Consider the bagel
“What makes a good bagel?” I asked my wall clock.
Ingredients
High-gluten flour, salt, water, yeast, malt. Time and craft matter more than water alkalinity.
Shape
A torus-like shape with a circular cross-section. If it’s flat, it’s probably over-proofed.
Size
About four ounces, which some consider “small.” That’s a quarter-pound of bread, people.
Appearance
Shiny but not glossy. The crust should have light blistering (“fish eyes”) and a healthy caramel color.
Exterior texture
A crackly veneer, neither crispy nor leathery nor plasticky. A delicate textural counterpoint to the bagel’s substantial chew.
Interior texture
A dense and chewy crumb. Not fluffy or bready.
Taste
A understated blend of normally strong flavors. Yeast, salt, and malt without being yeasty, salty, or malty.
Toppings
Poppy, garlic, onion, sesame, salt, or a combination thereof. Save the caraway seeds for pumpernickel bread.
Egg, pumpernickel, rye: sure. Cinnamon raisin is a slippery slope to blueberry. Asiago? Jalapeño cheddar? GTFO.
A good plain bagel has a certain elegance. There’s nothing for mediocrity to hide under.
Cream cheese
Yes, please. A moderate amount. Not a half-inch slab. Not an ice cream scoop’s worth. Also, room temperature (see toasting, below).
Lox
The key to great lox isn’t smoke; it’s salt and high-quality fish. I’ll take salt-cured, unsmoked salmon (gravlax, lox) over cold-smoked nova lox any day of the week. Hot-smoked (kippered) salmon is an expensive way to ruin a bagel.
Boiling
Cheap bakeries skip this step by using steam-injected ovens. If it’s not boiled, it’s not a bagel.
Toasting
A good bagel shouldn’t need toasting. If a bagel shop toasts your bagel without you asking for it, it’s probably a bad bagel shop.
Toasted bagels are best with butter. Toasted bagels with cream cheese are gooey and gross; this is a hill that I’m willing to die on.
Bagel sandwiches
Bagel sandwiches were invented to make bagels more profitable, not more delicious. They’re a compromise: either a too-soft bagel or a too-hard sandwich.
You may not mind bagel-shaped bread. It’s OK to like sandwiches more than you like bagels.
Pizza bagels
I don’t understand the question and I won’t respond to it.
11 Comments
Jill Paul
March 14, 2021Now I want some bagels with jalapeño cream cheese😊
Dan
March 14, 2021I know the feeling, Jill :-)
Corben
March 15, 2021Plain or blueberry bagel toasted with cream cheese for me! I know it’s gooey and gross but it’s faster and easier to spread than butter and usually a bagel is my get out the door fast breakfast.
Dan
March 15, 2021Corben, I’ve always liked you so I won’t judge your blueberry bagel preference. And I feel you on the whole butter-is-hard-to-spread situation. I’m going to start leaving mine out on the counter. 🧈
Rich Harris
March 15, 2021We see pretty much eye to eye on everything, and I like that it includes things we have not previously covered, like cream cheese on a toasted bagel. My only quibble is 1) the indifference to egg bagels, whose existence predates “everything” bagels by decades if not a century. “everything” bagels are a factory error, and 2) Salt as an acceptable flavor — it’s basically hot pretzel rolled into a circle.
You also don’t mention lox, which is a huge oversight. regular > nova, and it’s good with both butter and cream cheese.
Other notes:
– re: other kinds of bagels, “There’s nothing for mediocrity to hide under” is perfect.
– I was once at a bagel shop that asked me if i wanted it toasted and I heard myself say, “… is it fresh”?
– If you’re going to put cream cheese on a toasted bagel, you have to let it cool enough to not become that gooey mess when you try to spread it. butter is definitely superior on a bagel.
– re: sandwiches, agreed generally, but breakfast sandwiches should be addressed. an egg and cheese on an egg bagel (with or without bacon) melds together into an entirely different and excellent flavor. It doesn’t work nearly as much with a plain, but yeah.
– you may already be aware of it, but this goes into much a lot of detail and basically aligns with our thinking as well: https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/05/what-makes-a-good-bagel-bad-bagel-kenji-opinion-untoasted.html
Dan
March 15, 2021This is great feedback, Rich. I’ll grant you that I’m a little too friendly toward everything bagels and not showing enough respect for the egg bagel. I think salt is an acceptable flavor often executed poorly.
I’ll update this piece with my thoughts on salmon, which is that it is delicious and that anything salt-cured (gravlax or nova) is better than hot-smoked/kippered varieties.
The Kenji post is great (I’ve tried most of the places he mentions in it) as is your mental response to the toasting question. Where should I go to be convinced of egg and cheese on an egg bagel?
Rich Harris
March 16, 2021Good update, salt and quality fish are definitely the keys here, not smoke. smoked salmon is good as its own thing, but the harshness of the salt contrasts well with the bread-iness of the bagel and mellowness of the butter or tartness of the cream cheese. it’s good stuff, hard to find outside of the tri-state area unfortunately. “kippered salmon is an expensive way to ruin a bagel” is very funny.
For a good egg and cheese on an egg bagel, I think any place that has a good egg bagel should do this well. should be american cheese or a mild chedder and like a scrambled egg (not loose curd, but a more solid package, don’t want egg curds squeezing out all over the place). You could also just make it yourself and save a couple bucks. That flavor is actually a foundational taste of my youth that I hadn’t had for like a decade or more until like a month ago when we were in NJ and in a pinch, I got it from the local shop and man, it tasted exactly as I remembered.
Rich Harris
March 15, 2021Oh, I should have noted about lox, it does not belong on a toasted bagel.
Dan
March 15, 2021Elaborate on this. I’m intrigued. What am I to do with leftover bagels and leftover lox?
Rich
March 16, 2021The idea of eating lox with melted butter or the gooey warm cream cheese? what? also, the crispness of a toasted bagel (compared to the crackle you describe above) seems like the wrong vehicle also for lox also. the idea if very off putting to me.
Dan
March 16, 2021I simultaneously appreciate and regret asking you to paint a vivid picture. Point well taken.