The decline in the number of local bakeries seems to have been balanced by the increase in supermarket wannabes. The issue is that the stuff is mass-produced in large batches at a central location. Cheaper ingredients are used, and the chocolate chip cookie tastes a lot like its shelf neighbor, the oatmeal one.
The mass-produced supermarket variety may have started out as an alternative to the commercial stuff on the shelves from companies far away. And when they first arrived, I think the draw was that it was fresher and more local. But making the products so bland and indistinguishable narrowed the appeal gap to the point where I often buy the name brand instead.
As a result, I am done with the supermarket bakery products, unless I am certain that they are made in that specific market.
Bagels!
But specific comfort foods? Like many former New Yorkers, I could lecture on the properties of a good poppyseed bagel. But outside of the perimeter of about a hundred miles of the City, it can be hard to find a good one. No, don’t provoke me. I’d get the lectern out, turn lector, and pontificate on the good, bad, and ugly from places that sell what I call rubber bagels. And that includes supermarket bakery imitations. I didn’t know why a good bagel was so hard to find in stores until a friend pierced the veil of ignorance for me. Many are uneducated about what makes a bagel so good. The rubber bagel is fine if you have nothing to compare it to. Eureka!
Where I live, there is Joe and Athena’s Daily Bagel Cafe, which produces authentic products. It is an outpost of civilization in an otherwise barbaric culinary desert, bagel-wise. Thank you, Lord!!
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Years ago, we had one really good independent bagel place open up here. Sadly, it didn’t last long. Now we have a local baker, but the bagels still are nothing like the bagels we got up north.
Panera? Dave’s Killer Bagels? No. And no.
I agree, You can get good bagels in Jersey and New York, some in Philly. But those that you mentioned…rubber bagels, at best.
I would love a sesame seed bagel with chive cream cheese as I used to get at Bagel Nosh. I don’t know if it was an objectively good bagel, but my east coast Jewish friends were happy with it. I think the best bagel-like thing was a (soft) pretzel in Switzerland with lachs and cream cheese.
Oooowwww, don’t get me started on soft pretzels!!!! Next to bagels they are the best!
Nothing like fresh baked good from a neighborhood bakery.
yeah, you can’t get decent bagels in the UK. Certainly not in the supermarkets.
They don’t want to go throught the boiling part of the process, so they are just baked.
Bagels in Alaska are store bought. Not even any of the bakers make them fresh. I miss bagels- real ones!
It’s a real deprivation not to have any access at all, that’s awful!