I have a soft spot for this kinda food. It's right below the stent.

January 23, 2022 6:06 PM

All Praise the St. Louis Bagel and Its Infinite Potential The infamous, vertically sliced St. Louis bagel is not an abomination—it’s a brand-new playing field for a brand-freaking-new game.
posted by lalochezia (56 comments total)

Huh. I live in St. Louis and have never seen bagels sliced like that before.
posted by Foosnark at 6:17 PM on January 23, 2022 [10 favorites]

Before they’re slid into the oven, bagels are quickly boiled in water

Panera (and other big chains) somewhat famously do not prepare their ring-shaped bread products in this way.

Therefore, by this article’s own definition, the canonical example of the St. Louis Bagel is not a real bagel. QED.
posted by schmod at 6:17 PM on January 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

My God, this person's mind. A mad genius.

That being said, my first thought, before I actually read the post, was of this Tumblr classic: "Is this a sandwich? Please discuss."
posted by merriment at 6:21 PM on January 23, 2022 [10 favorites]

That being said, my first thought, before I actually read the post, was of this Tumblr classic: "Is this a sandwich? Please discuss."

Sandwich Alignment Chart
posted by lalochezia at 6:23 PM on January 23, 2022 [12 favorites]

My wife claims that she had bagels sliced like this at the famous Russ and Daughters shop in NYC. But, there is no photographic evidence on the internet that they do it, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
posted by anhedonic at 6:35 PM on January 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

hee, hee - hasselbagels.
hee hee hee hee, snort snicker snort.

That's a good one.
posted by ashbury at 6:42 PM on January 23, 2022

Also from St Louis. Also have never seen this abomination in the wild.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:44 PM on January 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

mods are asleep post forbidden bagel techniques
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:52 PM on January 23, 2022 [39 favorites]

The only issue I see here is that the St. Louis slice would make it nigh impossible to toast the bagel to my preferred level of brown before slathering it in butter and cream cheese.

I’m not even sure what use there is for an untoasted bagel.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 6:53 PM on January 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm supposed to be outraged on someone's behalf, aren't I? I can never quite tell with food stuff like this.   I mean I could try to be outraged, but I'm all out of fucks to give if I'm honest; it's all just too exhausting, policing how people are supposed to enjoy foods.  A bagel's basically a briefly boiled roll with a hole in it.  Slice it any damn way you want.

I’m not even sure what use there is for an untoasted bagel.

Indeed. I find one of life's small pleausures is a bagel nicely burnt and slathered in butter. But I'm a gentile, and since this is the internet I'm sure someone somewhere will be aghast that I can't stand lox and shrug at cream cheese as a topping because internet.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 7:01 PM on January 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

My dad grew up in St. Louis in the 50s, in the Jewish neighborhood, no less. I'll have to ask him if he recalls this. I have to say I think it's pretty genius; that cheese bagel looks amazing.
posted by zardoz at 7:06 PM on January 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

The tuna melted sounded good. I been makin' whole wheat tuna melt quesodillas, lately. The melted manchego and guava jam, multi-layered rebake could be good, in a discrete three little sammies way.
posted by Oyéah at 7:09 PM on January 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

“Smokey, this is not ‘Nam. This is bagels. There are rules. You cut that into 8 slices, and you’re entering a world of pain.”
posted by Ghidorah at 7:22 PM on January 23, 2022 [4 favorites]

"What if we reinvented bagel chips, but only half way?" is something I might ask idly myself if I was, say, trapped alone on Mars
posted by phooky at 7:23 PM on January 23, 2022 [7 favorites]

I mean, sure, you can slice your bagel on a different axis than everyone who has ever come before you. It's a free country, man. Maybe you spotted something that millions of people (some of whom have dedicated their lives to the craft) over hundreds of years just missed. It's like taking the Big Tech Disruptor approach to the humble bagel, which has heretofore resisted disrupting.

Mostly, though, if I ordered a bagel, and someone handed it to me sliced like this, I would react in much the same way as if they handed me an ice cream cone and wanted me to hold it by the ice cream.
posted by Mayor West at 7:31 PM on January 23, 2022 [14 favorites]

mods are asleep post forbidden bagel techniques

* with an x-acto knife and some patience, you can slice one bagel into several smaller, concentric bagels
* if you cut the bagel into cubes and dry them, you can make bagel stuffing
* for a fun twist, try making your bagel without the hole! you can cram 25% more bagel into the same space!
* bored in the bedroom? bagel + willing male partner = ring toss
posted by Mayor West at 7:36 PM on January 23, 2022 [27 favorites]

After experiencing the abomination that is St. Louis "pizza," this seems like small potatoes.
posted by rikschell at 7:38 PM on January 23, 2022 [6 favorites]

The "St. Louis bagel" reminds me of the time the NYT claimed something called Grape Salad was the quintessentially Minnesotan dish. Until that article, no Minnesotan I've ever met had even heard of such a thing.

I have heard of St. Louis pizza though. Sounds like something you'd want to keep to yourselves.
posted by Ickster at 7:41 PM on January 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

I don’t know how this silliness got started, but I’ve spent more than half of my years living in or adjacent to St. Louis. This isn’t a thing. (Don’t care if people hate on St. Louis pizza - just more for me. Can’t wait for this damn pandemic to end so I can go back and have my fill of IMO’s pizza, Urban Chestnut beer, gooey butter cake and toasted ravioli.)
posted by jzb at 8:12 PM on January 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

It's a thing. Maybe not to the extent of actually being a "thing", but there are billboards and news stories for a few years ago.

https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/how-st-louis-bread-co-started-the-bread-sliced-bagel/63-38abac7f-f3c6-44d3-961c-6282e505da09
and
https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/panera-shows-its-home-city-of-st-louis-love-with-sliced-bagel-billboards/63-4cf46269-ce5c-4db6-8570-ba365c4142da
posted by cybrcamper at 8:23 PM on January 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

mods are asleep post forbidden bagel techniques

mobius bagel, with math
posted by BungaDunga at 8:26 PM on January 23, 2022 [11 favorites]

I’m not even sure what use there is for an untoasted bagel.

A good, fresh bagel does not need to be toasted. In fact, it is an insult to the bagel. Of you don't live in NYC, you may have never had a bagel so good that this would apply. I am not sorry.
posted by dame at 8:37 PM on January 23, 2022 [9 favorites]

This is like it's from some alternate universe:

July 16, 1969: Man walks on the moon, birthing conspiracy theorists who insist that man has definitely not walked on the moon.

An alternate universe where the first moon walk was not on July 21, 1969, the way it was in ours.
posted by jamjam at 8:41 PM on January 23, 2022 [3 favorites]

Grew up in STL, eating bagels at Pratzel's when I had a choice. My synagogue had bagels from Schnucks on Sunday mornings. Gatekeeping what is a bagel is my birthright as a Bagels-and-Seinfeld Jew and I am here to tell you that, strictly speaking, bagels from Panera aren't really bagels. Too bready, not chewy enough. Too many sweet toppings to qualify.

Having said that, I occasionally indulged in a bread-sliced bagel from Panera (RIP dutch apple bagels) because they took longer to eat and were easier to eat in the car on the way home from Mizzou to St. Louis on a Saturday morning. Also, worth plugging an asiago cheese bagel with the sun-dried tomato cream cheese - it allows for a superior bagel-to-cream cheese ratio. Glad to see Serious Eats engaging with the form.
posted by honeybee413 at 8:42 PM on January 23, 2022 [8 favorites]

>A good, fresh bagel does not need to be toasted. In fact, it is an insult to the bagel.

The bagel can just go ahead and be insulted, then. If I want a toasted bagel, I don't much care about anyone's opinion on whether it needs to be toasted or not
posted by rifflesby at 8:50 PM on January 23, 2022 [8 favorites]

I was actually expecting the cuts to be radial, with wedge shaped segments glued together by filling — and doesn’t it look like they used a serrated knife for the cuts, considering all the crumbs? When a simple sharp knife would have saved all that and made the slices stronger?
posted by jamjam at 9:07 PM on January 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

with an x-acto knife and some patience, you can slice one bagel into several smaller, concentric bagels


With a lot of patience, you get a Sierpiński bagel with infinite surface area and zero volume.
posted by zompist at 9:12 PM on January 23, 2022 [7 favorites]

One day as a tourist in the MoMA district I got the courage to walk into a random deli and demand a plain bagel with 1/4 lb pastrami on the side. Can't remember if I asked it to be toasted, maybe that was a trick question I avoided. Anyway cream cheese is superflous if you have pastrami grease.
posted by credulous at 9:14 PM on January 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

With a lot of patience, you get a Sierpiński bagel with infinite surface area and zero volume.

wake the mods, cortex would want to join this discussion
posted by Ghidorah at 10:44 PM on January 23, 2022 [6 favorites]

Panera

Formerly known as The St. Louis Bread Company, it should be noted.
posted by wierdo at 10:54 PM on January 23, 2022 [10 favorites]

With that knife and patience and the Axiom of Choice you can get two solid bagels the same volume as the original.
posted by away for regrooving at 11:15 PM on January 23, 2022 [8 favorites]

If you're really patient, you get 2^n bagels.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:46 AM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

mobius bagel, with math

"Get away from that window, and put down those binoculars! How many times have I told you to stop obsessing about that Hart family?"
"But they're putting math into their baked goods again! It's an abomination!"
posted by otherchaz at 3:46 AM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

That was a great article. It was funny and clever and it changed the way I look at a food product I have known since birth.

And this part made me laugh out loud:

And, as I was now disrupting the entire identity of bagels, what else could I do to make the people of the internet really, really angry? This was the question that led to the aha moment I was looking for.

I should—nay, must—put the bagel in an Instant Pot. For science.

I don't think I'm going to follow her down the Instant Pot rabbit hole. But I am definitely going to Hasselback a bagel, if only because, as a dad, I am legally obligated to do one thing a month that makes my kids think I'm crazy.
posted by yankeefog at 3:56 AM on January 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

Huh. Maybe this is an option from Panera/St. Louis Bread/"BreadCo", but I've gotten conventionally sliced bagels from there several times.

(They moved out of the plaza complex where I work, and also pandemic, so I haven't been in quite a while.)
posted by Foosnark at 4:33 AM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

With a lot of patience, you get a Sierpiński bagel with infinite surface area and zero volume.

I am spending a non-trivial amount of time trying to figure out what this would look like, thanks
posted by phooky at 4:44 AM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

doesn’t it look like they used a serrated knife for the cuts, considering all the crumbs?

As mentioned in the article, there have been certain developments in bread slice technology that you should be aware of.

the fine citizens of St. Louis had inadvertently ushered in a new age of bagels by supposing that anything that technically qualifies as bread can be run through a commercial bread slicer.

posted by zamboni at 4:54 AM on January 24, 2022

For decades I have fought against the insanity of the badly prepared bagel. I order a bagel with cream cheese, I want it with cream cheese. Used to go into the local shop (RIP Bagel Fragel E.L.) and order one, that’s how it came - sliced horizontally, cream cheese. Place was great. Inexpensive, good selection, nearly always hot and fresh, giant vat of malted water for the boiling visible through the kitchen door.

Then the chain stores started moving in. Forced my local shop out of business (because the bagels were great but the service was s l o w and the incoming college freshmen only wanted to go to stores they recognized, damn kids).

First I had to start telling people not to toast it. Why is toasting it the default so many places? If I wanted it toasted I’d ask for it that way. Some chains automatically do it and it’s a pain in the ass to catch them and stop them before they toast it… next it was the slice. The chain stores smear on the cream cheese then instantly and without asking cut the bagel in half vertically. Again. If I wanted it in two pieces I would have asked. You can’t un-toast it, you can’t un-slice it. So now instead of getting what I want I have to jump through hoops asking in great detail for the bagel preparer NOT to do X, Y, or Z, and they stare at me like I’m the crazy one, who is this weirdo that doesn’t want his bagel ruined??

(Don’t even get me started on the dope who decided adding lox to a bagel made it a “sandwich”, which means it should include capers and cost $10… goddamn chain stores)
posted by caution live frogs at 5:16 AM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Another native St. Louisan here. Bagels cut like this are usually seen at parties or other gatherings to allow people to more finely tune the amount of bagel they are putting on their plate and avoid bagel wasteage...

St. Louis pizza is an abomination and should be avoided. Toasted Ravioli (more accurately deep-fried breaded ravioli) is the regional food item that should be held high and spread around the country with evangelical fervor.
posted by schyler523 at 5:17 AM on January 24, 2022 [7 favorites]

That croque m'seur looks like an awesome appetizer or snow day indulgence, but not every damn day: I have time for one cut in the morning, not eight-cuts-and-fire-up-the-broiler, fer cryin' out loud.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:44 AM on January 24, 2022

Hi folks,

Another St Louis native here, and a former St Louis Bread Co employee (before 'Panera' bought the brand and flipped its menu to use the Bread Co's original recipies).

Each storefront made a big deal about being an actual bakery where bread-making really actually occurred in the early-early morning hours. Because of this, whole-loaf bread slicing machines were on hand to produce sliced bread for the day's sandwiches.

I'm not sure who first had the idea of running the bagels through the loaf-slicer, but we would occasionally get customers buying a handful of bagels and specifically requesting this.

When I switched from being a kitchen worker to getting an office job, I did this myself a few times. The loaf-sliced wedges are absolutely perfect for sharing in an office setting and I'm genuinely baffled by the fervent resistance to such an innovation. This is, hands down, superior snacking methodology.

I genuinely believe that the heated anger is purely because someone from New York City didn't think of it first. In an alternate timeline, some boutique Brooklyn bakery would have called these "bagletelli" and had 20-somethings lined up around the corner.

PS: Imo's Pizza is great. So is Giordano's. So is floppy New York style. Fight me.
posted by neuracnu at 7:49 AM on January 24, 2022 [13 favorites]

I've never seen this. It sounds great. Bagels are always too big. Way too big. (Even the "little" Montreal ones.) Nobody sober needs to eat that much bread, especially first thing in the morning. I'm not a small or particularly fit person, but cripes! I always hold up the line cutting out 1/4 of a bagel at conferences and throw half of each bagel away in airports. I'm going to do this next chance I get.
posted by eotvos at 7:53 AM on January 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

The word "dip" occurs neither in this thread nor in the article. Interesting...
posted by hyperbolic at 8:42 AM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm not from St. Louis, but my dad was, and his mom was one of six kids and as a result we've discovered over the years that we're related to at least 2/3rds of native-born Jewish St. Louis. So I'm simultaneously intrigued that this is a new St.Louis bagel thing via St. Louis Bread Co / Panera, and also insistent that I would know if this were an Ur-St. Louis bagel thing à la tzizel rye, which is (in my family) the only reason to make a pilgrimage to Saint Louis for holy Jewish bread.

Still seems wrong, though.
posted by Mchelly at 9:05 AM on January 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

First I had to start telling people not to toast it. Why is toasting it the default so many places?

Because the bagels at these places are either not bagels (the ubiquitous “roll with a hole”) or are simply crap bagels. A fresh good bagel certainly doesn’t need it, so I assume that any place that defaults to toasting simply isn’t selling fresh good bagels.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 10:41 AM on January 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

I love Allison Robicelli's writing--I'll miss her regular columns on The Takeout but wish her well on the new path she's taking.

And I agree with neuracnu that vertically sliced bagels are a "superior snacking methodology." You still get the chewy, cruncy outer layer and the soft inner part, but in a finger-food-friendly size and shape.
posted by indexy at 1:17 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'd just like to thank everyone in this thread for not turning this into the "is a hotdog a sandwich?" disaster that I am most definitely not linking to because damn, just thinking about it made my eye twitch come back.
posted by ninazer0 at 2:48 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

There's no controversy if the question is "Would I eat this?"
posted by ovvl at 3:54 PM on January 24, 2022

Kenji on bagel toasting. I don't think he addresses unconventional slicing techniques.
posted by mmascolino at 7:34 PM on January 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

I don't think he addresses unconventional slicing techniques.

I think he does because a bagel cut in half is an unconventional slicing technique, unless you are cutting it in half to share with someone. But cutting one in half to share is also odd. It'd be like cutting a doughnut in half to share. They aren't expensive. Buy two.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:14 AM on January 25, 2022

As a beard-haver, I’m in favor of a vertical center slice (in addition to the normal horizontal one). More varied attack-vectors = less chance of cream cheese in whiskers. I would never ask for it at a shop (or expect it), but it’s definitely what I do when I bring them home and slice/schmear them myself.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 11:07 AM on January 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think he does because a bagel cut in half is an unconventional slicing technique

Aren't most rolls and roll like things slices once horizontally once if they are sliced at all. For the bagel, isn't slicing so that you have a flat surface for the cream cheese and lox (and whatever else you happen to put on a bagel)? Also slicing it would make it easier to eat for someone who is smaller-mouthed.
posted by mmascolino at 5:41 AM on January 26, 2022

a box and a stick and a string and a bear: "As a beard-haver, I’m in favor of a vertical center slice"

See this is weird because I literally have not seen my own chin since 1998, thanks to my now 24-year-old beard... and yet the vertical slice continues to offend me.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:32 AM on January 26, 2022

Of you don't live in NYC, you may have never had a bagel so good that this would apply.

Son … you don’t know me so I’m gonna cut you a break.

I live in Austin, the home of Rockstar Bagels. I have had a bagel so fresh, I had to wait for the baker to finish removing it from the oven. It was delivered into my waiting hands like a sacrament so holy that I felt almost unworthy of receiving it.

I took that bagel home, sliced it open and lovingly toasted both halves to a crisp brown-ness, and covered both halves with a quarter stick of butter each and at least two full tablespoons of cream cheese, each, plain, before I even thought about eating it.

And I would f****** do it again.

Over and over.

Again and again.

The full damn process.

I, personally, do not see a purpose for an untoasted bagel.

It was an everything bagel.

I still remember it.

It was holy.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 9:52 AM on January 26, 2022 [3 favorites]

Eponyblasphemous
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 10:05 AM on January 26, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm not a boy but congrats on missing out on one of the finer things in life I guess.
posted by dame at 1:03 PM on January 28, 2022