Yukiko Iikura, head baker at Wa-Bagel, moves around the company’s production kitchen with ease and speed, deftly lifting large pans of waiting dough and moving them through the stages of their process, from filling and forming to proofing, boiling, topping and baking.

The neatly printed but faded script on Wa-Bagel’s whiteboard production schedule hints at the unique element behind Iikura’s bagels: “Newborn Sourdough Every Tuesday.”

Iikura and her team make bagels with active koji sourdough starter. Koji, a type of mould derived from rice or soybeans and typically used in fermented products such as soy sauce, miso and sake, delivers a punch of umami to Wa-Bagel’s bagels. The koji fermentation also delivers a slightly different texture. “The dough is also more hydrated than most bagel doughs,” Iikura explains, which gives it a good chew. “I always cared about the texture of the food,” she says.

As a university student in Japan, Iikura was first introduced to bagels while working part-time at a local bakery. She also loves bread. “My grandpa and my mum cared about bread. I grew up in an environment where I had exposure to great bread.”

Inspired by New York City and its culture, which she says she experienced through “manga, music or movies,” Iikura visited various bakeries when she first travelled to the city. “I would just ask them to see their kitchens.”

Iikuria later ran her own bakery, Kepobagels, in Kamikitazawa, Tokyo before joining ABURI Restaurant Group to open Wa- Bagel in Vancouver. The group also operates ABURI Market and Minami, a restaurant in Yaletown, as well as Miku, a sushi restaurant on Vancouver’s waterfront.

A koji starter and international influences are only part of the story behind these Japanese bagels. For Iikura, it comes down to the balance between textures and fillings. And while a filled bagel might be a new experience for many, the flavour combinations at Wa-Bagel prove enticing. The art is in adapting the dough to the fillings.

“Mochi and cheese is already a very strong flavour, so I made the dough texture stronger,” Iikura says. Likewise, with sweet potato, “the flavour is sweet and subtle, so I made the dough a little softer.”

While knowing the correct texture of the dough may come intuitively to Iikura, her bakery production sheets express this in a system of what she calls “fluffy labels,” where she assigns each bagel type a rating for the fluffiness of the dough to standardize production. At the same time, she’s nurturing a young team of bagel makers, helping them spot the telltale signs of dough fluffiness, such as size, hardness, temperature and moisture levels.

“Emotional control is the trickiest part,” she says. Waiting patiently for the dough can be challenging, but she’ll stop production rather than push something out that’s not ready. This creates a balancing act for morning production times, as they bake fresh every morning for their two cafés, which open at 7:30 and 8:00 a.m., respectively.

The flavours may cause some to re-examine what’s expected from a bagel. Some flavours come from Iikura’s own experiences, including her habit of eating steamed rice with bacon and umeboshi, or pickled Japanese plums, which has given rise to the sweet, sour and savoury Ume Bacon bagel.

Other flavours are a result of customer suggestions. Still, Iikura likes to combine a known flavour with something unknown as a way to make some of the lesser-known flavours more accessible to her customers.

Take her Kinako Chocolate bagel, filled with chocolate and roasted soybean powder, which has a sweet and nutty flavour. Her combination of cream cheese and red bean paste takes a classic bagel smear and pairs it with something unexpected.

She thrives on customer reactions, especially when she surprises them with something they haven’t seen before.

“In Vancouver, people know how to eat bread,” she says. “They appreciate the balance between bread and fillings.”

Those who want to learn more can take classes in bagel making under Iikura’s tutelage. In Vancouver, she has found a willing audience, and her classes have been well received. “They love baking, and they enjoy their lives,” she says, expressing admiration for Vancouver’s balanced lifestyle, where people make time for such extra-curricular activities. The classes take place either in Wa-Bagel’s downtown kitchen or, more often, in local cafés that she collaborates with. Students work on an adapted recipe suitable for home baking.

Wa-Bagels unique concept attracts people from outside the city, with customers often driving in for the weekend and placing orders to take home with them. “It’s very Vancouver,” Iikura says.

WA-BAGEL
Park Place, B09-666 Burrard St., Vancouver, Bentall Centre, 501-595 Burrard St., Vancouver
wabagel.com | @wa.bagel | [email protected]