The Old Bear is correct in his factoids. In Jewish dietary rules Bagels are
what is know and Pareve, so it can be eaten with meat or dairy. Fish is
also Pareve - Bagel with Lochs and cream cheese works you see, but not
pastrami and cream cheese :-)
The skim mil powder fat or not adds protein to the structure and is also a
natural emulsifier to disperse any fat in the recipe. It also aids in the
browning of the crust, richer flavour, and as mentioned softer crumb.
Replace it? Mono diglycerides, sodium stearoyl lactelate, lecithin and/or
egg yolk and sugar or malt or diastatic malt flour.

Mr Pastry
"The Old Bear" > wrote in message
news
> (Anton S.) writes:
>
> >From: (Anton S.)
> >Newsgroups: rec.food.baking
> >Subject: Non-fat dry-milk...purpose?
> >Date: 9 Nov 2003 22:14:41 -0800
> >
> >I was also wondering this same question. I've been using a bagel
> >recipe that called for dry milk powder. I searched though these
> >groups for awhile and found out that the milk powder is supposed to
> >create a tighter crumb. . . . Makes sense for bagels since you
> >want a dense bagel. . . .
>
> My understanding is that non-fat dry milk is used in place of
> skim milk or whole milk to produce a "softer" product. The
> ubiquitous commercial "squshy white bread" was originally known
> as a milk bread for this reason.
>
> Dry milk handles well, stores easily, is inexpensive, and is
> "reconstituted" by the water in the recipe.
>
> But authentic bagels would never be made with any milk or dairy
> products because of traditional Jewish dietary laws which forbid
> milk to be eaten with meat. It would be too hard to determine
> whether one had a dairy bagel or a non-dairy bagel, so bagels
> -- like most Jewish baked goods -- are made only with water and
> vegetable shortening (if any) and not milk and butter.
>
> If you like making bagels with milk, be all means do so -- they
> may be delicious. But just don't consider them authentic.
>
> Cheers,
> The Old Bear
>