Can someone with bialy experience tell me if this is what they're supposed to look like? Of course, it would be good to know if they tasted/chewed right, too - more or less bagel-ish would be it. I have to admit to a suburban 60's California upbringing and don't remember seeing even a bagel before I went away to college. Now I find something called a bialy in a baking cookbook which I've made according to instructions without benefit of ever actually having seen one. For those as ignorant as myself, a bialy is a sort of near kin to the bagel. It uses high-gluten flour but isn't boiled before baking. Instead of a hole, it's shaped more like a small pizza with a thin "crust" in the middle, which gets a little smear of caramelized onion purée - the orange stuff seen in the photo.
This is also my first effort at posting a photo. I'm sure there must be an easier way to shrink the photo than emailing it to myself but that's what I did. Here goes: