Dooley's bagels deliver - on texture, on flavor

Sarah Fritschner

Among the adults at out house, breakfast consists of a bagel with crunchy peanut butter and some sort of sweet spread, usually marmalade.

As you can well imagine, when you eat something every day, you often find yourself depleting your source. Even buying by the dozens, we find ourselves in need of more bagels about every two weeks.

For a long time, our attitude remained democratic. We would buy bagels anywhere - supermarket frozen-food cases and deli racks, health-food stores, specialty bagel shops, muffin bakeries, doughnut shops and all the rest.

And here's what we've learned: Dooley's has the best bagels in town.

Bagels are European in origin, and start life much like any other yeast bread, as a simple combination of flour, salt, water and yeast. Sometimes sugar is added to the basic dough, or oil, or egg.

But not dough enhancers, preservatives and other commercially inspired additives. Some of these additives make bagels puffy and soft, take away all their "chew" and make them more like a dinner roll with a hole in the middle. That's the style of bagel you usually find sold "fresh" in supermarket delis and on the bread shelves. A bagel-loving shopper can only wonder if the supermarkets "just don't get it."

In the frozen-food section, bagel texture improves somewhat, but the bagels are meager and unsatisfying.

Once bagel ingredients have been mixed, allowed to rise and generally treated as thought they are destined to be yeast bread, an important step is inserted. Bagels are formed (either by making ropes and joining them end to end, or by punching a hole in the center of a round), then they are dipped in boiling water for several minutes. Boiling the bagels gives them their characteristic chewy crust, which inferior bagels lack.

Often the water used to boil the bagels has honey or sugar added to it, which (ideally) imparts a little bit of sweetness and allows the bagel to brown beautifully and evenly when baked. Bagels are generally brushed with an egg wash so they get a shiny surface with a little crackliness.

Great bagels, then, have a hearty, satisfying chew to them, a shiny surface and a wonderful, wheaty flavor. Every bite of the bagel resists being eaten, and that's the fun of it. When you've eaten it you know you've eaten.

Dooley's delivers on texture, on flavor, on the feeling of satisfaction. Though we love the Asiago cheese bagels at Panera bakery, the plain, poppy seed and sesame seed bagels from Dooley's provide the base for our peanut butter and jelly mornings.

The other criterion for a great bagel: freshness. When asked how long bagels stay fresh, one expert replied, "Five minutes." Dooley's sells bagels for a reduced price after 3 p.m. - a great way to get a great deal on bagels that you know you're going to freeze anyway (freezing is the best way to keep bagels more than 24 hours).

To oblige, Dooley's gives away freezer bags.

Now we're in search of great peanut butter.

Dooley's headquarters is in Louisville, and thought on of its 12 locations is in New York, most are in the Louisville Area, with forays into Lexington, Bowling Green and soon, Columbus, Ind.