In its second year, Maine’s Bagel-Off showcases the best local dough
Bagel samples from Spark, La Tartine, Hootenanny and Scratch bakeries at the 2026 Maine Bagel-Off event in Wiscasset on Saturday, Oct. 24, hosted by the Maine Grain Alliance. (Riley Board/Staff Writer)
WISCASSETT — It wasn’t until bagel 13 that I started to struggle.
Until then, my friends/co-tasters and I had been going strong in our effort to cast an informed vote for Maine’s best bagel. We, along with about 300 others, mingled at the Maine Tasting Center on a sunny Saturday morning, taking thoughtful bites of dough that hailed from Naples to Northport.
Stomachs full and palates exhausted, we tried our 14th and final bagel. It was pretty good.
It was my second year attending the event organized by the Maine Grain Alliance, focused on highlighting local flours and craftsmanship in one of America’s favorite baked goods. I could not have had a more different experience to last year’s.
Last August, my friends and I arrived hungry at the farmers’ market in Brunswick only to discover a line for the first Maine Bagel Bake-Off wrapping around the whole market.
We were not to sample any bagels that day. After we’d waited in line for more than two hours, organizers sold us half-price tickets because they were running low on stock. Despite a guarantee that there would still be some bagels left by the time we reached the end of the second line, they had run out and our tickets were refunded.
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It’s become something of a mythic event among my friends: how we waited for so long, discovered there would be no cream cheese, then we wouldn’t get any bagels; how we made friends with the couple standing next to us in line, how we all went to nearby Dutchman’s afterward to make up for it, met our new friends’ puppy, created a group chat.
Maine Grain Alliance Executive Director Tristan Noyes mentioned last year’s event before I even brought it up.
“Admittedly, I don’t think we were prepared for…” Noyes trailed off with a laugh, describing how the 2025 event went awry.
In Noyes’s retelling, the Bagel-Off (then called the Bagel Bake-Off, since renamed) was planned as a way to show off the great local grain innovations among the state’s bagel makers.
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The goal was to crown two winners, one judged by a group of bagel-tasting professionals, and one by public opinion. Noyes knew Sam Silverman, a Bowdoin graduate and the founder of New York BagelFest, who served as a judge, and other bagel professionals involved with the Alliance’s annual Kneading Conference.
But anticipation for the event went unexpectedly viral (the announcement on Instagram garnered 950 likes and more than 1,500 shares). It was too much for the organizers, the parking lot, or the bagel supply to handle. “Never has something gone so viral so quickly,” Noyes said. “The demand was just out of this world.”
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So he and the other organizers took extra care in arranging this year’s edition. The event moved to the Maine Tasting Center in Wiscasset. Tickets were sold in advance. The bagels would be served farmers’ market-style, with each baker at their own booth. And there would be cream cheese.
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That effort paid off. Saturday’s event was delightfully well-organized. Participants received a bagel passport with all of the vendors (perfect for detailed note-taking), a tray to hold samples and a ticket to cast their vote. The event offered regular and whipped cream cheese, alongside coffee and apple cider samples. Nobody ran out of bagels — in fact, bagel makers were generous with additional flavors or specialty schmears to sample. The lines for each booth moved quickly and the bakers were eager to talk about their submission, the flours and techniques they employed.
In all, 14 bakers offered up their bagel for consideration, ranging from some of Maine’s best-known bakeries, like Scratch in South Portland and Dutchman’s in Brunswick, to home bakers and microbakeries. There was no requirement to use local grains, but bakers received a bonus from the judges if at least 10% of the flour in their recipe was local. Noyes said 10 of this year’s bakers did.
The booth for Brunswick-based Dutchman’s Wood-Fired Bagels, featuring their za’atar bagel, at the 2026 Maine Bagel-Off. (Riley Board/Staff Writer)
Most bagel makers tried to stand out with unique flavors: three featured rosemary, two brought pretzel bagels and two included caramelized onion, while others offered pumpernickel, french toast, jalapeno cheddar and za’atar. The styles ranged from Montreal to New York, wood-fired to sourdough.
My group found plenty of common ground — Spark’s flavorful salt and fennel bagel and the Dutchman’s za’atar bagel were both crowd-pleasers — and were split on others, like the pumpernickel from La Tartine in Belfast.
One of the most memorable samples was from Knead & Knosh (last year’s judge’s winner, an award that prompted home baker Jeff Mao to open a brick and mortar store in Topsham). Mao submitted a Malay curry and sultana bagel this time around, a grown-up cinnamon raisin bagel with warm spices like turmeric, cumin and coriander, and bits of golden raisin. I loved it (even as a cinnamon raisin skeptic) but we agreed it was perhaps better as a fun bite than a whole bagel.
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In the end, I cast my vote for Scratch’s rosemary honey bagel, a chewy — almost puffy — and perfectly salty sourdough creation with a cornmeal crust. Two of my friends’ votes went to Spark, while another cast her ballot for Blue House’s rosemary onion (which came with a charred scallion cream cheese, the standout spread of the morning.)
When the winners were announced in the early afternoon, the people’s choice award went to Blue House, a small-batch Portland home bakery, while the judge’s award went to Scratch. Both of the winners used Maine-grown grains in their bagels.
Maine Grain Alliance Director Tristan Noyes presents the Golden Bagel awards at the 2026 Maine Bagel-Off at the Maine Tasting Center. (Riley Board/Staff Writer)
“We had an incredible, incredible, close competition in a million ways,” Noyes said before presenting the Golden Bagel awards to the winners. He also gave delayed trophies to last year’s awardees, including people’s choice winner Orchard Ridge.
While I’m taking a very short break from bagels, I’m confident I’ll have space for more by next year.
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Tagged: Baking
Riley covers education for the Press Herald. Before moving to Portland, she spent two years in Kenai, Alaska, reporting on local government, schools and natural resources for the public radio station KDLL. More by Riley Board
