There was a time when Leo Garcia only ate bagels about four times a year.
Now, he could eat around four a day.
These addictive bagels aren’t dense, chewy New York bagels, or thin, slightly sweet Montreal bagels — these are Tucson bagels.
The well-baked outside has a golden-brown hue, covered in melted cheddar cheese, and topped with fresh slices of spicy jalapeños. Once you bite in, you’re met with a pillowy inside filled with hints of both sweet and salty flavors.
It’s not like the bagels you’re used to.
"With wood-fired, you think smoky, but it actually doesn't give you that smoky flavor,” Garcia said. “It’s almost like pizza dough; it gives you a lighter bagel rather than chewy. It’s similar to the taste and texture of a soft pretzel.”
Garcia has mastered the art of wood-fired pizzas, combining the classic dish with Sonoran flavors like carne asada and chorizo, and now tacking on wood-fired bagels to his list of accomplishments.
This year, Garcia's popular pizza truck, Lumbre, added wood-fired bagels to its menu, and it didn’t take long for his new creation to take the city by storm.
““Most people know us for our pizza,” he said. ‘It’s kind of an odd dynamic because people that know us for our bagels never had our pizza, and the people that know us for our pizza have never had our bagels.”
The idea to make his own bagels was first planted in Garcia’s mind last year. He was serving up pizza at an event when one of his customers asked him if he had ever tried to make wood-fired bagels.
Garcia had never tried to make bagels before, but was intrigued by the possibility of using his oven for other delicacies, not just pizza.
He began playing around with different recipes, trying to figure out what the perfect amount of water was for an ideal dough.
“It's a lot harder to bake bagels than it was to do pizza,” Garcia said. “You can get away with some stuff when making pizza dough, but with bagels you have to time the dough perfectly. The water inside the dough can't be too much. It's a lot of stuff that I had to learn, taking what I know from pizza and applying that to just bread baking in general.”
Lumbre’s bagels come in flavors like plain, everything, sesame, jalapeño cheddar and pepperoni.
About four months later, Garcia had finally nailed down a recipe he was happy with, and he began selling his bagels.
Garcia's bagels come in flavors including plain, everything, sesame, jalapeño cheddar, and pepperoni — an ode to his popular pizzas.
Of course, he also had to add some Sonoran flavors to the mix. One of his cream cheese spreads has chiltepin incorporated into it, giving it some heat. If you’re more of a veggie person, there’s also a chunky vegetable spread that Garcia loves to pair with the jalapeño cheddar bagel.
At his special bagel pop-ups, Garcia will take things up a notch and make breakfast sandwiches with the bagels, and you get to choose between a bacon, egg and cheese, carnitas, or a chicken sausage he sources from Bashful Bandit BBQ.
At special bagel pop-ups, Lumbre’s Leo Garcia will make breakfast sandwiches with the bagels.
While Garcia only does pop-ups on certain days, you can still get his tasty bagels and spreads at Chappopin Café, Hebrews Coffee and Espresso Self on the weekends.
For those deliveries, Garcia has to start making the dough a day before since it has to rise and be boiled before heading into the oven. The next day, Garcia has to wake up before 3 a.m. to ensure he’s baking by 4 a.m. When they come out of the fiery oven, he has a batch of perfectly browned bagels, ready for distribution.
It’s hard to describe the deliciousness of Garcia’s bagels. The cheddar jalapeño bagel with its creamy cream cheese is a staple. The outside shell has the perfect amount of crisp to it; just enough for a crunch, but it won't rip up the roof of your mouth.
The cheese and spicy jalapeños add a nice kick to the subtle flavor of the dough. It’s soft, yet crispy; spicy and delightful. All these complex flavors come together to make one heavenly bagel.
“I like to claim that it's a Tucson-style bagel,” Garcia said. “We were able to experiment and kind of go our own way with it.”
Be warned: once you have one, you’ll want to start every morning with one.
With support from his wife, Natalie, his kids, and his loyal customers, Garcia has been able to turn his pizza empire into a pizza AND bagel empire.
“I kind of was in a funk but the bagels kind of boosted me back up, it was so interesting and difficult to do,” Garcia said. "I love the challenge and I'm very competitive, so I take pride in the product that I put out. I wanted to make sure it was something that's worth people coming and trying, just like our pizzas.”
Be sure to check Lumbre's Instagram page to see his schedule for the week.
