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How To Make The World's Finest Gourmet Pizza Bagels
By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 14, 2016
Modified Mar 14, 2016
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 14, 2016
Modified Mar 14, 2016
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Video by Jessica Leibowitz
Two years ago, I wrote an impassioned defense of homemade pizza bagels, the world's finest cheese-tomato-bagel hybrid.
It's a "specialty" dish of mine that started out as a joke (and admission that my skills as a chef may be limited to cheese-based bread mashups), but over many years turned into a signature meal requested by friends and acquaintances. Sure, pizza bagels are kind of silly childhood relics ("pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening..."); many foodies look down on them in shame; and there's no doubt that they are stupidly simple to make.
But that's part of the reason why I love them: the joy and excitement of cooking should not be limited to those who are already great at cooking. Pizza bagels are the ultimate expression of egalitarianism in the kitchen—you don't need fancy ingredients (though they definitely are encouraged!), you don't need to be any sort of cooking savant, and you needn't worry about the opinions of food snobs. Meat lovers and vegetarians can enjoy them in equal measure. They're the perfect food to experiment with as a gateway drug to cooking, and only a cranky lactose-intolerant monster could possibly frown upon such a delightful, quick meal.
Of course, I also love them because I'm always on the lookout for new ways to inject my body with pizza. After all, there is no such thing as bad pizza (we are not referring to pizza which isn't really pizza) except uneaten pizza. An angel loses its wings every time a slice is thrown to the rats. And it is certainly in our nation's best interests to create new sustainable forms of pizza to last us through President Trump's ascendence.
So today, in honor of Pi Day (...because pizza? And um, bagels are round?), I've decided to share my secret recipe for pizza bagels in the very serious video above. And who knows, maybe we'll have a pizza bagel pop-up in the not-so-distant future.
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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