One of America's Favorites - Bagel and Cream Cheese

A bagel with cream cheese

A bagel and cream cheese (also known as bagel with cream cheese) is a common food pairing in American cuisine, the cuisine of New York City, and American Jewish cuisine, consisting in its basic form of an open-faced sandwich made of a bagel spread with cream cheese. The bagel is typically sliced into two pieces, and can be served as-is or toasted. The basic bagel with cream cheese serves as the base for other sandwiches such as the "lox and schmear", a staple of delicatessens in the New York area, and across the U.S.






A bagel with cream cheese is common in American cuisine and the cuisine of New York City. In the United States, the bagel and cream cheese is often eaten for breakfast, and with smoked salmon is sometimes served for brunch. In New York City circa 1900, a popular combination consisted of a bagel topped with lox, cream cheese, capers, tomato, and red onion.

The combination of a bagel with cream cheese has been promoted to American consumers in the past by American food manufacturers and publishers. In the early 1950s, Kraft Foods launched an "aggressive advertising campaign" that depicted Philadelphia-brand cream cheese with bagels. In 1977, Better Homes and Family Circle magazines published a bagel and cream cheese recipe booklet that was distributed in the magazines and also placed in supermarket dairy cases.

In American Jewish cuisine, a bagel and cream cheese is sometimes called a "whole schmear" or "whole schmeer", indicating a bagel with cream cheese. A "slab" is a bagel served with a slab of cream cheese atop it. A "lox and a schmear" refers to a bagel with cream cheese and lox or smoked salmon. Tomato, red onion, capers and chopped hard-boiled egg are additional ingredients that are sometimes used on the lox and schmear. All of these terms are used at some delicatessens in New York City, particularly at Jewish delicatessens and older, more traditional delicatessens.

The lox and schmear likely originated in New York City around the time of the turn of the 20th

A "lox and a schmear" refers to a sliced bagel with cream cheese... 

century, when street vendors in the city sold salt-cured belly lox from pushcarts. A high amount of salt in the fish necessitated the addition of bread and cheese to reduce the lox's saltiness. It was reported by U.S. newspapers in the early 1940s that bagels and lox were sold by delicatessens in New York City as a "Sunday morning treat", and in the early 1950s, bagels and cream cheese combination were very popular in the United States, having permeated American culture.

Both bagels and cream cheese are mass-produced foods in the United States. Additionally, in January 2003, Kraft Foods began purveying a mass-produced convenience food product named Philadelphia To Go Bagel & Cream Cheese, which consisted of a combined package of two bagels and cream cheese.

Breakfast Sandwich Recipes

From the EatingWell website and Magazine its Breakfast Sandwich Recipes. Always one of my favorite ways to start the day, a Breakfast Sandwich! Delicious and Healthy Breakfast Sandwich Recipes like; Green Eggs and Ham Bagel Breakfast Sandwich, Spinach and Egg Sweet Potato Toast, and Strawberry-Ricotta Waffle Sandwich. Find these and more all at the EatingWell website. Enjoy and Eat Healthy in 23018!  http://www.eatingwell.com/

Breakfast Sandwich Recipes

Find healthy, delicious breakfast sandwich recipes, from the food and nutrition experts at EatingWell.


Green Eggs and Ham Bagel Breakfast Sandwich
This healthy bagel breakfast-sandwich recipe, with layers of ham, Swiss cheese, egg and spinach, is ready in just 5 minutes and can be wrapped up to eat on the go.......


Spinach and Egg Sweet Potato Toast
Skip the gluten and get some vitamin C with this healthy sweet potato toast recipe. Topped with spinach, egg and a dash of hot sauce, it's a delicious alternative to eggs Benedict.....


Strawberry-Ricotta Waffle Sandwich
Here's a sweet spin on a healthy breakfast-sandwich recipe. Other seasonal fruit, such as blueberries or sliced peaches, would be tasty toppers too.........



* Click the link below to get all the Breakfast Sandwich Recipes
http://www.eatingwell.com/search/results/?wt=Breakfast%20Sandwich%20Recipes&sort=re

Kitchen Hint of the Day!

Make your own Bread Crumb toppings......


Save all kinds of leftover bagels, bread loaves, rolls, crackers, biscuits, and make them into bread crumbs in a food processor. Then you can freeze them in self-sealing plastic bags or containers and use for stuffings and toppings later.

The Sunday Pizza - Beef Pizza Bagels

From the CooksRecipes website it's this week's The Sunday Pizza - Beef Pizza Bagels. Easy to prepare with just 5 ingredients; 4 plain bagels (halved), 1/2 pound cooked lean ground beef, 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, and 1/2 cup pizza or spaghetti sauce. You can find this recipe along with all their other great recipe selection on the CooksRecipes website!     http://www.cooksrecipes.com/index.html

Beef Pizza Bagels

Kids will love these ground beef and cheese pizza bagels.

Recipe Ingredients:

4 plain bagels, halved
1/2 pound cooked, lean ground beef
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup pizza or spaghetti sauce

Make These Great Holiday Brunch Recipes
Cooking Directions:

1 - Spread top of each bagel half with 1 tablespoon sauce. Top with approximately 3 tablespoons cooked ground beef. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon cheese.
2 - Place bagels on cookie sheet sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.
3 - Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted and bagel is golden brown. (Or, place bagel in 400°F (205°C) toaster oven for 10 minutes.)
Makes 4 servings.

Tip: Especially for the kids - Ask mom or dad to cook an extra pound of lean ground beef ahead of time. After drippings are poured off, separate the ground beef into four plastic baggies and keep in the freezer. These can be taken out of the freezer, reheated in the microwave, and used in this recipe for a short cut.

http://www.cooksrecipes.com/appetizer/beef_pizza_bagels_recipe.html

One of America's Favorites - Cream Cheese

Cream Cheese

Cream cheese is a soft, mild-tasting cheese with a high fat content. Stabilizers such as carob bean gum and carrageenan are added.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines the dairy product as containing at least 33% milk fat (as marketed) with a moisture content of not more than 55%, and a pH range of 4.4 to 4.9. In other countries, it is defined differently and may need a considerably higher fat content.

Cream cheese is not naturally matured and is meant to be consumed fresh, and so it differs from other soft cheeses such as Brie and Neufchâtel. It is more comparable in taste, texture and production methods to Boursin and Mascarpone.








Early prototypes of cream cheese were referenced in England as early as 1583 and in France as early as 1651. Recipes are recorded soon after 1754, particularly from Lincolnshire and the southwest of England.








In the United States - Recipes for the making of cream cheese can be found in US cookbooks and newspapers beginning in the mid-eighteenth century. By the second decade of the 19th century, Philadelphia and its environs had gained a reputation for this cheese. The cheese, however, was produced on family farms and so quantities for distribution were small. Around 1873, William A. Lawrence, a Chester, NY, dairyman, was the first to mass-produce cream cheese. In 1873 he purchased a Neufchatel factory and shortly thereafter, by adding cream to the process, was able to create a richer cheese, that he called “cream cheese”. In 1877 he created the first brand for cream cheese: the silhouette of a cow followed by the words: Neufchatel & Cream Cheese. In 1879, in order to create a larger factory, Lawrence partnered with a Chester merchant, Samuel S Durland. In 1880, Alvah L Reynolds, a New York cheese distributor, began to sell the cheese of Lawrence & Durland and created a brand name for it: Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Reynolds chose the name based on the reputation Philadelphia had for such cheese. By the end of 1880, faced with increasing demand for his Philadelphia brand, Reynolds turned to Charles Green, a second Chester dairyman, who, by 1880, had been manufacturing cream cheese. Some of Green’s cheese was, now, also sold under the Philadelphia label. In 1892, Reynolds bought the Empire Cheese Co. of South Edmeston, NY to produce cheese under his Philadelphia label.

When that burned down in 1900, he turned, the following year, to the newly formed Phenix Cheese Co. to produce his cheese. In 1903, Reynolds sold the rights to his Philadelphia brand to Phenix (which merged with Kraft in 1928). By the early 1880s, in addition to Philadelphia brand, was Star, a second cream cheese brand of Lawrence & Durland, and Green’s World and Globe brands. At the turn of the 19th century, New York dairymen were producing cream cheese for a number of other brands: Double Cream (C. Percival); Eagle (F.X. Baumert); Empire (Phenix Cheese Co.); Mohican (International Cheese Co.); Monroe Cheese Co. (Gross & Hoffman); and Nabob (F.H. Legget).

Cream cheese on a bagel

Cream cheese is often spread on bread, bagels, crackers, etc., and used as a dip for potato chips and similar snack items, and in salads. It can be mixed with other ingredients to make spreads, such as yogurt-cream spread (1.25 parts cream cheese, 1 part yogurt, whipped).

Cream cheese can be used for many purposes in sweet and savoury cookery, and is in the same family of ingredients as other milk products, such as cream, milk, butter, and yogurt. It can be used in cooking to make cheesecake and to thicken sauces and make them creamy. Cream cheese is sometimes used in place of or with butter (typically two parts cream cheese to one part butter) when making cakes or cookies, and cream cheese frosting. It is the main ingredient in crab rangoon, an appetizer commonly served at US Chinese restaurants. It can also be used instead of butter or olive oil in mashed potatoes. It is also commonly used in some western-style sushi rolls.

American cream cheese tends to have lower fat content than elsewhere, but "Philadelphia" branded cheese is sometimes suggested as a substitute for petit suisse.








Cream cheese is easy to make at home, and many methods and recipes are used. Consistent, reliable, commercial manufacture is more difficult. Normally, protein molecules in milk have a negative surface charge, which keeps milk in a liquid state; the molecules act as surfactants, forming micelles around the particles of fat and keeping them in emulsion. Lactic acid bacteria are added to pasteurized and homogenized milk. During the fermentation at around 22 °C (72 °F),[citation needed] the pH of the milk decreases (it becomes more acidic). Amino acids at the surface of the proteins begin losing charge and become neutral, turning the fat micelles from hydrophilic to hydrophobic state and causing the liquid to coagulate. If the bacteria are left in the milk too long, the pH lowers further, the micelles attain a positive charge and the mixture returns to liquid form. The key, then, is to kill the bacteria by heating the mixture to 52–63 °C (126–145 °F)[citation needed] at the moment the cheese is at the isoelectric point, meaning the state at which half the ionizable surface amino acids of the proteins are positively charged and half are negative.

Inaccurate timing of the heating can produce inferior or unsalable cheese due to variations in flavor and texture. Cream cheese has a higher fat content than other cheeses, and fat repels water, which tends to separate from the cheese; this can be avoided in commercial production by adding stabilizers such as guar or carob gums to prolong its shelf life.

In Spain and Mexico, cream cheese is sometimes called by the generic name queso filadelfia, following the marketing of Philadelphia branded cream cheese by Kraft Foods.

Seafood of the Week - Lox

Lox on bagel

Lox is a fillet of brined salmon. Traditionally, lox is served on a bagel with cream cheese, and is usually garnished with tomato, sliced red onion, and sometimes capers, which diners may or may not opt to add to the bagel. Some American preparations of scrambled eggs or frittata include a mince of lox and onion.

Lox and cream cheese sandwich

* Nova or Nova Scotia salmon, sometimes called Nova lox, is cured with a milder brine and then cold-smoked. The name dates from a time when much of the salmon in New York City came from Nova Scotia. Today, however, the name refers to the milder brining, as compared to regular lox (or belly lox), and the fish may come from other waters or even be raised on farms.
* Scotch or Scottish-style salmon. A mixture of salt and sometimes sugars, spices, and other flavorings is applied directly to the meat of the fish; this is called "dry-brining" or "Scottish-style." The brine mixture is then rinsed off, and the fish is cold-smoked.
* Nordic-style smoked salmon. The fish is salt-cured and cold-smoked.
* Gravad lax or gravlax. This is a traditional Nordic means of preparing salmon. The salmon is coated with a spice mixture, which often includes dill, sugars, salt, and spices like juniper berry. It is often served with a sweet mustard-dill sauce.
Other similar brined and smoked fish products are also popular in delis and fish stores, particularly in Chicago & the New York City boroughs, such as chubs, Sable (smoked cod), smoked sturgeon, smoked whitefish, and kippered herring.

One of America's Favorites - Bagels

A bagel (also spelled beigel) is a bread product, traditionally shaped by hand into the form of a ring from

A plain commercially produced bagel

yeasted wheat dough, roughly hand-sized, which is first boiled for a short time in water and then baked. The result is a dense, chewy, doughy interior with a browned and sometimes crisp exterior. Bagels are often topped with seeds baked on the outer crust, with the traditional ones being poppy or sesame seeds. Some also may have salt sprinkled on their surface, and there are also a number of different dough types such as whole-grain or rye.
Bagels have become a popular bread product in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, especially in cities with large Jewish populations, many with different ways of making bagels. Like other bakery products, bagels are available (either fresh or frozen, and often in many flavor varieties) in many major supermarkets in those countries.
The basic roll-with-a-hole design is hundreds of years old and has other practical advantages besides providing for a more even cooking and baking of the dough: the hole could be used to thread string or dowels through groups of bagels, allowing for easier handling and transportation and more appealing seller displays.





Contrary to some beliefs, the bagel was not created in the shape of a stirrup to commemorate the victory of Poland's King Jan III Sobieski over the Ottoman Turks in the Battle of Vienna in 1683. It was actually invented much earlier in Kraków, Poland, as a competitor to the obwarzanek, a lean bread of wheat flour designed for Lent. Leo Rosten wrote in "The Joys of Yiddish" about the first known mention of the word bajgiel in the "Community Regulations" of the city of Kraków in 1610, which stated that the item was given as a gift to women in childbirth.
In the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries, the bajgiel became a staple of the Polish national diet, and a staple of the Slavic diet generally. That the name originated from beugal (old spelling of Bügel, meaning bail/bow or bale) is considered plausible by many[who?], both from the similarities of the word and because traditional handmade bagels are not perfectly circular but rather slightly stirrup-shaped. (This, however, may be due to the way the boiled bagels are pressed together on the baking sheet before baking.)
Additionally, variants of the word beugal are used in Yiddish and Austrian German to refer to a somewhat similar form of sweet filled pastry (Mohnbeugel (with poppy seeds) and Nussbeugel (with ground nuts)), or in southern German dialects (where beuge refers to a pile, e.g., holzbeuge, or woodpile). According to the Merriam-Webster's dictionary, 'bagel' derives from the transliteration of the Yiddish 'beygl', which came from the Middle High German 'böugel' or ring, which itself came from 'bouc' (ring) in Old High German, similar to the Old English 'bēag' '(ring), and 'būgan' (to bend or bow). Similarly another etymology in the Webster's New World College Dictionary says that the Middle High German form was derived from the Austrian German 'beugel', a kind of croissant, and was similar to the German 'bügel', a stirrup or ring.
In the Brick Lane district and surrounding area of London, England, bagels, or as locally spelled "beigels" have been sold since the middle of the 19th century. They were often displayed in the windows of bakeries on vertical wooden dowels, up to a metre in length, on racks.
Bagels were brought to the United States by immigrant Polish-Jews, with a thriving business developing in New York City that was controlled for decades by Bagel Bakers Local 338, which had contracts with nearly all bagel bakeries in and around the city for its workers, who prepared all their bagels by hand. The bagel came into more general use throughout North America in the last quarter of the 20th century, which was due at least partly to the efforts of bagel baker Harry Lender, his son, Murray Lender, and Florence Sender, who pioneered automated production and distribution of frozen bagels in the 1960s. Murray also invented pre-slicing the bagel.
In modern times, Canadian-born astronaut Gregory Chamitoff is the first person known to have taken a batch of bagels into space on his 2008 Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station. His shipment consisted of 18 sesame seed bagels.

                                                        Bagels with cream cheese and lox


At its most basic, traditional bagel dough contains wheat flour (without germ or bran), salt, water, and yeast leavening. Bread flour or other high gluten flours are preferred to create the firm and dense but spongy bagel shape and chewy texture.[2] Most bagel recipes call for the addition of a sweetener to the dough, often barley malt (syrup or crystals), honey, sugar, with or without eggs, milk or butter.[2] Leavening can be accomplished using either a sourdough technique or using commercially produced yeast.
Bagels are traditionally made by:
* mixing and kneading the ingredients to form the dough
* shaping the dough into the traditional bagel shape, round with a hole in the middle, from a long thin piece of dough
* proofing the bagels for at least 12 hours at low temperature (40–50 °F = 4.5–10 °C)
* boiling each bagel in water that may or may not contain additives such as lye, baking soda, barley malt syrup, or honey
* baking at between 175 °C and 315 °C (about 350–600 °F)
It is this unusual production method which is said to give bagels their distinctive taste, chewy texture, and shiny appearance. In recent years, a variant of this process has emerged, producing what is sometimes called the steam bagel. To make a steam bagel, the process of boiling is skipped, and the bagels are instead baked in an oven equipped with a steam injection system. In commercial bagel production, the steam bagel process requires less labor, since bagels need only be directly handled once, at the shaping stage. Thereafter, the bagels need never be removed from their pans as they are refrigerated and then steam-baked. The steam-bagel is not considered to be a genuine bagel by purists, as it results in a fluffier, softer, less chewy product more akin to a finger roll that happens to be shaped like a bagel. Steam bagels are also considered lower quality by purists as the dough used is intentionally more basic. The increase in pH is to aid browning since the steam injection process uses neutral water steam instead of a basic solution bath.
If not consumed immediately, there are certain storing techniques that can help to keep the bagel moist and fresh. First, cool bagels in a paper bag, then wrap the paper bag in a plastic bag (attempting to rid the bags of as much air as possible without squishing the bagels), then freeze for up to six months.

Three Montreal-style bagels: one poppy and two sesame bagels

The two most prominent styles of traditional bagel in North America are the Montreal-style bagel and the New York-style bagel. The Montreal bagel contains malt and sugar with no salt; it is boiled in honey-sweetened water before baking in a wood-fired oven; and it is predominantly either of the poppy "black" or sesame "white" seeds variety. The New York bagel contains salt and malt and is boiled in water prior to baking in a standard oven. The resulting New York bagel is puffy with a moist crust, while the Montreal bagel is smaller (though with a larger hole), crunchier, and sweeter.
Chicago-style bagels are baked or baked with steam.
Poppy seeds are sometimes called by their Yiddish name, spelled either mun or mon (written מאָן) which is very similar to the German word for poppy, Mohn, as used in Mohnbrötchen. The traditional London bagel (or beigel as it is spelled) is harder and has a coarser texture with air bubbles.
American chef John Mitzewich suggests a recipe for what he calls “San Francisco-Style Bagels”. His recipe yields bagels flatter than New York-style bagels and characterized by a rough-textured crust.





While normally and traditionally made of yeasted wheat, in the late 20th century many variations on the bagel flourished. Nontraditional versions which change the dough recipe include pumpernickel, rye, sourdough, bran, whole wheat, and multigrain. Other variations change the flavor of the dough, often using blueberry, salt, onion, garlic, egg, cinnamon, raisin, chocolate chip, cheese, or some combination of the above. Green bagels are sometimes created for St. Patrick's Day.
Many corporate chains now offer bagels in such flavors as chocolate chip and French toast. Sandwich bagels have been popularized since the late 1990s by bagel specialty shops such as Bruegger's and Einstein Brothers, and fast food restaurants such as McDonald's. Breakfast bagels, a softer, sweeter variety usually sold in fruity or sweet flavors (e.g., cherry, strawberry, cheese, blueberry, cinnamon-raisin, chocolate chip, maple syrup, banana and nuts) are commonly sold by large supermarket chains. These are usually sold sliced and are intended to be prepared in a toaster.
A flat bagel, known as a 'Flagel', can be found in a few locations in and around New York City and Toronto. According to a review attributed to New York's Village Voice food critic Robert Seitsema, the Flagel was first created by Brooklyn's Tasty Bagels deli in the early 1990s.
Though the original bagel has a fairly well defined recipe and method of production, there is no legal standard of identity for bagels in the United States. Bakers are thus free to call any bread torus a bagel, even those that deviate wildly from the original formulation.





According to the American Institute of Baking (AIB), year 2008 supermarket sales (52 week period ending January 27, 2009) of the top eight leading commercial fresh (not frozen) bagel brands in the United States:
* totalled to US$430,185,378 based on 142,669,901 package unit sales.
* the top eight leading brand names for the above were (by order of sales): Thomas', Sara Lee, (private label brands) Pepperidge Farm, Thomas Mini Squares, Lender's Bagels (Pinnacle Foods), Weight Watchers and The Alternative Bagel (Western Bagel).
Further, AIB-provided statistics for the 52 week period ending May 18, 2008, for refrigerated/frozen supermarket bagel sales for the top 10 brand names totalled US$50,737,860, based on 36,719,977 unit package sales.