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I know I am 2 years late on this comment, but I have tried to make this recipe twice and both times got a curdled mess. I have made A LOT of the recipes from The Perfect Scoop with great success. Super bummed.

Now is the time for New Yorkers to save their money by drinking tap water! I just started to give NYC residents a real alternative to buying bottled water when they're on the go. Cafes provide clean water and can be found by using the iphone application or the Tap It web site.

ED LEVINE THOSE ARE MY SENTIMENTS EXACTLY !

Icing with way too much sugar. I'm usually the one scraping icing off of cake at parties.
Banana bread or cooked bananas (plantains don't count). I love bananas though.
Most corporate baked goods; you can taste the lack of love and care in them, and I can't remember ever reaching for carrageenan or sodium benzoate when baking.
Sugar-free anything. Sugar substitutes taste nasty.
Most fruitcakes. I'm bored with them.
Adult-sized slices of chocolate cake. I usually find it too rich to eat in large quantities. I love chocolate, I just prefer it in small doses.
Most donuts, except for cake donuts.
Crunchy cookies. Just not a fan of the texture.

Desserts that make me go meh:
Red velvet cake? I mean, it usually tastes OK (vaguely reminiscent of malted milk, like Wendy's frosties), but I always feel odd eating so much food coloring.
Sock-it-to-me/7-up/insert soda here cake. Common in Southern cooking, and almost always too sweet.

Re: buttercream icing: unless you had it on a homemade cake or cake from a wedding party, it probably wasn't made with real butter. 'Buttercream' icing made from vegetable shortening is pretty disgusting.

I'm surprised so many people here don't like tiramisu, but I've had my share of bad tiramisu. I'll second the cannoli though. Highly overrated and just not that tasty.

I come from Indonesia, where drinking bottled water is a necessity. The water we get is not drinkable, and it has to be boiled first to be able to drink from it. Even then if you can afford it it's better to buy. I dont get why people who have the luxury of being able to drink straight from the tap and dont have to worry about the hygiene of the water, would still buy bottled water when it's so clear that you're being charged just for the fancy packaging. I mean could you really taste the difference between French or Swiss or wherever the water supposedly came from, if it's not written in the label?

I've found that the "boiled then baked" requirement is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a great bagel. I've seen waaaaaaay too many places that claim they boil and bake their bagels that still can't put a good crunch on them.

Also, texture is only half the battle and I think it gets over emphasized because it's easier to discern for most people than flavor. Even in NYC the bagels can be rather flat, even among the oft-recommended luminaries like Ess A Bagel, H&H, and Kossar's.

We hooked up with a amateur Jewish bread baker here in Portland who had been making bagels, rye, challah, and pumperknickel and selling them at the Portland Farmer's Market. He uses a starter and a lot of malt in his recipe which gives it this great aroma and a nice tangy-sweet balance. They're smaller, denser, and crunchier than most of what you get in NY. And honestly, I think their texture is best after a rest of a few hours. They don't lose their crunch even after a day's rest in a paper bag. Oh, and they're all hand-rolled, boiled in malted water, and baked.

We've now got our down-stairs baking and prep kitchen done, so now it's just a matter of seeing if we can translate his old school, artisan technique into a 100 dozen a day.

Ed, email me in a couple weeks and I'll FedEx you a dozen.

It's true what annien says about it being a shondeh re: discussing this topic when the objects of desire are out of reach due to the holidays! I'm pretty sure my LI bagel haunt (Bagel Boss in Plainview) is closed till after Yom Kippur. While I agree with Ed, I have my own bagel ritual. I like a sesame or sourdough bagel (haven't found any good organic bagels...yet...and have no kitchen at the moment to bake my own though I have done non-organic in the past), cut in half, toasted, buttered (organic), schmear of cream cheese (organic) on each half, shredded nova on each side, chopped scallions or onions (organic & local when possible) on each side, and I'm a very happy camper. But I will say...buying warm good bagels late at night & not being able to wait...I'll rip pieces off one of them & scoop into a container of scallion or veg cream cheese purchased at the bagel store. It's all good! My boyfriend thinks I'm nuts but then again, he's a big honkin' wad of cream cheese kinda guy who'd be happy with sushi sized pieces of lox if he'd have the chutzpah (and cash) to ask for it at the counter :) .

I never knew untoasted bagels were so amazing until I moved to New York. As a girl from Ohio, I grew up with frozen Lender's (sorry). The light and crispy exterior and the chewy, almost stretchy, interior of a true bagel...it was an epiphany. The thought of making one into a sandwich is sacrilege -- and I'm a sandwich girl! A decent cream cheese "schmear" eaten open-faced is all you need.

I have to say, I too am curious about the English bagel which sounds delicious. It's funny that this intense bagel topic came up - I was supposed to be in NYC this weekend and we were planning on Murray's Bagels as soon as we got there. I'll just keep dreaming of them...

I agree with you completely and have been eating my bagels according to your rules my entire life. I will not eat just any bagel either. I would rather wait for the right one then waste calories on things that are bagels in name only.

Could only get plain bagels 20 years ago in N. Westchester-Connecticut border. Things have changed. Good bagels now. Stew Leonards has a wonderful, inexpensive bagel (12 for $5) Good bialys, too. NYC bagels are not always what they're cracked up to be and I'm not happy to be spending 90 cents each for them. Costco bakery products are generally pretty good but their bagels.....just horrible! Sped54

Ed, your rules, as printed in the NYTimes, are dead-on. Bagels in this country were ruined first by Bagel Nosh, which introduced the concept that a bagel could be a sandwich bread, and it's been downhill ever since.

When I was a little girl in Michigan in the 1960s, we used to drive 90 miles to Detroit, to get bags and bags of bagels from a great bagel bakery right next to Dexter-Davison's. We'd get them fresh out of the oven, and they'd steam up the windows of our station wagon--and each of us kids got to eat a fresh, warm bagel on the trip home. Those were bagels that knew how to fight back when bitten!

Here in NYC, there are only a few bageliers who get it right, one of them being the late, lamented Columbia Bagels at 110th and B'way. H&H bagels are an abomination.

I like a plain or egg bagel, myself, lightly toasted, with a shmear, a slice of very ripe tomato, and a pile of Nova. That's tastes like Sunday to me!