I have often wondered why it’s impossible to find a good bagel west of Pittsburgh. Some argue it’s the water, and that only the Eastern seaboard has appropriate quantities of bacteria and minerals in the water to make a good, pluchy bagel (If you need a definition of pluchy, imagine a really chubby baby’s feet. They are pluchy – mushy, dense, loveable all at the same time). I refuse to eat bagels in California, because the entire state has the strange notion that a bagel is merely round bread, and not boiled and then brick-baked to get the proper mix of crunchy outside and chewy center. Last week, I toasted a bagel at Nerd HQ in Menlo Park, California, only to have it crumble like, well, over-toasted bread with eggs, cheese and breakfast meat on top.
In addition to baking them the right way, a bagel must be cut and schmeared properly as well. As evenly across the radial axis as you can get, so the halves hold up in the toaster or under the weight of what your Aunt Ruth piles on top. If you’re going for a to-go bagel, then cutting the torus in half is also acceptable, especially if it creates the potential for melting butter to hit your dress shirt and tie on the way to work. But just when I thought I’d mastered the art of bagel topography, along comes a sculptor and master of food surfaces to redefine the art of breaking bread.
