Bagels - Can/should they be toasted?

Toasted bagels are awesome.

Anyone saying you shouldn't ever toast a bagel is a complete fucking moron whose opinions are null and void.

Never? What, are we fucking living in prehistoric caves?

Rules for bagel toasting!

"Do you want your bagel toasted?"

If you say yes, he's gonna give you an old bagel.

If you say no, he's gonna go to the back and get the fresh bagel.

If you say no then when he comes out, switch to yes, you'll get a fresh bagel that's toasted.

I usually don't toast. I like a chewy bagel. However, some bagels aren't authentic New York style and they're more like a dinner roll. Those taste better toasted.

Not when they’re fresh.

However, if we don’t eat all the super-fresh ones, I slice and freeze them immediately. If you toss a frozen bagel half in a toaster, the outside gets crispy and the inside stays soft. Delicious heavenly toasted bagels…

^^ Did it this very morning. We get them fresh out of the oven at 7:00 am as soon as Tal Bagels opens their doors.

Sure we have to step around bums and rats, but fresh bagels make up for it.

OP needs to be put into the military. Too much time on her hands.

R7 I've already enlisted you because you had time to make that comment.

Lightly toasted if fresh. Toasted normally if you think they aren't.

Do you, people. Toast the motherfucker if you want to. I personally couldn't imagine a sesame seed bagel untoasted, but that's just me.

NYer here. I would never get one toasted at the bagel store but once a month I get half a dozen and freeze them. For those I put them in the oven (not a toaster) for either a few minutes so they're warm and crunchy, or like 15-20 minutes so they come out more like Melba toast.

I never got the bagel thing but I grew up in the South with warm, fluffy biscuits. Bagels were simply unheard of back in my childhood. Bagels are tough little hockey pucks to me. I prefer toast or a warm croissant at home these days.

If your bagels are "tough little hockey-pucks" then you're getting absolutely terrible bagels.

Bagels should be soft and chewy.

Eat what you like and how you like it!

My toaster has a Bagel button to prevent the crust from being burned.

Bagels at Dunkin' Donuts are as mushy as their donuts.

The real question is, are they better with cream cheese or butter

And of course the right, yet controversial answer, is butter.

Bagels, like every other food, should be eaten exactly the way you like them.

Toasting is a minor transgression compared to blueberry, sundried tomato and other goyische flavors.

Depends on if they're egg bagels or water bagels.

Butter is great, especially with raisin bagels. Cream cheese is great with lox.

Butter on one slice, cream cheese on the other. Oy vey, so good you’re gonna wanna slap your mamele!

I think even Russ & Daughters in NY lets you get them toasted these days.

Those of you who live where you have easy access to fresh bagels should cherish them. Pity visitors to New York who return to their own countries and can only get sad imitations.

Must I have watched "Fiddler on the Roof" recently in order to appreciate a freshly toasted bagel fully?

Have your bagels whatever way you like.

R24 yeah I live back and forth between NYC and Argentina and bagels, along with chinese fried dumplings, are the 2 foods I miss most.

The real question is if they should be refrigerated or not.

If you goyim want to eat your bagels like a proper Boca Raton matron, you need to slice it in half and scoop out the inside (while loudly announcing to anyone in earshot that you are scooping out the inside as "all those carbs are no good for you.") and then spreading a thin schmear of cream cheese on it. You will then eat the bagel with a large cup of iced coffee because "Even with the air on, I'm already schvitzing from the heat."

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever had a fresh bagel. Terrible, I know. That being said, I like to slice and toast my Everything bagels (my favorite), so that the exposed sliced side is slightly golden and crisp, while the inside remains warm and chewy.

I prefer plain cream cheese with lox, or vegetable or jalapeño cream cheese without (or as the basis for a fresh vegetable sandwich).

I prefer them in a pan with butter, pressed face down to give them a crusty brown bunrt butter surface, then smear with cream cheese.

[quote] I don't think I've ever had a fresh bagel.

[quote] I prefer plain cream cheese with lox

I guessing you have never had Temp-Tee cream cheese either, but define "lox" given the first statement.

I’m remembering the co-worker whose time it was to bring in bagels & he brought in Lender’s bagels. From the frozen aisle section.

As long as they aren’t St. Louis style, who cares?

Where's the best place to get bagels in NY these days? It seems like now they're all pale and mushy versions of what they were when I was a kid. I miss great poppy seed bagels that are a crisp golden brown on the outside and chewy on the inside.

Looking at their websites online, even at Zabar's and H&H, they just look so pale and wan, like goyim dinner rolls. This is why people want to toast them now, just to get a deeper more appetizing color.

And whoever mentioned upthread about schmearing their bagel with butter AND cream cheese? Yeah, that's authentic, this is how we used to do it in The Bronx back in the day.

If you are having a bagel sandwich, then maybe. Otherwise bagels only need to be toasted if they are stale or bad.

R35 don't know Manhattan but as someone who has lived all over the NYC area, the best bagels I ever had were in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at a place called Knickerbocker Bagels. I live in Manhattan now and still I occasionally haul my ass up to Brooklyn for those works of art.

There's a place on Amsterdam and 77/78 that is my go-to R35 - Bagel Talk.

Dumb name but great bagels.

[quote] I’m remembering the co-worker whose time it was to bring in bagels & he brought in Lender’s bagels. From the frozen aisle section.

Depending on where you live, Lender's may have been a reasonable choice. Not everybody has the option to buy or make fresh bagels.

they are NEVER fresh out of the oven

R39, he most definitely had better options.

Plain bagels - toasted with cream cheese. Asiago Cheese - toasted with butter. I only eat those, don't know about the rest.

It's boiled, tough, chewy bread.

Chewy, yes, but it should never be tough. If it's though, it's a bad bagel.

... people eat untoasted bagels?!?

Best bagel I ever had was a fresh-made cinnamon-sugar bagel made at a little bakery in San Antonio. They were SO GOOD. I doubt the place is still around (this was more than 20 years ago).

What?!?!

[quote] Best bagel I ever had was a fresh-made cinnamon-sugar bagel

I think you meant "donut" R46

There is no such thing as a "cinnamon-sugar" bagel.

I used to work as a nanny on Long Island and bought bagels every week from a place near Hicksville or somewhere nearby. Best bagels I’ve had in my life, and not being from the East Coast, was my introduction to the normalcy of eating bagel sandwiches on a daily basis. The bagels were soft, chewy, and flavorful.

I ate them with Swiss and tomato, just Swiss, or cream cheese and tomato. Only toasted them when they started to dry out on day 3 or so after buying them.

I live on the West Coast now and can’t find a good bagel place out here. I buy some from my local grocery store, but they’re cardboard compared to the joy of the NY bagels.

R32 I avoid whipped cream cheese. I don't like the texture. It tastes like the lesser, underwhelming cousin of the alternative. And I say this as someone who loves cream cheese. More for you!

R48, I assure you there is, and it was delicious, and nothing like a donut (but they were best fresh out of the oven still warm)

"Purists" are fucking annoying and miss out on a lot of excellent things.

Bialys are better. Not so doughy.

No need to toast if it's fresh. If it's old or store-bought, do whatever you have to do to bring it to life. I usually just microwave for a bit. Makes 'em soft, warm and chewy rather than crispy.

I used to buy Thomas onion bagels, but since they seem to have discontinued them, I've been using 'everything' bagels from Sam's Club.

I put a sheet of aluminum foil on the oven rack, place the split bagels face-up on it, and spray them lightly with cooking spray. Then I sprinkle the bagels with granulated onion powder and a little salt. After toasting them under the broiler, I spread cream cheese on them. Mmm-mmm!

I always thought H&H Bagels in NYC was the Mt. Olympus of bagels.

R55 A few times I went to H&H early morning and bought twenty bagels and cream cheese, butter and lox as breakfast for my staff. It was sad when the store on 80th & Broadway closed. I tried the bagels from their other location on 2nd Ave a couple of times, good but somehow not quite the same taste and consistency. Go figure.

Jenny Craig has the best New York sesame bagel. I toast it and add a tsp of butter.

I toast depending on the bagel. Yesterday's bagels are better toasted.

Bagel Street Deli in Athens, OH actually flash steams their bagel sandwiches.

R56 I didn't know H&H has closed. It was THE best. Bagels outside of new York are a sorry apology at best.

Hard crust, soft and chewy inside, untoasted , with a schmear. Heaven.

On the east side Ess-A-Bagel is still around R60, and quite good - but their bagels have always been huge - around 20% bigger than H&H’s were.

I'm the poster whose Bayonne Grandmom had a flip-down toaster we used for bagels.

Toasted makes the butter, cream cheese, or whatever fat nicely meld with the bagel's interior to add that extra flavor to the main topping.

This thread has now motivated me to go this weekend to our local farmers market that has a merchant who sells bagels from NYC (we're about 90 minutes due West)!

Tidbit: When I was a child ca 1958 in my PA small town, it seemed nobody else knew what a bagel was, let alone any from "The City"!

Sudden desire for bagels

S.H.I.T. = Should’ve Had It Toasted

Mmm... boiled dough....

Ghetto.

Actually, "ghetto" described the name of neighborhoods Jew were confined to in Europe, such as the Warsaw ghetto. And yet they triumphed, making delicious bagels and bialys that have been culturally appropriated by the masses.

It closed at least 10 years ago R60, if not longer.

I grew up on the UWS and remember going in there as a kid with my grandmother. She'd find out which bagels were still hot and get one for me and my brother. That is my madeleine, the taste of those hot chewy bagels, plain nothing on them.

R61 - try Bagel Talk on Amsterdam & 77th. Ess-A-Bagel are not bad, but as you note they are huge

Are you the author, r67??

What's so great about lox? Isn't it just very salty fish?

If I'm in the mood for sweet I love a cinnamon raisin bagel, untoasted, with cinnamon, walnut raisin cream cheese.

For standard bagels if they're really fresh, and they always are where I buy them at my Brooklyn NY place, untoasted. For the ones I take home to freeze I thaw and slice in half and toast in the oven or if I'm not too lazy drag out my toaster and use that. I actually like to do 1/2 with butter and 1/2 with cream cheese and eat each half open face, not together like a sandwich, so I get best of both worlds.

At the bagel store I will order a plain bagel with vegetable cream cheese and their amazing melt in your mouth smoked salmon, lox is usually too salty. I also like turkey, American cheese on a pumpernickel bagel and sometimes go totally crazy and get ham and Swiss on an everything. I often have 1/2 of one of these bagel sandwiches and for dessert 1/2 of the sweet raisin ones.

Actually as long as you don't put mayo or tomato or lettuce or onion on the sandwich bagels they all freeze very well and when thawed you have a meal ready to eat and not have to assemble.

They freeze best wrapped in really good plastic wrap and then wrap that in a double layer of foil closed tightly and put in a ziplock bag. I've kept them for up to 6 months that way and they taste fresh when thawed. Do not thaw in a microwave. It will ruin them. Take they out a few hours before you want to eat them or thaw overnight in the fridge. Mind you, all this info is for the ones with stuff in them or cream cheese and salmon. The plain ones I wrap the same but will thaw in an hour or two.

Every time this thread shows up in my sidebar, I see it as "Bagels - Can/should they be trusted?

And the answer is no.

Ha R68!

I have spent much time in London and their bagels do not measure up. There was a place once that tried importing NYC tap water to make theirs and it came close but that was about it.

However if that is what you grew up on, I am sure it tastes amazing to you.

Would you toast a donut?

I would toast a slice of bread but not a slice of chocolate cake, so WTF kind of question is that R73????

Might it be good? I haven't tried it before. Toasted cake might be tasty too.

Chocolate fudge cake?

R76 why not? Put a slice under a broiler, then add butter.

Sliced, toasted poundcake is great. Toast a nice thick slab, smear on some peanut butter, a scoop of vanilla ice cream(optional but recommended) a drizzle of caramel or chocolate sauce(or both) Just the poundcake toasted and slathered with butter is a nice quick treat as well.

Poppy/egg bagel for me. Toasted medium and plenty of butter.

There was a shop down on South Street(here in Philly) BITD that sold the greasiest, garlic-iest toasted bagel chips. The ones you find these days don't even come close. 😢