In my house, growing up, bagels were a hot topic. My dad was fond of saying that a decent bagel hadn’t been baked in America since 1963 (just after the last good American cannoli was made). It didn’t stop him from picking up bagels most weeks at our neighborhood bagel shop (a dozen plain, well-baked) and seeking out new sources of bagel supply that might help him chase down that elusive bagel dream, a bagel that lived up to the bagels of his youth. We were susceptible to bagel fads - for a while, the bagel shop offered something called “flagels” - flat bagels that had been squashed after shaping to maximize the crust-to-crumb ratio. And we were, following my dad’s lead, a bit snobby in our attitudes toward what we considered the systematic failures of vision in the bagel-industrial complex. To wit, most bagels were too big, too fluffy, not chewy enough, underbaked, underflavored, or worse flavored with goyische abominations like blueberries or cinnamon and raisins. It’s a bagel, for crying out loud - let it be what it was, what it should be. Stop gentrifying my breakfast!
When I met Kali Hathaway, the owner, baker, bookkeeper, and dishwasher at Parzel’s Bagelry, a home-based bagel bakery, I knew I had found someone who would understand my deep feelings about bagels. She is a bagel fanatic whose level of bagel obsession eclipses even my own family’s passion.
Kali told me that bagels were always her “happy place” food, the comfort snack she’d seek out when nothing else would do the trick, and she’s always had exacting standards, even before she became a professional baker. “When I worked in advertising and someone would bring in bagels from [ed: a chain bakery whose name rhymes with Blamera], I’d be upset - it’d ruin my whole day”. When she first arrived in Southern California seeking sun and professional advancement, she spent days exploring LA’s bagel options. After getting married, starting a family, and moving to Riverside (during the pandemic) she’d trek across town to get bagels with an infant in tow, but eventually grew tired of the bagel commute, especially since the quality of the bagels on offer failed to live up to her expectations.
So, like any resourceful pandemic foodie, she started baking her own and shortly after that, like many pandemic bakers, hatched a plan to make her baking hobby into a brick-and-mortar baking business. The scale of her ambition was grand:“I turned to my husband and said ‘I'm going to elevate the bagel game in this city and I'm going to build a bagel empire’.” Intending to open a standalone bakery, she “entered the bagel-sphere”. She immersed herself in research, learning bagel history, devouring recipe books, and YouTube videos on bagel lore. She did test bake after test bake, experimenting with different flour, different leavening agents, different formulas and kneading methods, and different shaping techniques. For six months, she experimented until she’d achieved her goal: a bagel she knew she could be proud to offer to her community.
Wanting to “do things right”, she enrolled in a two-month program through the Small Business Development Center of the Inland Empire that helps people launch food-based businesses. It was there that she learned about the option to start her business at home with a permitted Cottage Food Operation (CFO).
Cottage food laws in California offer a legal pathway for home-based food producers to offer specific home-made foods for sale. CFO permit holders apply through their home county for a permit. They are required to submit a hygiene plan, acquire a food safety certification, and adhere to strict labeling standards. Type A CFO permit holders are allowed to sell only directly to consumers; type B permit holders (like Parzel’s) may wholesale through other retailers and are subject to annual inspections from county health inspectors. Kali says “When I learned about the cottage food options, it opened up my eyes to see that people are starting legitimate businesses from their homes. In this economy, starting a brick-and-mortar restaurant is very expensive and hard, especially in California, for a variety of reasons, so I was thankful that this was presented to me.” It gave her a terrific way to launch her business, build a client base, and perfect her craft without having to make enormous investments in fitting out a commercial bakery and retail shop.
In November 2023, Kali launched Parzel’s Bagelry (the name is a combination of her two daughters’ names, Parker and Hazel) and started to bring her bagels to the public. She pounded the pavement to find retailers to whom she could offer her bagels wholesale and launched a weekly porch pick-up for direct sales to bagel-loving customers who pre-order for each weekly bagel drop.
Apparently, Kali is not alone in Riverside with her hunger for good bagels. Since launching porch pickups, she’s sold all the bagels she can make at each drop, around 250 bagels a week. She mixes dough in a commercial 20-quart mixer (purchased from a restaurant auction), and proofs shaped bagels in three refrigerators. Every Saturday at 3 am, she poaches her bagels on a consumer range top and bakes them in a double wall oven and a small commercial convection oven that she rolls into her home kitchen for each bake.
While she’s happy she started her business from home, she still plans to open a full-scale bagel shop. Cottage food laws can be limiting: in the spirit of consumer protection, cottage food operators are limited to products at low risk of spoilage. Cream cheese, for example, is not allowed to be sold. Fine for now, but Kali would like to be able to offer her customers a bagel experience with all the trappings. I’m rooting for her and look forward to eating an everything bagel with lox and cream cheese from her bakery, whenever and wherever it opens.
Her bagels, I’m happy to report, are delicious. Kali makes a bagel that checks all the boxes. Her bagels are not too big, not too fluffy; they have a crisp crust and a pleasantly dense interior, with the kind of chew that gives your jaw muscles a gentle workout. She offers a huge variety of flavors with cutesy names, from traditional “plain jane”, sesame, and everything, to more nouveaux bagel options like the “spicy senorita” with dehydrated jalapeno and cheddar, cinnamon-sugar, and an option called the Misty, loaded with craisins and brie, which promises a taste of Thanksgiving with every bite.
Want to try it for yourself? At the moment you have two options. Kali stocks a freezer with bagels at the Victoria Grove Produce Market at 12261 Blackburn Road - you can purchase them there at your convenience. She also offers weekly porch pickup for pre-orders. Visit her site (parzels.com) and sign up for notifications - you’ll get a text on Monday when she opens orders for the week. Place a pre-order and then show up the following Saturday at the appointed time at her Citrus Heights home where she’ll have your order bagged up and ready to go. Kali’s bagels start at $15 / half dozen or $28 / dozen, with surcharges for certain flavors. She plans to expand her home operation in the months to come to grow a bagel catering business and to expand her partnerships with more retailers who will carry her baked goods.
I know you all want to know the answer to the big question: does my Dad like Parzel’s bagels? I’ll let you know - my parents are visiting next month, and I plan to pre-order a dozen for our breakfasts. No cinnamon sugar or chocolate chip for us, thanks. :)
