The Maine Bagel-Off
Taste your way through Maine’s best bagels
Saturday, October 24, 2026 | 10:00 AM-2:00 PM
Maine Tasting Center | Wiscasset, Maine
The Maine Bagel-Off is back!
Join the Maine Grain Alliance and the Maine Tasting Center for an outdoor celebration of bagels, bakers, local grains, and friendly competition. Meet bagel makers from across the state, sample their featured creations, vote for your favorite, and see who takes home the title of one of Maine’s best bagel makers.
Come for the bagels. Stay for a full morning and afternoon celebrating Maine’s growing grain and baking community.
General Admission: $25
Children 12 and under: Free
Your Ticket Includes:
- Tasting-size samples from participating Maine bagel makers
- Schmear for sampling
- A Maine Bagel Passport and event guide
- One token to cast your vote for the People’s Choice Award
- Live music
- The chance to meet Maine bakers and learn about their ingredients, techniques, and businesses
Coffee, full-size bagels, additional baked goods, and merchandise may be available for purchase separately.
What is the Maine Bagel-Off?
You’ll find an exciting range of styles and flavors, from beloved classics to sourdough, wood-fired, Maine-inspired, and boldly creative varieties.The Maine Bagel-Off is a farmers’ market-style tasting event featuring more than a dozen invited bagel makers from across Maine.
Each participating bakery will have its own outdoor booth where you can meet the bakers, learn about their process, and sample the bagel they have selected for the competition.
You’ll find a wide range of styles and flavors, from your favorite classics to sourdough, wood-fired, Maine-inspired, and creatively topped varieties.
After tasting your way through the event, cast your vote for the People’s Choice Award. A panel of guest judges will also evaluate the entries and select the winner of the judged Best Bagel Award.
The winners will be announced at approximately 1:30 PM.
Maine Bagel-Off Open Call: Now Accepting Applications!
Calling all Maine bagel bakers! We’re thrilled to open applications for the Maine Bagel-Off, and we want to hear from you. If you run a licensed food business — a bakery, commercial kitchen, food truck, or catering operation — and you’ve got a bagel worth bragging about, this is your chance to show the state what you’ve got. We’re especially excited to hear from bakers who incorporate local Maine ingredients and Maine-grown grains into their recipes. Applying is free and open to any baking business based in Maine. Fill out our short application to tell us about your bakery, your bagel, and what makes it competition-worthy — we can’t wait to see what’s rising in kitchens across Maine!
Meet The Participants
More than a dozen invited bakers will participate in this year’s competition. The event’s outdoor, farmers’ market-style format gives you the opportunity to speak directly with the people behind the bagels.
Ask them about:
- Fermentation and sourdough
- Boiling and baking methods
- New York, Montreal, and regional bagel styles
- Maine-grown grain and stone-ground flour
- Toppings, seasonings, and flavor combinations
- How and where to find their bagels after the event
Blue House Bagels
63 Kent St, Portland ME
Ryan is the baker behind Blue House Bagels, a cottage bakery run out of his (aptly blue) home. Each weekend, he hand-crafts around 30 dozen bagels, using a long, cold fermentation process to build deep, complex flavor. True to his new-age approach, Ryan’s bagels are yeasted and heavily blistered, with a focus on a bold, chewy crust. Every bagel is hand-rolled and boiled fresh each morning, ensuring a batch that’s as fresh as it is flavorful.
DLBagels
Dutchman's Wood-fired Bagels
14 Maine Street, Brunswick, ME
Jeremy Kratzer and his wife Marina launched Dutchman’s as a bagel pop-up inside a local pizzeria in Brunswick, Maine, in November 2022—and it quickly became a hit, drawing steady crowds until it turned into a permanent fixture just four months later. A bagel journeyman, Kratzer honed his craft making wood-fired Montreal bagels at The Purple House and New York-style bagels at Rose Foods before bringing it all together at Dutchman’s. In a fitting partnership with Nomad Pizza, the bagels are baked in a wood-fired oven, yielding a crispy, chewy result worth savoring any time of day.
Gemini Cafe & Bakery
96 Main Street, Bethel
Anna and Nicole first met while working together for 12 years at the beloved Cafe DiCocoa in Bethel, Maine, forging a close friendship that only deepened as their careers—and families—grew alongside one another. That bond has now led them to open a village bakery and cafe of their own in the former Key Bank on Main Street. They named it GEMINI, inspired by the mythological twins known for their seamless collaboration—a fitting nod to their partnership, and a playful tie-in to Bethel’s own Gem Theater and Maine Mineral & Gem Museum.
Hootenanny Bread
Nobleboro, ME
Hootenanny Bread is a Maine-based bakery selling bread made with organic bread flour and locally-sourced, organic, whole grains. Founded by Derek DeGeer in 2011, Hootenanny Bread now serves 6 markets from Damariscotta to Brunswick and about a dozen wholesale accounts (Food co-ops, restaurants, and 1 food hub) and is still growing! Look for Hootenanny at your favorite Mid-coast market, restaurant, and store, and at the Common Ground Fair, the Maine Artisan Bread Fair, and the Maine Cheese Festival.
Knead & Nosh
4 Bowdoin Mill Island, Topsham, ME
Knead & Nosh is a passion project led by Jeff Mao, an avid baker, educator, and technologist. By combining these three, Knead & Nosh hosts online and in-person baking and cooking classes, recipes, and informational articles to help home bakers and cooks!
The Miller's Table
42 Court Street, Skowhegan, ME
The Miller’s Table is a destination gathering place in downtown Skowhegan’s Maine Grains gristmill, with a cozy dining room and oven-side bar set in the former garage bay of the renovated Somerset County Jail, plus outdoor seating in the courtyard garden and front patio. Located steps from the Skowhegan Farmer’s Market and alongside Crooked Face Creamery’s on-site ricotta and smoked cheeses, the menu is as local as it gets, with sourdough bread, rustic pastries, pizza dough, and pasta all showcasing the hearty flavor of freshly milled whole grains.
Orchard Ridge Farm
236 Sebago Lake Rd, Gorham, ME
Orchard Ridge Farm is a year-round u-pick orchard and farm store in Gorham, Maine, offering apples, blueberries, raspberries, and pears across its 38 acres of hilly orchards and woodland. The farm store bakes fresh donuts and bagels Wednesday through Monday, alongside rotating pastries, seasonal fresh and mulled cider, and a full coffee and espresso menu. Visitors are welcome to enjoy the scenic landscape and farm offerings all year long
Sassy Sammie's
Norridgewock, ME
Sassy Sammie’s Kitchen is a one woman home based bakery in Norridgewock, ME that specializes in handmade bagels, english muffins, a variety of buns and rolls, and select pastries. Established in 2023, she does most of her business on Saturday’s at the Skowhegan Farmers Market, and was featured at Chartrand Farm’s farm stand in Norridgewock and Water Dance Farm’s farm stand over the past 2 summers.
Scratch Baking Co.
416 Preble Stree, South Portland, ME
Scratch is a small neighborhood artisan bakery that opens early Wednesday through Sunday, offering small-batch baked goods in a personal, welcoming environment. Along with its famous bagels, the bakery serves incredible bread, breakfast pastries, sweet treats, a tempting dessert case, and a full coffee bar, plus a savory selection of premade sandwiches, salads, and weekend quiches.
Sebagel
679 Roosevelt Trail, Naples, ME
Sebagel started as a pop-up in and around Maine’s Lakes Region in 2024 before opening its new HQ in Naples on Memorial Day Weekend 2025. The bakery is now open five days a week — Monday, Thursday, and Friday from 7am–1pm, and Saturday–Sunday from 8am–1pm.Sebagel hand-rolls its bagels in small batches, baked fresh each morning using as many local ingredients as possible. The result: a bagel that’s a little crispy on the outside and chewy-yet-airy on the inside — just as a good bagel should be.
Spark Bagel
Northport, ME
Spark Bagel was born out of a lifelong love of bagels and a desire to bring that passion to Mid Coast Maine, offering naturally leavened, hand-rolled, long-fermented, honey-boiled bagels. Inspired by tradition and infused with local flavor, Spark Bagel uses Maine-grown and malted grains to craft a distinctive sourdough bagel.
La Tartine Artisan Breads
More information coming soon.
Meet Our Bagel Judges
Reva Castillenti
Reva Castillenti is a bakery consultant, educator and award winning baker specializing in artisan bread, bagels. The focus of Reva’s consulting company Small Good Bakery helps bakeries move from pop-ups into their brick and mortar stage. She has unwittingly become a national premiere bagel judge through her work with Bagelfest, US Bread Awards, and last year’s Maine Bagel Bake off.
Ethan Marks
Ethan Marks is a baker, pastry chef, and educator. As part of the team at Apollo Bagels—known for its sourdough bagels—he helped grow the business from a single retail location to six successful stores across New York and New Jersey. Ethan now operates as an independent bagel consultant specializing in production and scaling, and serves as chair of the Bread Bakers Guild’s Programs Committee.
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