Bagels, bagels, bagels!

Got four flavors of gourmet bagels yesterday, in the mail.

The flavors delighted me. I was all too pleased to try them. Being Jewish, I've discovered many a bagel in my life. They were a traditional staple of our household in Sunday mornings, and made all sorts of good recipes. Many was the day where I'd come home to look in the freezer, only to find that paper bag stuffed full of bagels.

These four flavors of bagels were no less than the ones we had, some slightly less kosher, though. My sampler pack, from Eleanor, also known as eeka13 on etsy, had a vegan apple cinnamon, a garlic, onion, and the crown glory, a bacon cinnamon bagel.

The bagels came wrapped neatly in wax paper, which I highly appreciated because there's nothing worse than biting into something and finding that whatever it's been mixed with in the packaging has contaminated its flavor. Each was labeled so I could easily seek the bagel I so desired.

The first bagel I tried was the vegan apple and cinnamon. To be quite honest, I wasn't as excited about this bagel than the others, for good reason. I mean, someone managed to put bacon in a bagel. But I popped it in the oven and got on with it.

The funny thing is, it was much better than I had originally assumed! There was an apple glaze on top, and the bagel was delightfully infused with lots of cinnamon flavor. If this was vegan, I wouldn't have guessed. The cell wall definition was great, many tiny bubbles infused in it, with only the smallest of yeast-like tastes to it. Overall, this was a really great bagel for vegans and non-vegans.

7/10- DELICIOUS

The next bagel I tried was the onion bagel, with pieces of purple onion on top. It was attractive, all the bagels were. They are chubby for miniature bagels and have a pretty wash on top to make them shiny.

The onion bagel smelled like onion, but when sliced, the taste had not much onion at all. The top half had it, but not so much the bottom, and I think that was only because the top had the pieces of onion on it to begin with. It wasn't as bubbly with the cell wall, and had a crumblier texture than the others. I wasn't too impressed.

4/10- ALL RIGHT

The garlic bagel was another one that I didn't expect to be as good as the others, but one that completely blew me away. Slicing into it, it had a mild scent of garlic, with a nice texture and softness to the inner bread. When I toasted and ate it with butter, it was like eating garlic bread from a restaurant. It toasted perfectly, with an outer shell for a good, crunchy crust, and a delicious inner fluffiness that was almost infused with garlic flavor.

This bagel was also great with cream cheese.

9/10- AMAZING
The last bagel was the cinnamon and bacon bagel. This was a monstrous bagel, even for a miniature. If this bagel was a horse, it would be a slightly obese Shetland pony. Anyhow, the taste. Unfortunately, this bagel was a little more crumbly than the garlic, the standard by which all bagels are now judged, but toasted up nicely.

Topped with a little bit of butter, this was not a bad bagel at all. I just wasn't as impressed with the flavor as with the garlic. There wasn't as much cinnamon as in the vegan bagel, and the pieces of bacon were present, but not as flavorful. I really wished that this had more flavor to it.

6/10- GOOD

eeka13.etsy.com
AWESOME BAGELS.