At first, I tried running my experiments with a dozen or so bagels from Beauty’s, a Montreal-style shop in Oakland that makes some of the finest bagels in the country. However, I quickly discovered that Montreal-style bagels, with their thinner figure and denser crumb, are not representative of the standard bagel, and that for a true test, I’d need to get my hands on some honest-to-goodness New York bagels.
I made a quick call back to Serious Eats World Headquarters in New York and asked Ed Levine to pick up a half dozen mixed bagels from Absolute near his apartment on the Upper West Side and send them to me. One night and $78 later, I had them in my hand, ready for testing. For the next couple of days, I reheated those bagels, as well as the bagels from Beauty’s, using a half dozen different methods, ranging from the microwave to the toaster to the broiler to the oven to a skillet. Here are the most effective methods.
