I was never fond of bagels. That didn’t mean, I didn’t eat one when someone offered it to me. Now that I am writing this, I always thought bagels never reached its potential, but it always had a possibility.
No, you are not it, bagels
Every time I bit the hardy bread, I reached the same conclusion: No you are not it, bagels.
Yes, I have tried the plain bagels with salmon cream cheese, the plain bagel with chives cream cheese, the cinnamon raisin bagel with the plain cream cheese, and the everything bagel with plain cream cheese and locks on top. But none of those whet my appetite. When I was going through my sugar detox couple of years ago, I learned few non-nutritional qualities about bagels, and I was glad I never cared for them anyway.
Bagels never made it to my top breakfast list, but that all changed one day when I was visiting Olympia, Washington. There I went to a bakery because my friend was a fan of bagels. My friend ate bagels as much as I ate cereal, countless times.
Maybe bagels are not so bad with some good cream cheese
It was raining hard the day we went. We parked on the side street and ran to the bakery without an umbrella. From the road, the bakery looked like a house, probably, tucked in a sleepy residential neighborhood area. As soon as I ran inside the shop, a waft of smell hit my nose –– the toppings on the bagels, the chives and the smell of fresh bread, and the sweet aromas of a warm bakery. It was a small place that offered a few seats by the window. Luckily a table by the window became available.
The rain came down, hitting on their meek rooftop. We ordered and waited. I tried one of their fresh bagel and their homemade cream cheese. Hmm? Not what I was expecting. Though the bagel and cream cheese have an equal partnership in providing a hard and creamy experience, I never tasted one like that before. It was that day I learned that delicious cream cheese makes a mediocre bagel, reveal its hidden worth. Please, can I have one more bagel and a pint of cream cheese to go, I said ordering at the counter.
Since Olympia, I have become fond of bagels. It is a good thing I allow myself a desert a day after my sugar detox because a good bagel with good cream cheese is like a good dessert.
Too bad Olympia is far away from where I live, which meant that I have had to learn how to make my own cream cheese.
Now that I am hooked on you, bagels
I will attempt my version of the cream cheese.
So I tried to make homemade goat cheese cream cheese one day. It tasted a little zingy, but it was acceptable. Then one day I was assisting with a party. I was debating if I should make homemade cream cheese or bring some store bought cream cheese. Since we wanted a variety for the party, I said why not do both? I‘ll have the goat cream cheese with vegetables and the store bought cream cheese with bagels.
There I stumbled upon what was called a whipped cream cheese. My same friend who was a fan of bagels mentioned a few times about whipped butter before. I thought I would give the store whipped cream cheese a go.
Let me tell you that whipped cream cheese was so good; it came close to reminding me of the cream cheese that the little bakery served.
I know the headline said, a bakery in Olympia changed my mind about bagels. Now, I am really thinking that it should have been, cream cheese in a bakery in Olympia changed my mind about eating bagels.
If you are in Olympia looking for bagels, stop at the San Francisco Street Bakery, and try one or two. At the time we went, they had different flavors of cream cheese: Pesto, garlic chives, walnut and olive, salmon, and plain.
Disappearing bagel