alt-text
A short video still featuring a woman with blonde hair and a text overlay that reads “Things I prefer in the US as a German” with American and German flag emojis, and further states “I don’t know why we don’t have bagels in Germany.”
Above this, the social media post caption reads “I can think of a reason!” The post is from “Vikram Bath @vikrambath.bsky.social.”
You must log in or register to comment.
And a staple of a New York Classic, the Breakfast Sandwich! New Yorkers might pick fights over how other cities do their pizza and hotdogs, but god help you if you try to take their breakfast egg and bagel.
When a place just tries to microwave the egg to put on their steamed bagel 😠
Eggs in the womb.?
It’s too much bread for a breakfast sandwich. Let the bagel stand on its own.
Good breakfast sandwiches scoop the bagel out.
Correct, the egg sandwich goes on a roll.
A big pile of pastrami and provolone? You better believe it’s going on a bagel. Preferably pumpernickel.
I honestly prefer a good buttermilk biscuit for breakfast sandwiches. If you have a Tudor’s Biscuit World near you go try them out! They are the only good fast food restaurant to work for, as in you get benefits, stock options, and will retire comfortably if you stay with them for 20 years. They also make some absolutely banging giant biscuit sandwiches.
Listen I love bagels. I just want to say that, there’s a reason it’s so popular and done so well by the good people living in NYC.
It’s probably the same reason that bagels are either rare, or kind of suck by comparison in Germany.
Somewhere a German is struggling to formulate a humerous retort.
Going to Russ and Daughters ruined me on other bagels
I love a bagel, but bialys make even better breakfast sandwiches
Bagels come from Poland? They aren’t even a thing here anymore. I never saw one in my life.
I can think of a reason!
I don’t get the joke please explain? Is the joke that bagels are bad? Because I’m German and I love bagels
The joke is that bagel shops are a Jewish food, so most bagel shops are owned and operated by Jews. And Germany did that whole holocaust thing, where they systematically tried to wipe out the Jews.
It’d be a little bit like if a country tried to wipe out Indian people, then went “Hmm why don’t we have any good Indian restaurants?”
Not a great example though, because Britain literally conquered India and we’re full of great Indian restaurants.
Did you systemically persecute Indian business owners in Britain, escalating it to ethnic cleansing?
The analogy is historically exact.
Britain is a cultural kleptomaniac, not remove everyone who isn’t British from their lands and make everything British.
In the US at least, bagels are stereotypically popular among jewish people.
I just want to put it out there that not all begals are equal…
In Southern California we have places like “Einstein’s Begals”. These taste like soggy compressed cardboard.
In New York, however, they have these crispy, amazing circles of heaven. These are life-changing.
you must boil them first, then bake them.
if you just bake them, all you get is a shitty dinner roll. not a bagel.
Yes! This is it exactly.
It’s the water.
You have to put baking soda in the water too, right?
IDK it’s something about NY water that makes them taste better.
I was thinking of pretzels.
No, you have to put 17 million dead micro crustaceans. Orthodox Jews, who will leave the oven running all day so they don’t have to push a button on the sabbath, literally made a religious exception to the shellfish rule so they could eat New York bagels.
We have bagel here, so.
I never saw a reason to get a bagel if I could get better tasting alternatives. However since every bakery get stupid expensive I haven’t bought anything but blank buns there anyways. I’m not going to pay 6€ for some bagel and still be hungry afterwards. Keep it
I don’t hate bagels, but in the end it’s just pretty dry funny shaped bread. I assume americans go crazy for bagels because their normal bread is ass. If you have some good alternatives or you can bake yourself, i don’t really see the point.
I would not describe bagels as “dry.”
it’s just pretty dry funny shaped bread.
Idk what bagels you’ve been eating, but we have clearly had different experiences with bagels.
If your bagel is dry and you can’t distinguish it from normal bread, you’ve never actually had a real bagel.
do you mean dense? I would say bagels are dense. But when talking about bread I could see how dry and dense could be similar.
Yes, I can see how you would not like bagels if you’ve never had a good bagel.
… Every moderately sized grocery store here has bagels.
I don’t know the person in the OP, but I am assuming she is not talking about a pack of bagels you buy from the grocer. I imagine she is talking about the grocer selling packaged bagels in the aisle and having a baked goods section with bagels from a bakery in the same city. And also have one or two bagel places local. And also cafes or similar establishments that rep their bagel game.
I do not know Germany 's bagel game. Just saying being able to buy a thing at the grocer does not mean you have access to the jawn the way others do. For example I can buy sushi at the grocery store near my work.
I do not know Germany 's bagel game
This is simple. If you are not in the US Northeast or Mid-Atlantic, there is a high probability that your bagels are trash.
Did your neighborhood have any national policies with respect to bagel bakers and their ethnic roots?
Disappointment
Delectable
Do you live in Germany?
Ja.
das Bockmist.
Plenty of bagels in Germany…but hey, why not make a meme stirring up a little controversy, right?
I had a friend from Germany say the same thing, didn’t call them out on it but man I laughed later.
Of course we have bagels in Germany. But with a good Baker having one or two dozen variants of rolls anyway, nobody actually needs defect rolls with a hole in the middle.
I would never consider a bagel as a roll. I’m not sure what I would call it except excellent. But it isn’t a roll with a hole in the middle. I’m legitimately sorry if that has been your bagel experience.
Rolls are good, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a certain density to bagels that most rolls don’t have any business trying to imitate.
It’s just a different type of bread product entirely.
If people prefer rolls, that’s cool. Eat what you like, but nobody should be going around saying that rolls are universally better than bagels. They’re different, sometimes you feel like eating a while loaf of bread in one handheld package and bagels are there for you.
Don’t judge me.
Tell me you’ve never had a decent bagel without telling me you’ve never had a decent bagel. A bagel is not a roll.
I never said either was better, just different.
Maybe bagels are better than American rolls, but that is not exactly aiming high. Have you ever tried German rolls? Because after that, you won’t touch bagels anymore, unless you go back to the US. And yes, I’ve had them all, and I don’t understand how you can stand those squishy, HFCS-loaded things.
You’re either responding to the wrong comment. Can’t read. Or you think straw man arguments are valid.
I never said either was better, just that’s it’s foolish to confuse or compare the two.
deleted by creator
Another European here. Might be because I’m into baking but I don’t think a bagel should be classified as a roll. Bagels are boiled in water prior to baking which gives them a rather unique texture compared to rolls.
Sadly most commercially available “bagels” are not actually produced in this way.
deleted by creator
The order of superiority goes like this:
American bagels > German rolls > German bagels > American rolls
The America bagel is definitely at the wrong end. It is better than American rolls, but that’s it.
Thinly veiling eugenic beliefs behind a topological proclaimation.
What?
Delusions
We don’t? I am eating Aldi bagels right now, lol.
They might not be as widespread, or as good as in New York, especially when it comes to the fast food, but you can absolutely get them in almost every supermarket.
Well no wonder she can’t find any bagels
For those that haven’t tried them, and don’t fancy going to NYC or Montreal for the “authentic bagel experience”, try making your own and you’ll see the huge difference between what you get in supermarkets (even good ones with good bakeries like Lidl) and a proper bagel. While there’s a few steps, it’s not hard to make.
But for the yanks, you should absolutely try German bakeries. I can understand why even good bagels aren’t a priority for them…
As an Australian living in Germany for over a decade I’m still not that impressed with German bakeries. The pretzels are awesome and the bread is fine but the sandwiches are lame. They’re like mostly bread and never more than 1 or 2 toppings. A German once told me it’s because the point of the sandwich is the bread and if there are too many toppings you won’t taste the bread 😅
Germans love their bread so much but I think it’s just because that’s what they grew up with, I don’t think it’s objectively as good as they think it is
I recently, as a lifelong montrealer, spent a few days in Manhattan and tried the bagels. Montreal bagels have this kind of faint aroma you get from the honey in the dough that I just didn’t find in New York bagels, the flavor of the new York bagels was much closer to bread but the texture was great. Also, maybe a New Yorker could answer this, but were they always so big with almost no hole or is that a development from them being used for sandwiches?
I read they use a malt syrup in NY instead of honey when they boil them, I’ve always wanted to try making them that way.
The recipes I’ve followed ask for some malt extract in the boiling water. There’s a definite difference in taste and texture, and while I recommend it, most places that sell the extract sell huge jars of it, so you’ll want to make a lot of bagels to get it used up…
Ah! That goes to show how our local experience shapes our definition of things. Is the malt syrup or honey more traditional (I’m guessing honey but you never know)?
I never had a bagel on my trips to Britain but, at least when my dad was growing up in the 30s and 40s (and an adult there in the 50s), he said British bagels tasted somewhat different from American ones and had a very different texture.
you’ll see the huge difference between what you get in supermarkets (even good ones with good bakeries like Lidl) and a proper bagel.
I believe in large part this is because traditionally a bagel ought to be boiled in water and then baked in an oven. But to save labor costs, mass-produced bagels are often baked in a steam oven which doesn’t quite give the same chewy texture.
Another factor is, they will generally partly bake them in the factory, then freeze them and ship them off to your supermarket which finishes them off before putting it on the shelf.
Well see there’s was this whole thing back in the 1930s-40s…
Big Hunk candy bars?
1992 called. They want their mic back.
Bagel privileges revoked!
No bagels for you!
Who needs bagels when you can have pretzels?
Why have abs when we can have kebabs?
Who needs bagels when you can have better bread rolls for the same price without a hole
