Donuts.
That’s where my family gets our bagels! It was still there in December. Or at least the one on Santa Monica Blvd was. Yum…
Definitely doughnuts. I remember getting chocolate cream filled doughnuts from Dunkin’ Donuts as a kid - an incredible treat. I don’t think I had a bagel until college, in the '80’s. I was introduced to them by my (now) husband, who’s family was from New York.
Donuts. I don’t remember this myself, but apparently when I was three my dad was convinced that I knew that the Dunkin Donuts sign said what it did because I recognized the pink and orange logo. Until he wrote the words down (I guess he was making a to-do list) and I told him what it said 
I’m trying to remember when I first became aware of bagels. I think the frozen ones in bags were something I knew about as a little kid, but I don’t think I tried one until I was a pre-teen. I do recall them being a big deal when I started college, though.
I think I was probably introduced to both around the same time. I grew up in South Florida, and there were a lot of Jewish/New York style delis (well, they imitated the restaurant aspect of it) that served bagels that we went to on occasion for a weekend breakfast. I also distinctly remember my mom and her family friends making Icelandic Kleinur in the kitchen. They were dense and coated in powdered sugar, and were great while still warm with a mug of cocoa or coffee.
These days, I’m not a huge fan of donuts, as they tend to be too sweet and unfilling, but I love a good bagel. I’m branching out more flavor-wise with bagels, and am open again to both savory and sweet flavors as long as they’re not too cloying or too bitter.
Definitely donuts. I didn’t have my first bagel until my senior year of high school.
I’m 38 and grew up in Arkansas.
Doughnuts were the first. My mother took “Poppin’ Fresh” biscuits, punched a hole in them, fried 'em up and sprinkled them with sugar and cinnamon. My younger brother called them “Doug Hunts”, and that’s what we’ve called them ever since.
I didn’t have a bagel until the 70’s, when a friend and I got rained out at the Renn Faire in Novato. On our way back home, we happened upon The House Of Bagels on Geary in San Francisco. What an introduction to that marvelous bread-type-thing!
I’ve known both since early childhood. I have fond memories of sneaking little cinnamon donuts out of the kitchen, with my father’s help, before dinner. We got them at the grocery store, but I also remember going to Dunkin’ Donuts fairly often as a kid (although I usually got Munchkins because they’re so much more fun for a kid). My grandmother made donuts, too, and they were small and dark and dense and not at all like the kind we got at the store.
As for bagels, well, I grew up in Montreal and I’m accustomed to the thin, dense, yummy, sesame-coated Montreal-style bagels of the Saint-Viateur or Fairmount bakeries. I’ve been eating those since I was a kid. My first experence with thick bready “bagels” was in my teens, in the school cafeteria, and I can’t say I’m a big fan. Well, maybe the cinnamon-raisin ones, if I’m in that sort of mood.
Being from MS, I believe also believe geography had a lot do with the fact I ate donuts throughout my childhood; I don’t think I even heard of bagels until I went “Nawth” to college. Oh, and I’m mid-40s.
Definitely doughnuts. I grew up in mid-Michigan and I don’t think bagels were widely available until I was in high school or so. I’m 49.
GT
Donuts. No bagels for hundreds of miles where I grew up. I think I discovered bagels during one of my first trips to Albuquerque as an adult. That city and Santa Fe were like Mecca for me WAY back when. It was there I discovered espresso and cappuccino, too. Now, the small Texas city where I grew up has all of that, but not when I was there. I love bagels now and never fail to order one at Au Bon Pain here in Bangkok.
I’d never seen a bagel until I was in my 30s. It was actually a Jewish friend who turned me on to them. It was always donuts, usually Tim Horton’s. I’m 48, and there is a package of bagels in my fridge right now, with a tub of whipped cream cheese. I’ll have a couple of them for breakfast this morning.
A big 10-4 on the whipped cream cheese there, Bubba. I had enough left from my latest 6-pack of bagels to feel the need for more bagels. It works that way: I run out of one before the other and will restock the missing ingredient. It’s like painting the Golden Gate bridge for me.
Donuts by a mile. I was born in 1960 and I don’t remember ever not ‘knowing’ donuts. Winchells, specifically, for donut-shop donuts, and Hostess for grocery-store bought. And the lady across the street (Mrs. Roman) used to make them homemade once in while – homemade cake donuts rolled in cinnamon & sugar. When she made them, she would fill baggies with donut-holes and hand them out to the kids on our cul-de-sac. The English language needs a more descriptive word than ‘good’ for Mrs. Roman’s donuts…
I never had a bagel until latish in the '70s. Lenders Bagels out of the freezer case, those were. My mother is fond of gadgets and ‘new’ things. Any new product that comes out, she’s soon trying. So she brought home Lenders Bagels as soon as they were available. I tried making my own bagels around that same time (from a recipe in a Bread Cookbook circa 1975). Not a big success – Lenders were just as good and many times easier. I don’t remember seeing bagel shops around until the '80s – the late '80s, probably, after my kids were born.
I’ve never been much of a donut fan, but I was definitely familiar with them, and had eaten them long before I knew what a bagel was.
I’ll be 48 in April, and I’ve lived in Alaska for 37 of those years. I think I was in my 20s before I discovered bagels. That doesn’t mean they weren’t available to us, I just don’t remember! (it’s the first thing to go :D)
I remember being three or four years old, and my parents taking me to a donut shop for breakfast occasionally. Actually, I have a pretty poignant memory of the last week before we left Kansas. It was my last week of second grade, and my class spent the whole week putting on a play for the other classes. Because all we were doing was the performances, we were allowed to come to school late and leave early. My mother had quit her job prepatory to moving, and was probably very stressed out about packing up the house (dad had been working in the new state for several months by that time, so he wasn’t there). My mother and I went to the doughnut shop for breakfast every day that week. She also picked me up from school every day, and took me to the 7-Eleven to get slurpees.
Dear memories from a mostly-latchkey childhood.
Bagels I first encountered at hotel breakfast buffets, I think.
Definitely donuts. My grandmother worked in a little mom & pop donut shop when I was but a sprout, and I often “helped” her on weekends. I still can’t face a donut.
I didn’t learn about bagels until I was about 20. (20 years ago, yikes)
As best as I can remember, somewhere around 1959, definitely donuts. I know bagels were around long before this, but I just don’t remember seeing them until somewhere in the 1970s.
Donuts are available in all states and most locations aren’t they? If not from an actual donut shop, there are national brands of packaged ones in supermarkets and convenience stores. That still isn’t true for bagels although I am sure that the range has expanded greatly in recent years. I didn’t see one until I was a college freshman in 1991 and that might have been because I went to a university with a large Jewish population. My tiny home town in rural Louisiana didn’t have them. I am pretty sure that they still don’t.
I had donuts since I was a toddler. Bagels were something I didn’t encounter until my mid/late teens.