"bagels" news and stories

Maybe you don't give bagels much thought -- grab one from the freezer, give it a quick toast and a smear of cream cheese and you're set. But for New Yorkers, bagels are a source of local pride, and they take them very, very seriously. 'To toast or not to toast' is one of the city's great debates. Over at The Daily Meal, native New Yorker Arthur Bovino has come out swinging, arguing that toasting a perfect bagel -- one fresh from the oven -- is a travesty.

Find out why he says "Toasting a good bagel is bastardizing a beautiful thing" at TheDailyMeal.com

We want to know: Do you toast your bagels?

New Yorkers, beware. The latest victim in the state's string of foodstuffs to come under tax (soda, pizza, junk food) is perhaps the most irksome and perhaps the most innocent: the city's iconic, beloved bagel.

It seems that if you simply order your bagel unadulterated (not sliced, not toasted, not schmeared with anything) and scram, you're in the clear. But if you order yours sliced open or topped -- with cream cheese, lox, you name it -- or eat it inside the establishment, a tax, dear New Yorkers, may soon ensue.

While the State of New York has yet to formally announce this new tax in code, an old stand-by bagel franchise, Bruegger's, has already been tapped, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company faced the surprise during an audit this summer when owner Kenneth Greene was charged with a lump sum for past bagels and was ordered to implement the tax immediately, adding about eight cents to each sliced/toasted/topped order.

Salty, creamy, chewy, smoky --a bagel with smoked salmon, cream cheese and caviar pretty much fulfills all promises. But, and here's where a little rain falls on the brunch parade, it's a poor choice unless you select your fish with an eye on sustainability.

Salmon and sturgeon are both on the least-sustainable seafood list (they've been overfished), so, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch, an easy-to-use buying guide, choose wild-caught Alaska salmon instead of Atlantic salmon, and caviar (roe) from U.S.-farmed sturgeon, or those that are wild-caught from Oregon and Washington.

A classic combination simply becomes a classic with a conscience.

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Whether eaten plain or with a "schmear" of cream cheese, Americans chomp their way through whole-wheat, cinnamon-raisin, poppy seed and onion bagels every morning. But while most procure their morning rings of dough from a local bagel shop or deli, a fresh bagel is only a few, simple ingredients away.

The boiled-then-baked rings of dough from the Fresh Loaf are nothing more than bread flour, salt, water, yeast and malt powder -- leading to the question of "why didn't I try making these sooner?"

The dough is made and shaped into circles – the bagel's signature silhouette -- the night before. The next day, they are boiled and baked just in time for the morning pot of coffee.

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The new pecan and cinnamon rolls. Photo: Krispy Kreme.

A decade after quietly tiptoeing away from its first bagel experiment, Krispy Kreme is rolling out an expanded line of "baked creations," including muffins, cinnamon rolls and decidedly not-sugary bagels.

While the new menu items are currently available only at a single location in Greensboro, N.C., company officials predict folks from Tampa to Tacoma will soon be able to supplement their orders for cream-filled doughnuts and chocolate crullers with a flax-seed-and-barley-flake bagel schmeared with reduced-fat vegetable cream cheese.

"It gives the regular customer some variety," publicist Steve Baumgarner explains.

Krispy Kreme first introduced bagels in 1996, offering them in just three stores nationwide. "We were unsuccessful in finding a product the consumer could identify with," Krispy Kreme VP Jack McAleer told the Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area when the pilot project was shelved three years later. (Perhaps inadvertently reflecting the trouble the Southern chain had connecting with bagel culture, the Business Journal's story was headlined "Krispy Kreme puts the cabosh on bagels.")