Filter Shmilter . . . It’s All The Same

After reporting that the city’s water is too muddy, the Times samples expert opinion on whether New York’s bagels are imperiled. Survey says . . . “no”:

Water purity was up for discussion yesterday for bakers who labor over $1 bagels and those who make the focaccia in four-star restaurants like Daniel Boulud’s Daniel. They know the facts as surely as they know their recipes: New York City has the largest unfiltered water system in the country, and New Yorkers have long bragged that their water tastes better than the water anywhere else.

Federal officials are concerned that city water now contains too much clay, stirred up in part by wild weather upstate, where most of the reservoirs are. The city has been dumping tons of sediment-scrubbing chemicals in the water, but that may not be enough. The city may have to build a filtration plant.

That could cost billions of dollars, a financial headache, perhaps. But a culinary one?

Some restaurateurs said that if water is the most important taste element in your cooking, you have a problem.

“I have another store in New Jersey in a town that filters the water,” said Louis Thompson, who owns Terrace Bagels, on Prospect Park West in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. “My bagel comes out just as good in New Jersey as it does in New York.”

The wrong water can ruin things, he said. “You can’t use well water to make bagels,” he said. “You could, but they won’t come out right. What, exactly is in that water, I don’t know. I’m not a chemist, I’m just a bagel maker. All I can tell is the water in New York has always been good for bagels, Italian bread, pastries.”

Noel Labat-Comess, the president of Tom Cat Bakery, a wholesale operation in Long Island City, Queens, called the issue of filtration and taste a “nonworry.”

“Water used for bread that’s within a normal range has little or no effect on it,” he said. “It’s only when it gets to the extremes, when it gets extremely mineraly, that it can be a problem. I’ve never run into anyone in my years of baking anywhere that had a problem with their bread that was caused by the water.”

. . .

Mr. Thompson, of Terrace Bagels, experimented before he opened his New Jersey shop and cafe. He hauled 150 gallons of filtered New Jersey water to Brooklyn and made a batch of bagels.

“The bagels came out just as good,” he said. “In towns in New Jersey you can’t find a decent bagel. I don’t know if that’s the water or the people that make them.”

All of which begs the question — what if the New York water thing is just a myth?