Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

My vote for Fairmount, the best bagel bakery in the world.

Important advice for bagel smugglers: NEVER put hot Fairmount bagels in those plastic bags. Keep them in paper bags until they cool and then transfer to plastic. If you do put hot bagels in plastic, PLEASE do not blog about it. Spare me the anguish.

In a wood-fired brick oven, sesame comes out best, natch. But be sure to try kimmel (caraway seed), too. Never found a kimmel bagel in New York. Only place outside of Montreal I've seen one is at Happening Bagel, the best bagel bakery in London. That's not saying much: I don't even mind much if you put a hot Happening bagel in plastic.

The half-life of a fresh bagel is less than six hours. I am skeptical how a six-day old bagel would taste, or worse yet, one stored in the refrigerator for 10 days.
A fresh bagel that is sliced and immediately frozen, then toasted, is OK, but not as good as a fresh-baked bagel.

I'm definitely on the St-Viateur side of the bagel divide and I miss scarfing down a couple of hot bagels as a treat (!!!) before my morning swim when I lived in Mile End. I hardly eat bagels here in NY/NJ because they're just bread in a doughnut shape. Schwartz's smoked meat is the best!

RawMazing
Twitter: Rawmazing
URL: www.Rawmazing.com
Twitters about: the healthy, tasty world of raw food.Great recipes, pictures and lifestyle information

A generation ago, New York bagels were more like these, although never quite as sweet.

I always thought Montreal bagels were more chewy, not less. In any case, I like them better than NYC-style, though I don't play favourites between Fairmount and St-Viateur.
It's true that Toronto hasn't mastered the bagel yet: even the outpost of St-Viateur somehow doesn't get them right. Ottawa, on the other hand, has a couple decent bagel-makers.

Bouchon For 2 - Mel
Twitter: BouchonFor2
URL: BouchonFor2.com
Twitters about: Beloved Recipes, Delicious Photos, Culinary Misadventures around Vancouver.

oops
Twitter: @christellar

Thank you for participating, and congratulations to our winners:

Louisa
Jilly
leighana
Michael Z
gramvo

Winners have been notified by email and also appear on our Contest Winners page.

my first cookbook was one i got from school...it was with all the students favorite recipes...

it's actually kind of sad. My freshman year of college I worked at the corporate HQ of Fanny Farmer candy shops and for our Xmas bonus we all got a copy of the new Fanny Farmer cookbook ..... so my first cookbook was the Fanny Farmer cookbook.

My first cookbook was Betty Crocker's. It had all the basics and I still own it today.