You really have to enjoy one to understand my rapturous tone, but a warm, buttered egg bagel is one of the sublime pleasures of eating.
An egg bagel is rather simple in concept: a plain bagel dough with egg added where it would otherwise be absent. But the flavor is rich, the color near unnaturally yellow, and when said bagel comes from The Bagel Oven in Red Bank, New Jersey, the baked ring of bread is dense, chewy, and covered in a barely crispy skin just thick enough to balance the texture.
I enjoy the occasional bagel from Panera or Einstein's, but munching on that glorious "o" of dough this weekend reminded me just how bagels outside of the North East try - and utterly fail - to be what bagels ought to be.
An egg bagel is rather simple in concept: a plain bagel dough with egg added where it would otherwise be absent. But the flavor is rich, the color near unnaturally yellow, and when said bagel comes from The Bagel Oven in Red Bank, New Jersey, the baked ring of bread is dense, chewy, and covered in a barely crispy skin just thick enough to balance the texture.
I enjoy the occasional bagel from Panera or Einstein's, but munching on that glorious "o" of dough this weekend reminded me just how bagels outside of the North East try - and utterly fail - to be what bagels ought to be.