For me it was donuts by at least a decade, and maybe two. I remember various varieties of donuts from early childhood. Eventually Krispy Kreme became the standard by which all donuts are measured, but before KK came along there were oodles of brands and variations on the theme. There’s even a vague memory of somebody (aunt, grandmother, friend’s mother) making homemade ones.
Bagels, on the other hand, are relatively recent for me. I had heard of them on radio and TV, associated with lox and other delicatessen fare, but had never seen one for real until I was grown.
I believe geography may have been a factor im my case: bagels didn’t seem to be all that Southern in my earlier days.
Donuts, definitely, here in Southern Ontario. And none of the mushy overly-sweet microwaved alien invaders like Krispy-Kreme. We had real donuts, firm cool cake-based donuts with icing or glazing, from such places as Tim Hortons.
I’m not sure I even saw a bagel until I was at university.
Growing up overseas, mom made a lot of things at home that I don’t think she’d have made if she’d been working outside the home (or if she weren’t a bit homesick for the US). So she made donuts and bagels at home. I think donuts came first, and they were great. Her bagels, on the other hand, were just okay. I didn’t realize that there were profound differences between her bagels and commercially available bagels (which I don’t think I tried until college). We just preferred her donuts to commercial donuts and to her bagels.
I didn’t have a bagel until I moved to Calgary at 16. Now I love them.
It is only very rarely will I eat a doughnut. I will have them when I’m in Canada visiting home and can get them from Tim Hortons (my weakness is for the toffee glazed which is not at all as gooey as the name implies).
Definitely bagels, which I remember as far back as I remember anything, while my mother would have described doughnuts as “Chazzerei” (pig food) and I never had one till I was grown.
Sounds like my house! We had bagels and lox every Sunday after I got home from Sunday school. Sometimes we’d have those mini bagels- I always loved those best.
I don’t remember ever having a donut as a kid- although I must have at some point!
I wasn’t allowed to have sticky things as a child, so it was definitely bagels. I don’t recall the first time I had a donut, but it must have been at some point after I was eight or so. Probably, it was around the same time that I was allowed to have syrup on my pancakes.
Bagels. When I was a kid I remember waking up early to go with my dad to the bagel shop before my mom had woken up. I always begged for strawberry cream cheese. I’m from California btw, although bagels are pretty common in Edinburgh too.
I’m 65, but I think my late exposure to bagels (just guessing here: 1980’s) was more a function of place than time. As best I can recall, my first bagels were at the snack bar at work where the gal put out bagels among the breakfast fare. I’d have a plain with cream cheese, warmed in the microwave, every morning with my coffee. Plenty breakfast for me. I don’t like them toasted, just warmed up. I like the chewy texture. I’m not all that big on flavored ones either; just plain. They need to be pre-sliced, though. I fuck them up bad when I have to slice my own.
Panera has the best ones in these parts, but the Kroger brand works okay for me – mainly because they’re much cheaper than Pepperidge Farms and other brands.
FWIW, I never cared for Dunkin Donuts. My favorites were always the cake donuts with powdered sugar. I hate jelly-filled donuts!
Donuts first, I remember learning to “make” them as a youngster by cutting a hole into premade refrigerator biscuits and deep frying them then rolling in cinnamon and sugar.
Bagels were always available in the grocery store, I distinctly remember asking my Mom what kind of donuts those were and her explaining they weren’t donuts, but my family never had them at home. I was probably in my teens before I tried one.
Donuts. I’ve been eating them since I was a kid. Mom could buy them at the supermarket, from the donut shop, and so on.
Bagels were a little more rare. I probably never had a bagel until I was in my 20s. (That would have been the 1980s.) Oh, I knew they existed–bakeries in the Jewish part of town would advertise “Fresh Bagels Daily” in their windows. But outside of there, bagels were not widely available when I was a child.
Of course, they are very popular now, and available anywhere. And now, I like both donuts and bagels. But for me, donuts came first.
Donuts by a long shot. I didn’t even discover bagels 'til my teens and never ate one 'til my 20s. Of course I was born and raised a big-city slicker, where donut shops outnumbered delis and bakeries by approximately 10:1.
Oddly, my preferences in that department have done a 180. I hardly eat donuts anymore, but I love a nice buttered or cream-cheesed bagel.
Bagels. When I was a kid, we lived in the San Joaquin Valley, and every few months my dad would have to drive down to LA. He would visit Western Bagel and stock up on bunches of bagels to freeze. My favorite was blueberry, but I was also partial to a nice sesame seed bagel.
My mother is something of a hippie, and I don’t remember eating many donuts as a kid. I regarded places like Winchell’s Donuts as unreachable paradises. In college, I worked at a couple of bakeries, and now one donut a year is about my limit. I still like bagels, though. I wonder if Western Bagel still exists?
It might have been simultaneous… When I was little we lived in Kansas which was pretty bagel-free in 1978 (we moved back to NYC when I was 5, 1980). However, my parents being the resourceful Native New Yorkers they are, they made them at home in huge batches every now and then. At the same time, I wasn’t allowed to have many sweets, so I don’t think doughnuts would have anything more than a very occasional treat. Its a close one, but I’ll go with bagels.
Never even heard of bagels until well into adultery. First one I tried was ‘blech’, but of course it was prepackaged and not really a bagel at all. Sort of like those ‘croissants’, which are nothing more than bread dough shaped like a croissant.
Growing up in the midwest, I hadn’t heard of bagels until I was about 16 (1979). Tulsa had exactly one bagel shop.
A couple of years ago, I was checking in at a hotel in Oklahoma City and a woman asked the man behind the counter where the nearest bagel shop was. His reply was, “Ma’am, this is Oklahoma, we don’t have bagel shops.” The woman started laughing until I told her that he wasn’t kidding.
Doughnuts for sure - I grew up in British Columbia Canada, and doughnuts were always a favourite treat, especially once we got a Tim Horton’s!!!
I think I was about 16 the first time I had a bagel - I was babysitting for a family that didn’t believe in junk food for the sitter ( :eek: ) - instead the mom told me to help myself to a bagel … :rolleyes: