip to NYC becomes a culinary tour of the city’s most talked-about bagels and pizza, a planning method I know all too well. Favorites include BO’s Bagels, Ess-a-Bagel, and Utopia.

The couple moved to Seattle in 2004 after traveling the country via Greyhound (“We didn't have money,” said Katie. “We were timing our bus trips so we could sleep on the bus in between cities.”). Katie worked various jobs, from barista to boatyard worker, before becoming a policy and politics writer for outlets such as Crosscut (now Cascade PBS), PubliCola, The Stranger, and The Urbanist. The couple also founded the Transit Riders Union, a democratic membership organization that represents working people across Seattle and King County.

She says that she wasn’t thinking about running for Seattle mayor until the special election this past February, when Prop 1A won in a landslide, pledging millions for social housing through a tax on high earners.

“I think it's just really important that we make social housing work, and it's going to be complicated,” she said. “If we have a mayor who just wants to undermine it, then it could easily be a failure in the next four years.”

If there’s a place where bagels and politics intersect in Seattle, it’s in the success of “corner store” locations like Mt. Bagel, Salmonberry Green Grocer, and Bloom Bistro. Current zoning laws make it challenging to create new opportunities like those, but Wilson would like to push forward a proposal in Seattle’s new comprehensive plan to make it easier.

“I think right now, the current proposal would allow corner stores, but they have to be literally on corners,” she said. “I think we can be broader about that. Allow micro businesses and small businesses in residential neighborhoods. I think that's a really good idea.”

Scott, meanwhile, continues to work with TRU and help out on Katie’s campaign, but it’s hard to pull his focus from the bagels he’s worked so hard to perfect over the last few years, especially as he’s come to appreciate what makes a good one so good.

“You have to just taste it and you’ll know, you know? Or especially get used to it, because when you get used to it, you can't go back,” he said. “You're just like, ‘This is not a bagel. This is just a roll with a hole.’

“It's one of those funny things that people are just like, ‘It's just a bagel. Who cares?’ And it's like, ‘Well, if you know…’”

Oh, I know.

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