Michael Shafran is a food-lover at heart and has dedicated his career to it, first as a food journalist and then as founder of Brooklyn Boy Bagels. It is here that Michael and his team produce true, New York-style bagels, and have claimed international awards along the way.

Michael Shafran never aspired to be a baker, however, it turns out life had other plans for him.

After making the move to Australia in 2002 with the aim of transitioning into a full-time food writer, the third generation Brooklyn native spent his initial months down under writing for publications like Gourmet Traveller, Gourmet Traveller Wine, Lonely Planet, Qantas magazine, and Good Food, and working as Delicious magazine’s chief sub-editor. If that wasn’t enough, Michael also established himself as one of Australia’s early food bloggers.

Michael said he fully immersed himself in Australia’s foodie culture, often choosing to give American foods a wide berth. However, after 12 months the cravings for the taste of home began to set in, and so he headed to a Jewish neighbourhood in Sydney in search of a bagel.

“New Yorkers’ expectations of bagels outside of New York City are extremely low. I thought my best shot in Australia would be to go to a Jewish neighbourhood and look for a bagel place – so I did. I went to Bondi and tried one of the famous bagel places there,” Michael said.

“I bit into the bagel and it just made me angry how bad it was. It was a classic example of what New Yorkers would call a roll with a hole.”

Michael was on a mission. He spent his spare time travelling around Sydney to sample more bagels but kept coming up short. Then, one day, someone told him the real bagels were in Melbourne – so he headed south.

“I went down to Melbourne and tried all the bagel places there. Then someone told me the real bagels were actually in Perth,” Michael said.

“I said, ‘I’m pretty sure the real bagels aren’t in Perth’.”

Michael at Brooklyn Boy Bagels

Getting to work

Despite his foodie frustrations, a seed had been planted. Michael had come to the realisation that he spent his days editing chef’s recipes and cooking in his head all day long – he could potentially make his own bagels too.

After researching at least 50 recipes Michael got to work and began testing out the variables, while at the same time speaking regularly with bagel makers back in New York and gleaning their tips. Almost straight way there was success.

“The first batch I made were better than anything I had had here. The biggest flaw was they looked a bit ugly – it took me a while to get my shaping and proving right,” Michael said.

At first Michael only turned his hand to bagels a few times a year, predominantly making them for friends. Over the next 12 years Michael slowly learned to master the craft of bagel-making and, eventually, began to do some stages with bakeries around Sydney.

In those early days Michael had to borrow a bench in a kosher bakery in Bondi, working out of a little pot and using a temperamental single deck oven to make his bagels. It’s a far cry from the Brooklyn Boy Bagels business of today, which consists of two shopfronts and regular market stalls in addition to a wholesale business arm that supplies products across Sydney.

“It’s grown a lot since I started! These days we’ve got a 400sq m bakery and a couple of hundred wholesale customers… we’ve grown in leaps and bounds,” Michael said.

“The challenge as you grow is that it’s very easy to start productising things and cutting corners. If I was financially driven I would have done that already, but I’m very much authenticity driven so it’s always been the question of, ‘OK as we scale and things get bigger, how do we maintain the artisan nature of the bagel?’.

“That’s what we’ve really been striving to do all this time – keep up that quality even as we grow.”

Recently Michael and Brooklyn Boy Bagels claimed another accolade when they won the Asia Pacific title at the renowned Bagel Fest competition in the US, in addition to placing third in the International Bagel category.

It’s a win that Michael describes as momentous – but it’s one that almost didn’t happen.

Taking on the international scene

Michael plans on heading back to Bagel Fest in 2025

Michael said he saw Bagel Fest as a litmus test for how his bagels would measure up against those from the US, and so he reached out to the organisers to see if they would let him compete.

“They were ecstatic and very supportive,” Michael said.

“Bagel Fest has been around for a handful of years but it’s got exponentially bigger every year, and this year it just ballooned. They were doing it at Citi Field, which is where the Mets play baseball, and it was this massive event.”

So the process of working out the logistics of how to compete began. Michael wanted to create his bagels using Australian products, so had to figure out how to get his flour – which is sourced from a farm in Northern New South Wales – through customs. Eventually this was achieved, but then, the first big blow came – Brooklyn Boy Bagels’ head baker could not get a US visa in time for the competition.

Michael said despite multiple appeals he eventually had to make the decision to travel solo.

Following a quick stop-over in Japan, where Michael sourced shichimi – a Japanese spice mix that he wanted to use in a creation he describes as a mash-up between a tiger bread and a bagel – Michael landed in New York.

Severely jet-lagged, he travelled to Port Newark in New Jersey to pick up his flour. The only problem was no one could find it. It took hours of searching to get the right clearance and get to the correct office before Michael finally got his hands on the flour and headed straight to the commercial kitchen in Queens to begin work.

The next hurdle came from the bagel roller he had hired backing out at the last minute. Michael turned to his support network, and on the day of the competition had managed to assemble a motley team around him.

“I had a New Yorker here that worked with me in Sydney, so he came to help out. I also had a top food blogger who ironically was working for New York City tourism who also came to help out,” Michael said.

“A friend of mine from high school, who is a chef, was also going to help but he got called into work. But his son, who’s a professional body builder, actually worked in a bagel shop so he came to help out too. So, on the day I had all this help and support.

“Even though I was exhausted mentally, and we showed up two hours late to the event, it all came together at the last second and was great. It was worth it.”

Although the dates for the 2025 Bagel Fest are yet to be announced, Michael said Brooklyn Boy Bagels would be making the trip again – this time with his head baker in tow.

“We’ve worked way in advance to get my head baker over there with me this time. The result will be better and it’ll be more enjoyable if the two of us can do it together,” he said.

“It’s a bit like when you run a marathon. You swear you’ll never do another one and then six months later you sign up again. But I’ll have to sleep for about a month beforehand to get ready for it”