Photos by Jesika Theos

First Ed Thill and Lindsey Gaudet made a few dozen bagels here and there for friends and neighbors, hand rolling, boiling and baking in their steamy home kitchen. It was all word of mouth. They did family events and school events, dozens of trial batches, gathering feedback and adjusting the recipe along the way.

The couple quit their day jobs and rearranged their dining room to make space for a 250-pound mixer, knowing it would someday find a home in their own shop. They popped up at yoga studios and breweries and borrowed commercial kitchen spaces that went unused during the day: Colleen’s in Medford Square, ONCE in Somerville. When the former Stone & Skillet production space, a squat brick commercial building nestled in a broad residential swath of Medford near their home, became available, they were ready.

Encouraged by the success of artisan bagel shops like Cambridge’s Bagelsaurus, Thill and Gaudet were eager to breathe life into a corner of their own city lacking retail and food options. “We definitely wanted a food thing and bagels made a lot of sense. We live in this neighborhood, so we knew there was a need for something that people wanted to go to around here. Bagels are a good-enough-selling specialty item but also very approachable. We could have coffee and everything else with it, too,” says Gaudet. For months before the shop’s opening, during the buildout, neighbors drove by the bold awning with its bright, blocky marigold and coral logo, anticipating something special. When the shop opened its doors last September, the line snaked around the block.

Thill and Gaudet couldn’t find the bagel they wanted in Boston. “I feel like, around here, a lot of the gourmet bagel places are on the sourdough kick,” says Thill. “I do use a sourdough starter, but I feel like our bagels are a little sweeter and they’re a little chewier. They’re a little more traditional New York style,” with a shiny, thin crust and a dense, chewy crumb. Thill started with the King Arthur recipe, tweaking a bit with each batch, watching YouTube videos for advice. When the couple went to New Jersey to buy equipment, they met a bagel making consultant, Beth George, who travels the world designing and developing Old World bagel recipes for clients. With her help, they achieved just the sweetness and chew they were looking for.

In addition to housemade cream cheese and bagels, Goldilox makes popular salted chocolate chip cookies and bagel sandwiches—a straightforward egg sandwich, classic lox, a “Happy Hippy” hummus sandwich and the “Graceland,” with peanut butter, bacon, Nutella and banana. Everything is made in-house except the gluten-free bagels, from Woburn’s Something Sweet Without Wheat. They started out wanting to do pizza bagels, but found them too time-consuming—for now.

Keeping up with demand is the shop’s greatest challenge—that, and staffing. The couple went through three employees before the shop even opened. “Dough is a living, breathing thing” that requires care and attention, says Thill. It’s labor-intensive and time-consuming. While the recipe’s no longer in flux, the business needs to stay nimble. The pair make 500 to 1,200 bagels each day, tweaking the number to accommodate school vacations, construction, weather. “When it’s really cold out, the bagels take forever to proof. I proof them before I put them in the fridge to ferment overnight. Some days it’s so cold I’ll have to come back at in at 2 in the morning to just check on the bagels to see that they’re properly proofed… We’ve been thankful for a mild winter for that reason.”

Even on a frigid Saturday morning, folks are lined up for the 8am opening, and the shop is likely to sell out before 2pm. Lots of regulars—Tufts students and their families, local Medford and Somerville people. But as word spreads, people are making the trek from distant suburbs. “It’s a process,” says Thill, “but yeah, it works how we’re doing it. It’s pretty exciting.”

goldiloxbagels.com

This story appeared in the Spring 2020 issue.