Great Bagels…in Olney

After the ER doc pronounced my pitching hand merely bruised and not broken—---this following a nasty dustup with the AP on the softball diamond, where a brawl broke out and I had to clock several journeymen wordsmiths for their complete lack of understanding of the inverted pyramid*—---I decided work was the best medicine on a Saturday afternoon. So I ate my way home from Montgomery General Hospital.

The best stop was my first one, at the Bagel Bakery in Olney, where they make those gut bombs the old-fashioned way: They boil ’em in water, then bake ’em. I ordered my fallback bagel, an everything with cream cheese, and was pleasantly surprised to see that BB doesn't cut corners on ingredients either. The bagel came densely sprinkled with garlic, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, caraway seeds, and salt on both sides of the roll. (For the sake of comparison, check out an everything bagel from Einstein Bros. They put essentially the same ingredients—---though far less of each one—---on the top of the bagel only; the bottom is sprinkled with cornmeal, which is fine, but if you eat the top and bottom separately, the latter becomes something other than an everything bagel.)

The BB bagel was chewy and crusty, and it delivered on that contradiction of great bagels: It was dense and airy at the same time. But more than that, it was topped with liberal amounts of rock salt, thick crystals that not only emphasized the doughiness of the bagel but also tied together all those toppings. This thing was so good it almost made me forget about my throbbing right hand.

* A total fabrication to blot out (blog out?) the ugly truth. I was beaned on my appendage when I apparently tried to stop a line drive with my hand. Thanks go to the AP team for its concern.

[Editor's Note: The pictured bagel isn't from BB.]