The Beef Jerky of Bread

written February 27, 2009




I’m not writing this to start a fight. I’m not writing this to fuel the ever long fire between the North and the South. I’m not. It’s just my own – southern opinion being expressed here. It’s something that’s perplexed me my entire life and I feel that if I just get it out now, finally, once and for all; I’ll feel so much better. 

*Sighhhh 

So. Tell me. What the hell is so great about a flippin’ bagel? 

Hm? I don’t understand it. Hard, rubbery, chewy bread? Really? Why is it awesome? Have you ever HAD a biscuit?? Or a croissant? Or a fresh-baked roll? A fresh doughnut? (I mean FRESH – like Shipley’s – not manufactured fresh like Crispy Cream. (Oooooh, I also have a beef with Crispy Cream but I’ll save that for another day.) 

I’ve tried. Really, I have. But every time I’m 2 minutes into the never-ending chew of the bagel – I just want to spit it out. I think it’s a southern thing. We like warm, soft food that’s easy to masticate. Oh, and butter. We like butter on our warm, soft bread. An oven-fresh roll has almost no weight. It sits in your hand like an airy thing from heaven. It smells sweet. You can give it a little squeeze and it will slowly bounce back – like memory foam. 

A bagel is hard like STALE bread. You could hit someone in the head with a bagel and piss them off. You could chunk a role at someone as hard as you could and not furrow a brow. There is a restaurant here in Houston where the waiters actually throw rolls at you from across the room. It’s fun. Rolls are happy things. Look at the Pilsbury Doughboy. Happy fatty. Soft. Giggly. 

A bagel is trying too hard to be too much. It’s like someone wanted to eat 15 soft rolls – so what they did was stack them – and then smooshed them down to a compressed piece of toughness and then let it dry out a little before they ate it. 

Why would you do that??? 

Okay – maybe I can understand it this way: 
When I was a little girl I would take a slice of bread, remove the crust and then smoosh it into a little doughy ball and eat it. That’s sort of like a bagel. I also used to go around my neighborhood with a bucket and collect all the dead cicada shells from the trees and then take them back to my room and hang them on my curtains. It was weird, I know – just like eating compressed bread. The fun was in the making of the ball - not the eating of it 

I want to add my co-worker, Michelle’s two cents – which I think make another valid point: 
“Perhaps the standards for food up North depends on how well it travels. In large, cold metropolises food needs to make it from point A to point B and withstand the elements. A bagel starts out as cold, hard and disappointing so by the time you arrive at your destination you can eliminate being let down by your breakfast food as it was pretty disappointing to begin with.” 
—Michelle Stidman 

I keep going back to the image of The Pilsbury Doughboy vs whatever the Bagel Man would look like. The Doughboy is smiling and giggling and hugging children. The Bagel Man is just standing there all tough and hard like a bouncer at a Choad Bar. If you poke his belly he’ll break your fucking finger. Nobody wants to eat that guy. 

In closing: Please, make me understand. I’m open to the idea that I’m missing something huge. Maybe I’m just not DOING it right. I tried. I was in NY for a month last summer and I still… just didn’t get it. 

Until then...Long live the Kolache!