Regular loaves of bread have pre-slicing technology figured out, so what is it with bagels and English muffins?

GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.social to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 63 points –
39

A properly-sliced bagel would be the best thing since sliced bread.

by properly sliced, I assume you mean like this:

you monster, you.

Lmao legit thought this was sliced chicken breast šŸ˜…

this is because you are a normal person. not a bagel-defiling monster.

Idk man, arenā€™t bagels just failed donuts? šŸ˜†

Nope. not at all. I mean, yes, they have the same amount (or sometimes even more,) calories, but, like, totally different. Also, I discovered it's super easy to troll colleagues at work. (I may have brought in lots of bagels and left 2/3's of one bread sliced on a plate.)(They had it coming... they drank all the coffee.)

Lol. Grew up an hour from St Louis and I still don't know how people prefer sliced bagels like those. I like to butter my bagels or some other schmear. I don't want to eat a dry bagel and I also don't want to walk around with a dip

I mean, I just assume that it was something that Panera or whoever did to give out samples, which is an entirely reasonable form of sacrilegeā€¦. And that one idiot made it go viral.

In Germany, English muffins are pre-sliced 90% of the way.

That said: Fresh cut bread tastes better anyway.

I donā€™t want my English muffins sliced at all, personally, and I agree about freshly sliced breadā€¦

ā€¦butā€¦

In the US, pre-sliced bagels are the worst. Theyā€™re the fucking worst! In a package of 6 bagels, at least 4 will not be sliced in the middle, so you get one ā€œhalfā€ with 75% of the bagel, and the other ā€œhalfā€ just disintegrates. Of the ones that are sliced in the middle, they leave a line of uncut area for godknowswhy and trying to tear it apart usually fucks up one of the halves.

One shouldnā€™t have to pull out a sharp knife to open a pre-sliced bagel!

And donā€™t even get me started on toasters with a bagel functionā€¦

You don't "open" a bagel like a pop can, that's why they're ripping.

You "twist" it like a bottle, and it should split evenly 99% of the time.

The middle being connected is so you don't just have a bag of bagel halves.

I get that, but itā€™s executed poorly. If only 20-30% of the time theyā€™re cut properly to do the twist move, itā€™s still a failure. Iā€™d rather have a bag of disconnected bagel halves or have to cut them myself than the BS currently available in my local market.

I mean, I honestly can't remember buying bagels at the store and ever having one that isn't connected still.

Not that I eat a crazy amount of bagels tho.

You need a bagel stabber like this one Just insert bagel and stab, no more worries. Oh and buy real bakery bagels not grocery store ones.

This is because they know if you are buying a bag of pre-sliced bagels you donā€™t care about quality and they figure they can just phone it in.

In much of the USA, bags of pre-sliced bagels are the only kind available. If you are not in a large urban center, that is all you likely have access to.

Iā€™m gonna have to disagree with you on that one, bud.

I have been to places where the only reasonably close food is a piggly wiggly or a dollar general and thatā€™s it, but most towns over ~35,000 people have some sort of grocery store with a bakery department. The vast majority of the US population lives less than 20 minutes drive from such a town.

Iā€™d also argue that if you donā€™t live near a decent grocery store you have likely accepted a lack of amenities and would make your own bagels if thatā€™s something you really cared about.

Wait, what's wrong with toasters that have a bagel function? It's way better than toasters that don't. Only toasting the open faced side of the bagel means you are still able to touch the outside without burning your fingers while the inside is actually toasted enough to be crispy. Without the bagel setting on a toaster, the only other option you have is a toaster oven or doing it by stove top. Toaster is way more convenient than either of those.

Unless you mean cheap toasters that have a poorly implemented bagel option, rather than full separate control of all heating elements. But you didn't specify cheap toasters. A good toaster is pretty important, so don't buy it at wal-mart, and don't get a cheap one from a proper store either. A top of the line toaster is a pretty cheap luxury, spoil yourself in an affordable way.

Iā€™ve only seen one toaster properly implement the bagel function properly, and it was $200. Every other toaster up to $130 that Iā€™ve tried has failed miserably, often toasting the outside more than the inside. They all aim to ā€œwarmā€ the outside and end up toasting it at least a little.

often toasting the outside more than the inside

So, unless I'm mistaking your meaning that's where I'd flip each bagel half 180 degrees before putting it in the toaster so the inside half faces the "more toasty" side of the toaster's heating elements...unless I'm completely misunderstanding you?

flipā€¦180 degrees

I tried that as well, but it didnā€™t work, I think the bagels were too thick to have it work properly. It just comes down to bad design, imho.

HolyfuckingshitthemostIwouldspendistwentydollarsonafuckingtoaster. inhale

A lot of those were in the break room at my job.

Idk about other countries but you can buy pre sliced bagels in the uk

It's not that they're not "pre-sliced" it's that they're pre-sliced poorly. Either they're still connected in the middle and trying to cleanly pull them apart is frustratingly rare or they're sliced unevenly resulting in a 80/20 bagel experience. All too often it can be both.

First job was panera bread many moons ago. The bagel slicer is essentially a chute with a saw blade. Sometimes an oblong bagel would slice badly, or the blade would come loose, resulting in poor performance.

The technology exists, and certainly could be improved, but that costs money and god forbid innovation eat into profits šŸ„Æ

I once ate at a residence hall cafeteria where they had these fuckin bagel guillotines that you basically positiones your bagel in as if it was the head of a hapless French aristocrat and you could be all like vive le revoluciĆ³n and chop those fuckers. But they'd all seen so many bagels without sharpening that they required great strength to slice through a chewy bagel. In fact they probably slowed down the process.

The moral of the story is that bagels are hard to slice on a large scale.

The same with, as we call them here, regular muffins.

While you were dicking around with sliced loaves, we were studying the blade.

Now we can slice our own bakery products.

We used to get a brand of bagels here that were fully pre-sliced because they were in the same style of bag as a loaf of bread. So being fully sliced wasn't a problem, they weren't gonna shuffle around in that bag. Not sure why they aren't all like that. Also despite being fully sliced, they did still stick together a little bit while fresh. But it was only their humidity holding them together, once they got a bit stale the halves fell apart from eachother.

But yeah, not sure why that is so rare, I can't think of a downside to it that other manufacturers are trying to avoid. Maybe different types of bagels need different solutions? The ones we used to get were cinnamon raisin.

Bay's English muffins are superior to others and are perfectly presliced.

Muffins shouldn't be neatly sliced. Make the internal surface as rough as possible to hold more melted butter.