To many people, the bagel is the king of breakfast. It’s like an evolution of toast, similar, yet greatly superior. And the best of those who love the bagel bow down to the salt bagel, the king of all bagels. It adds a perfect amount of flavor that goes great with cream cheese, especially strawberry cream cheese. But why strawberry cream cheese? Well, combining the sweet of the cream cheese with the salt of the bagel creates a perfect balance unparalleled by any other food in the world. Ever.
But is the salt bagel perfect? No, far from it. While bagels are delicious, they have one major flaw. That flaw is obvious to anyone who has ever attempted to shmear cream cheese across the surface of the bagel. The hole. This hole sucks up perfectly good cream cheese, rendering the bagel an imperfect medium for shmearing. Enter the Salt Stick. The Salt Stick is the salt bagel perfected. It is little more than an unrolled salt bagel, but that unraveling opens up a world of delight. The Salt Stick can be cut open, toasted and shmeared perfectly without concern over loss of cream cheese. Alternatively, it can be easily dipped into cream cheese, saving the lucky consumer from the effort of shmearing in the first place.
But where can you find the Salt Stick? Certainly not in LA. In fact, for a city with such a huge Jewish population, there is a surprising lack of good bagels at all. Few things bother me more than cutting open a bagel and discovering massive air pockets and a doughy interior. Bagels were not meant to be this way. Bagels are meant to be dense and not just a glorified English Muffin with a hole. To the best of my knowledge, the Salt Stick hardly exists beyond the borders of the Detroit area in Michigan. Local bagel places like Detroit Bagel and New York Bagel are always stocked with Salt Sticks. It is there that the Salt Stick flourishes, waiting for an opportunity to shmear its perfection across all the land. And it is there that I have to return to consume the Salt Stick.
I try to restrain myself from more than two salt bagels a week. By far the best bagel out there.
Hey Blog Friend Forever and Salt Bagel Alliance Founder! Great post, but now all I want is a Salt Stick. I’ll have to get my salt fix from Noah’s lox sandwiches on salt bagels and Auntie Anne’s pretzels!
Interesting, I have never heard of a “salt stick” but I live in Europe so bagels are a novelty and when available = just awful! I will keep my eye out for one of these things when I am next in the US.
I grew up in the Bronx, where my father would go to the Jewish bakery nearby every Sunday morning to bring back rolls and a salt stick for me. I was just in Vienna and behold… salt sticks are regular offerings in every bakery!
What?! I need to move to Vienna apparently, because salt sticks are one of the greatest edible items ever created.
Hi again. I was just thinking again about saltsticks and Vienna. Yes, I’ve missed them too all of my adult life, and I thought that no one but me remembered them! I was thrilled when one appeared in the basket of rolls placed on my table on my first visit to a Vienna coffeehouse.
Here’s a link to a photo of one from a bakery chain in Vienna:
http://www.stroeck.at/produkte/detail/salzstangerl?page=59&filter=
I had one of these which looked a little too long and wasn’t quite as good as the one in the coffeehouse, but good nonetheless. Anyway, Now I know the German name, salzstangerl, and if you Google that you’ll find lots of links!
Looks quite tasty, I’m guessing the salt stick arose from some sort of fusion between Jewish bagels and the German salzstangerl. Whatever the case, I can’t wait to get my hands on one next time I can!
I grew up on Chicago’s south side in the 60’s and remember a bakery that made a roll they called salt sticks. It was topped with salt and caraway seeds. Had never heard of it since. Might have to take a road trip to Detroit to try it again.