What’s baked and round and eaten all over? Bagels. Clearly we love bagels. If you’re reading this, you must too.

1. Bagels are the only traditional bread item that is boiled before they’re baked. Once shaped, they’re dropped in rapidly boiling water for 3-5 minutes on each side. They’re then drained and baked for another 10 minutes or so—never fried!

2. The origin of the word “bagel” is unclear. Some say it comes from the German verb “biegen”, which means, “to bend”. Others say it’s from the Yiddish “beygel”, (itself a derivation of the German “beugel”, meaning “ring” or “bracelet”).

3. One bit of bagel lore has it that the bagel was invented in 1683, when a baker in Vienna baked a hard roll in the shape of a stirrup — "bügel" in German — as a gesture of thanks to the cavalry-leading King John III Sobieski of Poland, who had saved the city from Turkish invaders. (Source: foodreference.com)