Plain, sesame, poppy... hard to choose the fourth, I'd say... raisin? I think everything bagels have gotten more popular lately.
Having now read the post, I don't think pumpernickel is one of the top 4. I will admit that I'm a blueberry bagel Jew.
Oh, I don't think it is either. I'd guess onion, poppy seed, plain, and maybe cinnamon raisin. Pumpernickel just happens to be what I first mistook the cinnamon raisin bagels for, and got all excited for it, and then got all let down from it, and still I want one.
Plain, Garlic, Poppy, Salt
(I know this isn't going to be right. But in NYC maybe it is.)
Plain, sesame, poppy seed, onion, rock salt, egg. I'd say the top four have to be on that list, but of my last three I'm not sure which is in the top four.
Plain, cinnamon raisin, blueberry, and poppy.
I did not follow instructions, which is probably why I was never very good at math.
I'd say the canonical bagel flavors/styles are plain, poppy seed, sesame seed, onion and pumpernickel. I've never approved of sweet bagel flavors, and only eat them in extremity. "Everything" gets a pass, even though it is gauche, because it includes most canonical bagel flavors. I know cinnamon raisin has been around for a long time, but I still don't approve of it.
I like cinnamon raisin, but I know that they're not canonical. Mostly, if you wouldn't put fish on it, it's not a real bagel flavor.
In Dan Savage's adoption book, he has a freakout in a hospital cafeteria about a bagel with bacon bits. Which seems like a legit thing to freak out over.
Plain, sesame, poppy seed, onion.
This thread is so validating. Follow-up question: are bagels supposed to have a weird, spongy, light bread-like texture, or a normal bagel-like texture? Defend your answer.
I thought "plain, onion, poppy seed," and then I got stuck trying to figure out what should be fourth. For some reason sesame didn't occur to me, but it sounds like a good pick for the top four.
At work we make salt, sesame, everything and poppy seed, in descending order of popularity. This is in Portland, Maine.
9: I think he recycled that from his column.
I also think putting pork products on bagels is kinda absurd, although I hardly know any Jews who do not eat pig food if they feel like it. (Those that won't are pretty much all vegetarians anyway.)
I totally put salmon on blueberry bagels.
I did forget about onion, but I think of those more as bialys. Good luck finding one of those in Texas.
My Israeli mother did not know what a bagel was until she came to the U.S. in her 20s. My father, a New York Jew, told her she couldn't be Jewish.
Perhaps I've told you all this before.
11: They are supposed to be dense and tough, requiring effort to tear a piece off with your teeth.
Maybe I should try making bagels this week. They're really not great in my neighborhood.
I once attended a Jewish wedding where the first course was clam chowder with bacon bits. And of course bagels should be chewy and crusty. Wonderbagels are an abomination.
putting pork products on bagels anything is kinda absurd awesome
I did forget about onion, but I think of those more as bialys.
Bialys are totally different. And maddeningly hard to find.
11: I've heard the sentiment expressed that for true New Yorkers, "if you can't dunk it, it's not a bagel". I dunno if I would go that far, but those light, bready bagels are an abomination.
LRT: My friend in Portland is lonely for other radicals, where do they hang out?
16- Is she Sephardic? Bagels are Ashkenazi in origin, right?
I also think putting pork products on bagels is kinda absurd, although I hardly know any Jews who do not eat pig food if they feel like it.
Huh. While most of the Jews I know interrupt eating bacon only to eat shrimp, there's still something off to me about the bacon on the bagel. It's like breading your chicken cordon bleu with matzoh meal for Passover.
20- I should say, when I think of onion bread products I think of bialy, not that an onion bagel is the same as a bialy. Onion is the #1 flavor for bialys, not in the top 3 for bagels.
This thread is so validating. Follow-up question: are bagels supposed to have a weird, spongy, light bread-like texture, or a normal bagel-like texture? Defend your answer.
Heebie, I think you should become a pollster.
I'd say the perfect bagel texture is about 10% more dense than a Bruegger's bagel. I don't want to have to worry about my fillings when I bite into a bagel, but I want something that's dense enough to stick to the ribs a bit.
23: Once while eating at Blue Ribbon Bakery, I discovered that the bread basket was filled with bacon and sausage stuffed breads. Not bagels, of course, but still -- a risky proposition for NYC, especially all unbidden and unannounced.
I miss my childhood hole-in-the-wall bagel/bialy place, on Fourteenth east of First. When I was in grade school, bagels were a quarter. The baker had an extreme wall-eye, and closed for every possible Jewish holiday. And the bialys were wonderful.
Bagels are to be boiled -- thus the chewy, dumpling-like texture of a proper bagel. Most places don't bother with that at all -- hence bread rolls with holes in the middle. Also, SFers? Noah's "it's the steam" is correct insofar as it diagnoses why their bagels aren't very good.
a risky proposition for NYC, especially all unbidden and unannounced.
As I flip merrily from side to side of issues, I'd worry about vegetarians more than Jews on that. Are there a lot of Jews these days that are unkosher enough to bite into a piece of bread in a non-kosher restaurant, who would still be bothered by an accidental mouthful of pork? Some, maybe, but I don't think I know anyone in that category.
Sesame seed, poppy seed, onion, pumpernickle.
Bialys have yet to make the leap to becoming normal mainstream middle-America food, right?
An opportunity for some entrepreneur? Maybe.
And then we'll have cranberry and chocolate chip bialys.
I never knew what a bialy was until I googled it just now. I don't have fond memories of bagels from my childhood because the only bagels I had came from the freezer.
who would still be bothered by an accidental mouthful of pork?
Somebody drinking orange juice?
31: I know a fair number of Jews (and their Muslim counterparts) who don't keep kosher, but don't eat pork or shrimp. And plenty of non-vegetarians who aren't keen on bacon and sausage. It just seems like cured pork falls into enough problematized categories that popping it into a usually anodyne bread basket seems kinda wacky.
Most mass market bacon bits are vegan, right?
Bialys have yet to make the leap to becoming normal mainstream middle-America food, right?
Truly. I haven't found them in Boston although I haven't searched Brookline much, so far I've only had them in NYC and Rochester, NY.
37: I think that's true. At least one brand was at one time when I checked.
Bialys (just ok bialys, but still) exist in Chicago.
Everything
Cinnamon raisin
Sesame seed
Onion
Natilo: I sleep all day and work all night, and the critical mass went sub-critical last year, and the good coffeeshop closed, so, I'm not really sure. There is the Meg Perry Center, but I've never been there. I'm a radical who got sick of meetings, and I have some radical friends, but that's all I know. There is a small chance I know who you are talking about, email me.
I sleep all day and work all night,
You're a lumberjack and you're all right?
LB, do you ever use FreshDirect? They sell some pretty ok (local, NYC) frozen bialys. If you're hard up.
We've tried it a couple of times, but can't seem to get in a rhythm with it -- either we end up going to the store just as much anyway, or the refrigerator is full of stuff we don't eat.
I'm a baker and I hate the light?
This article confirms my sense that bagels are, like fortune cookies, basically an American food.
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/09/weekinreview/american-fast-food-in-israel-the-bagel.html
Do I really need to say it? Einstein's ≠ bagels.
Onion, poppy, sesame, plain. That's at either a diner or somewhere that sells bagels to New Yorkers, like Bergen Bagel or wherever. Elsewhere, I guess like plain, blueberry, cinnamon raisin, and some sort of cheese.
My mother regards cinnamon raisin as half-donut, half-abomination, so I inherited that attitude a little. But the cheese kind, those are hard to resist, as abominations go.
17: I don't want to get all identify-y about your neighborhood, but there's a place nearby that has great rye bread and I bet they make good bagels. Email me if curious. Ba-curious. Heh.
nobody nuke 39! poppyseed, plain, sesame...onion, I guess? more even than actual bagels I miss whitefish salad. and bialys. there's this kind of nicoise tart that's like a giant bialy with a grid of anchovies and olives on it, it's really good. actually, caramelized onions are just plain good.
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comment 32, I swear, opinionated grandma for reals.
>
Plain, sesame, poppyseed, and ... something. Onion, maybe. I like "everything" bagels but I don't think they're a canonical flavour.
Sesame is the default bagel flavour in Montreal bagel bakeries - if you order "a dozen" without specifying a flavour that's what you'll get. Now I'm craving bagels...
re: 47
They've been widely available in the UK for many years, but until the past 10 or 20 years, only in areas with a fairly large Jewish population. My Dad certainly ate them as a boy in Glasgow -- the area he grew up in had a large historically Eastern European Jewish population.
but seriously, blueberry? cranberry!? what the fucking fuck? cinnamon raisin, toasted, with a lot of butter, OK, but y'all are eating some crazy bagels nowadays. narnian bagels are...eh, no worse than in california, really. no wait, worse, because they have sesame but not poppyseed or onion. but no-- better insofar as they are a reasonable size and not a plate-hiding stay-puf bagel monstrosity.
49: Abomination! Ha! That's the exact word my mom always uses to describe bagels that she considers not to be True Bagels.
I tell her that as someone that didn't even know what a bagel was until she was an adult she has no standing to make that kind of judgment.
And then she threatens to cut me out of her will.
Well of course Narnian bagels are bad, the whole series was a Christian allegory, how do you expect them to get bagels right?
52: Where was I just reading that you can now get Montreal bagels in New York?
All this said, I must break with bagel orthodoxy and say I know a good one from a bad one but the way they're sometimes discussed in this town is a little baffling to me, as if there were infinite gradations. I guess it's good to have some things you're not picky about. It's cheaper, anyway.
not reading comments or the below the fold text: poppy, sesame, onion, and raisin. Or if you count plain as a flavor, substitute that for one of the four.
plain, poppy, sesame, cinnamon-raisin
Poppyseed, sesame, onion, and pumpernickel.
58: There's a Montreal-themed diner/restaurant in Brooklyn. And somebody -- maybe the same somebodies -- sells them at one of the Green Markets.
Bialys are totally different. And maddeningly hard to find.
Fairways bialys aren't bad. Which means they're great toasted with Ben's cream cheese which is also available a short bumper shopper stroll from the bialys and bagels.
Montreal bagels are available at the Brooklyn flea at the low, low price of two bucks each, and they suck. Avoid unless starving or on a zero sodium diet.
Plain, sesame, whole wheat. Dunno on the fourth. Pretty sure it's not onion, though that's my favorite.
Going to read the rest now!
Plain is a flavor the way white is a color. Well, that doesn't make sense, but I still maintain plain does not deserve all the mention in this thread.
Even our "weird, spongy, light bread-like" bagels are leagues ahead of the one I had in Chennai. Almost exactly like bread, toasted to a crisp, and with a jarring sourdoughy flavor.
58: I'm usually not hyper-picky about stuff, but bagels I've got three levels: 'what the hell are you calling that a bagel for', which includes most of what you get out of NYC, the screwy flavors, Lenders and similar packaged bagels, that kind of thing; 'bagels', which are normal flavors and dense, chewy bread, identifiably a real normal bagel, but not particularly good of its kind, the sort of thing that you get in any deli in NY; and 'good bagels', which are freshly baked with a good chewy crust and a good flavor. Acceptable bagels are pretty easy to find, but good bagels are rare even in NY. If Ess-a-bagel would make theirs half the size they do, they'd be pretty close to what I want, but they're also nowhere near where I live.
(You get unsettling category crossers, where really pretty good bagels texture-wise come in inappropriate flavors like cheddar. I'm not sure what to think about those.)
66: An extreme bagel purist would say that the plain is the only True Bagel, and the rest are abominations. I'm not sure that anyone that extreme actually exists.
63: Fairway. Huh, I should schlep down to Fairway more. I never think of it except for major holidays, when I need four really specific things and it's hell on earth.
These are the world's best bagels. Having sampled all of the world's bagels, there is no comparison.
http://www.blogto.com/bakery/gryfes
From the link in 72: Gryfe's bagels are soft and fluffy
Disqualified!
My prewar Poland born and raised to adulthood Jewish (nominally at least) grandmother and grandaunt didn't know about bagels until they came to the US in the late sixties. Then again, my grandaunt also claimed that not only did she not know any Yiddish (very likely), that she hadn't ever even heard it (completely implausible) because 'they' kept to their neighbourhoods and 'we' kept to ours. When I mentioned that to my dad, he told me that her grandparents were native Yiddish speakers. I passed that on, and she grudgingly admitted it was true, but insisted that 'they knew not to use that, that... żargon in the house'. (imagine the word 'jargon' being uttered with a mix of extreme contempt and disgust).
Plain is a flavor the way white is a color.
Fuck that "white is not a color" nonsense. Elementary school teachers everywhere should be ashamed of themselves for that one.
Let a thousand bagels bloom!
I picture my mom in 16th century Italy saying, "Tomato sauce on pasta! What an abomination!"
There is a place with awesome bialys on the lower east side, next to the doughnut plant (awesome doughnuts), on Grand and Essex. Kossar's, I think.
What, do you want the hockey pucks they call bagels in New York?
79: Keep that up and we might see a lot of revised answers to the "have you been in a fight as an adult?" question.
77: I'd be more sympathetic to this if weird flavors didn't consistently go with bad bread. You show me someone putting chocolate chips in a bagel, and I'll show you someone who isn't boiling the dough before baking it.
Someone opens up Ralph's House Of Good Bagels In Weird Flavors, and I'll probably reconcile myself to cheddar-jalapeno-cilantro bagels, so long as they're dense and chewy.
(imagine the word 'jargon' being uttered with a mix of extreme contempt and disgust).
It's easy if you try.
Having finally read the text, I'll say that pumpernickel is by far the hardest good quality bagel to find. Even the places that make otherwise decent to good bagels seem to insist that pumpernickel should be a cinnamon raisin with caramel and food coloring substituted for the cinnamon. Ick.
I would kill for a top notch bagel with cream cheese and lox and capers and dried onion flakes right now. This thread is torment.
Ralph's House Of Good Bagels In Weird Flavors
You mean that taste like powdered eggs and are covered with coloured corn syrup?
I believe the best bagels have a bagel-like texture and are from e.g. H&H in New York. I believe the best flavors are sesame and poppy. Garlic is a little much for me but if the bagel has been in a bag with a garlic/everything bagel and gets a little garlicky - well, that's kind of nice.
But I eat them untoasted, unsliced, and I don't care for cream cheese, lox, etc., so I don't really consider my opinion authoritative here.
If the bagel is to have a lousy, bread-like consistency then I would actually prefer it to be raisin or some such so I wouldn't feel like I was just chowing down a torus of wonderbread.
Not really what I was thinking of, but if that's what floats your boat.
are bagels supposed to have a weird, spongy, light bread-like texture, or a normal bagel-like texture?
Shortly after I moved to Texas in the early '90s I saw a sign in the HEB bakery section that said "Bagels! The delicious 'roll with a hole'!", and I despaired. Minus the "delicious", this turned out to be an accurate description of the bread-like bagels that predominated in town (I don't think I ever risked an actual HEB bagel).
86.last: Yeah, I can eat a sweet, fruity, fluffy bread object and think, "Okay, it's a doughnut-bun. Wonder why they don't make these in NY?"
Sort of off topic, but to the German speakers here, does describing Brooklyn as a 'Viertel' also sound weird too you? To me it has the connotations of 'neigbourhood', rather than a 2.5 million strong large expanse of land.
Oh! There is exactly one other flavor you can count on seeing at HEB, after all the sweet flavors: honey-wheat. This is probably the grossest flavor ever.
My favorite bagel place is still the one near my parents' house in NJ. (It's really very good -- and the fave place of my friend E who basically denies she's ever been to NJ, too.) When the local school district hired an outside contractor to handle school lunches, my mother (who worked in the business admin. office) told them that their plan to replace the bagels bought from the good place with their own sourced frozen bagels would never fly. "We know from bagels here." "No, no," they replied, "Our bagels are great and everyone loves them." They switched back to the local bagels within a couple months.
I just bought bagels at the supermarket for our staff meeting. They had bagels in like 5 different sections. Bizarre. Also, weirdly, they had something called (I think) a "deli float" -- pre-packaged, it looked kinda like an English muffin, but with little holes poked into it in a pattern. Next time I stop in I am going to examine it at more length. I was thinking it might possibly be some kind of horrible goyisch Bialy rip-off, but I didn't look at it closely enough to determine that.
69: Recently I bit into what I thought was a cinnamon-raisin bagel and found that it was *gasp* mouse turd chocolate chip.
I'm so much of a bagel purist, I don't even eat chocolate-chip muffins.
But I eat them untoasted
Properly made bagels don't need to be toasted. Improperly made bagels are generally inedible unless toasted.
plain, blueberry, garlic/onion, and "everything"
Unrelated to anything but the post title, I'd like to add, "Shoot the hostage."
Any of you NYers eaten at wd~50?
"Everything bagel, smoked salmon threads, crispy cream cheese" is an item on their $140 tasting menu.
I've eaten WD-40, but I wouldn't recommend it.
98 Yes. Interesting but not really worth it.
Plain, poppyseed, cinnamon-raisin, onion.
honey-wheat
Huh. I was surprised this was the first mention of anything "wheat" as my top four (by guessed popularity, not by personal preference) were: plain, whole wheat, sesame seed, poppyseed.
My own personal favorite is pumpernickel, and that always seems to be a flavor that runs out early, leading me to believe that bagel makers of the world are underestimating the demand for delicious brown bagels. Also, that our local (Yggles-approved!) bagel joint doesn't have pumpernickel always knocks 'em down a few pegs for me, but I make do by ordering a salt bagel and knocking half the crystals off, because they overdo it.
Honey-wheat is the grossest bagel flavor ever. That's probably why it escaped everyone's guesses for so long.
81: We knew we'd win you over with our dense, chewy, salt caramel black bean pesto bagel!
Plain, poppy seed, sesame, and "everything".
78 is correct, and I am sad that I don't live within walking distance of Kossar's anymore.
Plain, sesame, poppy, onion. Cinnamon raisin is acceptable to have on hand for people who don't like bagels.
I think there's a rule in American cuisine that all breads gradually evolve into cupcakes. Look at muffins. These days you can get muffins with icing. Now bagels have a bit farther to go. First they have to turn into muffins. But eventually they will follow muffins and become cupcakes.
Similarly, all drinks in the US eventually become milkshakes.
Plain, poppy seed, onion, everything. (I like salt, myself.)
Have any of your born-and-bred New Yorker types had Montreal bagels?
Similarly, all drinks in the US eventually become milkshakes.
No! My mochacappalattechino is legit!
I only buy bagels in supermarkets ... plain, onion, something with loads of seeds in it, cinnamon and raisin.
110: IANABABNY, but close enough for government work. I used to have Montreal bagels all the time, because CA's brother lived around the corner from St-Viateur. They're fine; I like them, if find them a bit too sweet. But it's not something I fight about, since it's really an apples and oranges comparison.
I want a bagel. I can't imagine there are real ones here.
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I'm trying to open this letter of recommendation by saying "Student is tied with Other Student as the two strongest math students I've seen at Heebie U." Any help on a more eloquent way to say this?
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"Rodney is one of the two strongest math students I've seen since I began teaching at Heebie U" seems fine to me.
Oh I see, you lure us all in with bagel talk and then make us work! Good tactic.
Can you just say X is one of the two strongest etc?
116: " This student is as strong a math student as I have ever had at Heebie U.."
Thanks! I don't know why a simple construction was hard for me to find.
"I haven't seen a better math student at HU".
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No more masturbating to Paul the Psychic Octopus.
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119: "So, student is strong, but how is the student at math?"
Of course, as this is written for math oriented people you'll have to assure them that you have had a non-zero number of math students.
Plain, onion, egg, and sesame are the bagel flavors that I most commonly find.
100: Did you have the bagel?
Some distant relation of mine works there. .
116:
Dear Madams and Sirs,
This student, who you are considering for acceptance in your worthy program, is one of the finest students I have ever set eyes upon, and I'm not talking about the spandex-covered ass that made my office hours a joy. I have not had a student stronger than this one in all of my years of teaching and would be delighted to see another so bright.
Your obedient servant,
HG
122: And I think Juan Williams was fired by NPR.
I don't get comparing unworthy bagels to donuts. Just cause it has a hole in the middle and is sweet does not make it a donut!
Apo is being really helpful today. I'm starting to feel bad.
131: Try Neo-Donuts™, now 100% coronary-free!* The latest thing for middle America.
*Guarantee does not apply to Neo-Donuts™ topped with our Scruddly-Umptious Vanilla Raspberry Cream Cheese™.
You know, donuts are the one dessert I can't really get behind. Actually, pastries in general don't do much for me. They just don't have the right kind of presence. Like they're not substantial enough and clear about why they're here and want to be eaten.
Like they're not substantial enough and clear about why they're here and want to be eaten.
Stifling the obligatory Hitchhiker's reference.
Plain, blueberry, cranberry, and sun-dried tomato. But I've always lived amongst the goyim.
134: They're not a dessert, but instead a wholesome breakfast.
But you're right -- they're not something I seek out: I want something non-sweet for a meal, and if I'm going to have a dessert it's not going to be a doughnut.
If a doughnut appears, undefended, where I can get at it without seeking it out on the other hand, that doughnut's days are numbered.
Three Dunkin' Donuts opened in my part of town. Just boom, they appeared in an area that had previously been donutless excepting grocery stores.
I think donuts are as much an ideological good as an economic good - representing the school of thought "have something at hand at all times to cram in your craw."
Donuts are the glue that holds my workplace together. When we ride in the elevator together on a Wednesday, we say, "Only two days till donut day!"
submit what you consider to be the four most mainstream, common bagel flavors greatest atrocities committed against the Jewish people
1. The Shoah
2. The Sack of Jerusalem
3. Goyish Bagels
4. The Pogroms
One of the lesser-publicized recent announcements by Steve Jobs was the iPhonut™. Slogan: "There's an app(etite) for that."
Plain, sesame, poppy, cinammon raisin (posted without reading the comments or post, so who knows where we are now).
Also, this thread totally forced me to go out of the place to Glorified Local Bagel Place for lunch (photo forthcoming perhaps). When leaving the shop, I had a non-beketchupping encounter with a small child.
As I approached the door, I saw two seven-ish-year-olds on the other side trying to open the heavy door, as their mothers lagged a bit behind with a wee one. I slowly opened the door for the group, and the more precocious of the two seven-year-old girls said, "Come on out!" not realizing, one guesses, that me exiting would return the door to the closed position. I said, "That's very polite of you, but I insist," and her mother arrived to usher her in and give me a smile, saying, "She's very progressive."
It was pretty great.
Having mostly caught up on the thread :
1) I think the best bagels I've ever had were on the Lower East Side, and I've been to Kossar's and had the Bialys. Of course, none of you should be eating bread anyway because it's sapping your life-force with neolithic poisons. I agree with LB's bagel hierarchy stated somewhere upthread; LA has a few places that I think (or thought, when I ate bread) contend for "good" bagel, but it's not really in the running for "best bagel."
2) Heebie should adopt a "when in Rome" approach and get really into Kolaches.
3) Do you know the easiest way to piss off a particular kind of Upper West Side New Yorker? Offer them this quote:
In the 1930s there were something along the lines of 1,500 kosher delis in New York," Sax says. "Now, there are about two dozen in all of New York City. That's an 80% to 90% decline. This has been echoed in other cities around the country." Yet Los Angeles delis have managed to thrive in a niche market. Acre for acre, Sax maintains that Southern California boasts "more delicatessens of higher quality, on average, than anywhere else in America."
It was pretty great to see a kid so young with such well developed gaydar.
"Rodney is one of the two strongest math students I've seen since I began teaching at Heebie U. Only yesterday I saw him lift a Toyota pickup over his head with one hand while trying (and failing) to solve a simple quadratic equation with the other."
Well, it probably takes longer than normal to extract oneself from masturbating to an octopus.
Plain, poppy, sesame, pumpernickel. All must be baked & boiled and be chewy.
I'm an Irish-Italian boy from the midwest, but I'm thinking boiling followed by baking might work better.
I feel compelled by the mention of donuts to repeat my previously stated position that Krispy Kreme donuts suck ass, and that I would do unsavory things to get a proper chocolate-frosted cake donut in Virginia.
Stanley you are crazy. The plain Krispy Kreme are delicious (the chocolate frosted ones, an abomination). Dunkin Donuts makes the frosted chocolate cake donut of choice (though not the chocolate-frosted cake donut of choice).
Heebie should adopt a "when in Rome" approach and get really into Kolaches.
They are good! They're pretty greasy, though.
They're pretty greasy, though.
I gather there are lots of different iterations of the kolacky, but I've never encountered greasy. My mom goes apeshit with the kolacky baking every Christmas, using a recipe that came down from the Polish great-grandmother. The dough is rather plain, slightly sour even, and flaky, and the fillings a variety of jam-like fruit stuff, that's sourced from a particular store in Chicago. Each one's about the size of an Oreo.
Protip: identify early on which plate has the povidla-flavored ones; those are to be avoided with extreme prejudice (if you're me).
Composed before reading the thread: Plain, sesame, poppy seed, whole wheat?.
After reading the thread:
I prefer the chewy kind myself, despite the resulting jaw soreness, since they have the best crust (in MSP Common Roots bagels are an amazing gift), but I don't have an ethnic/regional dog in this fight and have long since given up on ideas of authenticity in food.
When my friend M (Jewish, from Long Island) moved from NYC to Atlanta, she found that she actually enjoyed what passes for bagels down there. She split the difference between NY provincialism and New South cosmopolitanism by declare them not to be bagels, but instead "delicious dough things."
One day, at the club
Actually, pastries in general don't do much for me. They just don't have the right kind of presence. Like they're not substantial enough and clear about why they're here and want to be eaten.
Why, they go perfectly with coffee at 10:15, just after you've finished teaching your 9:00 class.
(I've been fighting an ongoing battle this semester, and losing more days than not. Mmmm, apple danish.)
Just cause it has a hole in the middle and is sweet does not make it a donut!
Yes! What is this obsessive focus on holes (fructus lowhangica)? You people are thinking of muffins or bread. Who the hell makes a cinnamon raisin doughnut?
My wife, from eastern WI, displays a provincialism towards donuts similar to the cult of the one true bagel. Even one state over, she declares our donuts to be inadequate and with improper nomenclature. Still, she finds it in her heart to eat the inferior donuts available to her.
1) I just ate a bagel for lunch (walnut smear on poppyseed) and now want to eat about 10 more after reading this thread.
2) Does anyone know where in NYC you can get that delicious poppyseed cake that is like no-kidding 95% poppyseed? The only place I've ever had it was in the Jewish quarter of Paris, and it kicks your ass to the ground with poppyseed lovin. I want to eat some right now.
identify early on which plate has the povidla-flavored ones; those are to be avoided with extreme prejudice (if you're me).
Good powidla are the best jam there is. For the ethnically challenged, powidla are (is? - how does one handle foreign plural words?) a jam made from fried fruit, very sour with a slightly smoky flavour.
164: Does she constant utter the phrase "cider mill" wistfully?
Friend: What's the deal with this area? There's all these apple farms and places that make cider, but where are the cider mill donuts?
Me: Cider mill donuts?
Friend: You know, you go to the cider mill, and you get donuts.
Me: [to self] Why donuts? Why not potato pancakes? Or lamb chops? This tradition sounds like a non sequitur.
165 2. It's not going to be the same as the French version, but you can get sweets made primarily from poppy seeds in any Polish store that sells pastries. They're all over the place in Greenpoint. It's either going to be a sweet poppy mix with some sweet yeast dough (makowiec/rolada makowa) or with a bit of cake dough and some sort of cake cream, typically coffee or poppy flavored (tort makowy). The latter will be the same thing you get in Germany or Austria.
What is this obsessive focus on holes (fructus lowhangica)?
The Magic is in the Hole! The intro page concludes "I'm sure some corners of the globe have yet to be penetrated", so I suspect that fruit was hung low intentionally.
Imagine that I used html correctly in 169.1.
It's either going to be a sweet poppy mix with some sweet yeast dough (makowiec/rolada makowa)
This may be what I have in mind. What I ate was pretty much two inches of poppy-seed, stewed in a small amount some sort of sweet sirup that held the seeds together, on top of a very minimal pastry shell.
Almost too intense, but awesome.
One of the local orchards brags about its donuts. I had no idea this was A Thing. Great place to go look at Fall leaves, at any rate.
152:
I'm attempting to reconstruct citation rules from the depths of the last millennium; I recalled "ff." as a prettier variant of "et seq.", used when responding to several comments within a thread so I wouldn't have to reproduce all the numbers.
It now appears that I've got it wrong, and shouldn't use it for a scattering of individual notes. But what the hell is correct? "Et al.", I suppose, or plain old "etc."
Frankly, I tend to use it because I'm pretentious and because I like the way it looks (not, I hope, necessarily in that order).
Now I expect you're sorry you asked.
Also: Krispy Kreme is from my hometown, but I kind of soured on them after they turned the wondrous 24-hour donut shop of my youth (complete with a giant conveyor belt, visible through a vast expanse of window behind the bar) into a Fast Food Hut that looks like every other in America.
The poppy seeds in the makowiec will have been ground and then stewed with sugar and/or honey and sometimes a few spices, making for a sort intensely poppy flavoured cornmeal grained sticky yummy goo. Raisins and/or walnuts may be added in small amounts. It will then be lathered on thick on a thin layer of sweet yeast dough, rolled up and baked. It will sometimes then be glazed. The whole thing has about a two or three to one poppy glop to dough ratio.
167, 172:
No, Apple orchards aren't really a thing where she's from, though her folks make an annual trip here to load up on fall produce. It's weird things like having established varieties that every bakery stocks, with very little variation. For example, there's one called a persian, which is just a bismark with white frosting/glaze and crushed peanuts on top. She used to become confused when fruit-filled donuts had something other than blueberry in them.
I'm familiar with apple cider donuts as a seasonal treat, though I don't recall having had them myself. See here for rhapsodising about the baked version, and here for a Stanleyland fried variety.
171: I'm pretty sure I've seen something like that in Brighton Beach. There's a store near the Coney Island end of the main street where I used to go for these pastries that are little triangles filled with poppy seeds. (I asked one time: what are these called? and was told in a matter-of-fact tone "Триуголнички с маком." That means "little triangles with poppy seeds.") Those are more dough-based, but I'm thinking they have sweets where the poppy seeds are the main attraction as well.
176: Haman's ears? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamantash
Oh man hamentaschen are so good.
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If you've always thought safewords were for suckers, this may be the Halloween thrill for you:
When the car came to a stop 20 minutes later I was pulled out of the trunk. The hood I'd managed to tear off my head was secured in place once again. My wrists and ankles were bound with plastic bands, and I was placed on the ground on my side. The music was then turned off, and the only sound I heard was that of a shovel being pushed into the soil, as if a hole were being dug. No one in the group uttered a word. Within minutes another vehicle pulled up, and I heard something being unloaded. I realized it was a wooden coffin as the three men lifted me inside and closed the lid. The entire time I'd been angrily informing the crew that there would be no column, just a phone call to the cops. I shouted that if Speece was one of those involved he was ruining his chance for any free publicity. I never received a response.
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My brother has a friend who calls ladybits "hamentaschen," so you're all cracking me up right now.
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Also: Old Keeper Scotch is about what you'd expect from a €7 bottle, and "Veronika Decides to Die" is a thoroughly mediocre movie. Sarah Mich/elle Gel/lar is really not a good actress, much as I will always treasure my Buffy-watching memories.
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Plain, sesame, onion, cinnamon raisin. The last is an abomination to bagels, I realize, but it is thoroughly mainstream.
It's possible that the stuff I ate in France was just metastasized Hamentaschen. It was thick like a casserole. So, so good.
My brother has a friend who calls ladybits "hamentaschen," so you're all cracking me up right now.
Doesn't Henry Roth use "knish" for the same thing in Call it Sleep? Mmm, yummy Jewish snacks.
Apricot hamentaschen are better than poppyseed hamentaschen.
Wait, are you talking about the actual hamentaschen or the other thing?
188 helped me to see that 187 is racist.
Sarah Mich/elle Gel/lar
You googleproofed that? Out of...a fear of the vampires she might attract to the comments?
177: No, they're not quite. The dough is more like the dough for rugelach, sweeter than for hamentaschen. And they're smaller.
As promised, a crappy photo of my bagel lunch.
The best donuts in the world are Montgomery Donuts - Montgomery County's second best export (after your's truly.)
Bagel sandwiches: acceptable or trayf?
Bagel sandwiches: impossible to eat without the insides falling out and making a giant mess.
The roof fell in on the bakery a few years ago, heavy snow, so no more of those donuts, which were pretty good.
197: Not necessarily true! The sandwich pictured in 194 had hummus, which acted as a sort of a mortar, keeping all the other constituent parts secured to the bagel. Admittedly, as you eat it, hummus and tomato begin to squirt out the back side, which means you can't simply eat the bagel uni-directionally but rather must continuously rotate to take on the latest surging edge, slowly eating your way to the center from the edges.
And it was fucking delicious.
199: I love hummus/tomato/onion/beansprout bagel sandwiches.
These things can be tasty! I love a fried egg on a bagel. But it is a fact that they are messy.
Good plain bagels are a bravura show of skill, like good plain French bread. With the boiling! and the baking! and the not-too-dense! and the non-diastatic malt! Oh, the flavor in things we thought flavorless. Mm.
I remember Krispy Kremes being good when they were half-soft inside, which probably depended on eggs with less innate salmonella.
201: I usually get hummus, tomato, sprouts, and Swiss, but I've been freaked out about sprouts since some of the comments in the canonical-sandwich-bar-ingredients thread.
Montgomery Donuts are back. (The roof did collapse under the snow in 2003.)
I've only ever had Czech koláč, but the kind [makovy] with the sweet tvaroh/mak filling [quark/poppy-seed] are utterly delicious.
Jackmormon,
I just remembered Chocolate & Zucchini posting this, which may or may not be the sort of thing you're looking for.
203: World's Best Donuts
I've had them. And they are pretty damn good. I also liked the whole wheat doughnuts at Gibson's near DFHC back in the day.
208.--It's getting there, but the cake-thing I crave was black with poppy seeds. It was so dense that it should have been served like chocolate squares.
206: Thats good. Because I swear I had a Montgomery Donut relatively recently, and I'd hate to think I was hallucinating.
plain
poppy seed
sesame seed
pumpernickel
Yes, but I cook them backwards (Moby was right).
Plain.
Salt.
Onion.
Everything.
Poppyseed.
Sesame.
Pumpernickel.
jackmormon, you should know that if your workplace starts drug testing, and you've been eating nothing but poppyseed cake and hammentaschen, you will test positive for opiates. I would think a nyc employer would already be aware of this conundrum, however.
220: My mom had to stop making my dad's favorite poppy seed cake for that very reason.
re: 212
That's the czech version, with a couple of almonds chucked on top. Completely black with poppy seeds.
I've located the world's sorriest excuse for a bagel! To find it you have to fly Continental out of Toronto and stop at the coffee place by the gate. It comes only in the form "bagel w/ chees" and looks like white bread mashed into a semi-torus wrapped around something plastic that might be the "chees". I didn't partake.
Here's an image of a standard makowiec, here's one of something closer to what you describe (As the html indicates, this is poppies on a layer of pastry dough.) You can get the former quite easily in NYC, and should be able to find the latter if you wander around Greenpoint.
203: I think I have had those, but it was so long ago I don't really remember. Here in town, I like the plain cake donuts from The Baker's Wife, their croissants are also good. The best donuts in town used to be The Lonely Donut in the skyway, above Kieran's, but the owner got in a feud with the property management company and couldn't find anywhere else he could afford to move. They also had amazing soup and breadsticks for lunch. The breadsticks might have been better than the donuts, actually.
I think I ate too many bagels yesterday. 4? 5? I bought a bunch for the staff meeting, and then they were just sitting around, so I had more throughout the day. For store-bought, packaged bagels they were mostly pretty decent though. Not even as good as a fresh Bruegger's, but you could choke them down.
There is a weed in Florida that makes a Y, and the top portion is covered with black seeds. It was a joke to do the following: Pluck two of them and orient them so that the stems overlap, but one opens to the left and one opens to the right. Ask your friend to bite down on the pair of stems. Then take the two bases, and pull in opposite direction, so that the two Ys pass through their teeth and coat their mouth with black seeds, which are impossible to get out from between your teeth.
Alternatively, just eat Jackmormon's poppyseed cake.
195: Hey, I'm from Montgomery County too! Well, I'm not really from anywhere, but I did go to high school there. What high school did you go to, Spike?
Everyone went to ogged's high school, my and will's high school, or peep's high school. Those are the prerequisites for commenting.
229: I had no idea! Did I ever mention what high school I went to? Did anybody else here go there? Am I doing a good job pretending to take Stanley seriously?
229: I object to that. Several of us didn't go to any common high school, but did go to the same Statewide Nerd Camp.
I'm from pretty close to Montgomery County. Did I go to high school with any of you? Is that why everybody hates me?
195: Montgomery Blair. Not the new one, the old one. You?
No one went to high school within a few hundred miles of me, I'm pretty sure.
No one went to high school within a few hundred miles of me, I'm pretty sure.
No one at all? There weren't even teachers there? I'm not sure that was high school, heebie.
Not as far as any of you know.
236 I'm pretty sure that's true of me.
I went to Elena Kagan's high school. And of course AC's, if anyone remembers that far back.
