Of course an everything bagel doesn’t truly feature everything but what do you expect it to include?
Suppose you were to walk into a bagel shop where you’ve never been before. Without looking at the bagels on display, you order an Everything Bagel. What do you expect to get?
From a life’s experience, I would always expect both poppy seeds and sesame seeds. I would hope also for garlic and onion, maybe salt. I certainly would not expect to be served a bagel with poppy, sesame, garlic, onion, chocolate chips, blueberries, sundried tomatoes, jalapenos . . .
What’s the minimum, what are the standards that you would expect for a bagel shop to justify calling a bagel an Everything Bagel?
Definitely poppy and sesame seeds and onion. It’ll probably have salt, too, though I don’t actually care about that. Garlic would be good too, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was absent.
I understand that some people can take or leave the salt, but that’s my favorite thing about Everything bagels.
A salt bagel is TOO salty for me. The amount on an Everything bagel is just right. Ditto garlic, though I’m not as actively disappointed when garlic is missing than when salt is.
Damn. Now I really want a bagel, but the bagel shop on my block has turned into a Persian restaurant. Their food’s great and they’re good neighbors and I’m glad they’re here, but…no bagels.
Yeah, the main five: salt, onion, garlic, and sesame and poppy seeds. I don’t see any of them being optional, though. Other spices that would go with those, like rosemary or thyme, I guess. Although I’m not a cook so maybe those would clash.
If they had bits of sun dried tomatoes and/or jalapenos, I don’t think you could complain.
Blueberries and chocolate chips are right out, though.
The concept never occurred to me before this thread (as we just don’t have bagel shops around here), but I’d like a go. I guess it would have butter, cream cheese, jelly, and peanut butter. Those are all the things I ever see people put on bagels.
And it seems I am totally wrong. Are you guys actually talking about topping or things in the bagel dough? What you guys describe sounds like it would go great with a pizza bagel.