The search for the best bagel in Atlanta is over

We had one goal: Find the best bagel in Atlanta (according to 12 hungry AJC staffers)

Credit: Courtesy photo

Credit: Courtesy photo

Before we get to the contenders, we need to talk about what, exactly, we were looking for.

Confession: I have made thousands of bagels. Many years ago, back when I could still go straight from the club to my job at a bagel shop and do eight hours of backbreaking work, lifting 50-pound bags of flour and removing massive mounds of sticky dough out of giant stand mixers, I learned a whole lot about what makes a champion bagel. But that doesn’t make me an expert. We’ll give that title to award-winning baker Rose Wilde, author of the Bread and Roses cookbook.

Wilde sold more than 600 bagels a week at the Santa Monica Farmer’s market in California for close to a decade and was ranked as one of the top bagel makers in Los Angeles. For her, a top-tier bagel is all about technique.

“Like any bread project, it’s really about time and knowledge. Knowing when your dough still has the structure to give you the bounce that you need for a bagel, but is also really proofed so your crumb is open and cooks well is really something that can only be honed through repetition.”

Credit: Rebecca Stumpf

Credit: Rebecca Stumpf

What should a great bagel look like?

According to Wilde, the first thing you should look for in a top-tier bagel is a shiny crust that crackles faintly when it’s torn.

“I want to see a nice golden texture. The crust should be thin but distinct. I look for a darker brown because I want to know that it was baked hot and quick and well,” she said.

The top crust should also be freckled with small blisters that bakers call “bird’s eyes.” These are a sign the dough was given the time it needs to truly shine.

Unlike many yeasted bread doughs, which are rested at warm temperatures, bagel dough is usually refrigerated. The cold environment causes yeast to slow its feverish consumption of sugars in the dough. The yeast releases small amounts of gas, which allows tiny pockets of air to form just beneath the surface. When that ring of dough hits hot water for a quick boil and then an even hotter oven, those pockets push through the top layer and blister.

That’s why a smooth, matte crust can be a red flag. It usually means the dough was rushed, under-fermented or (gasp) never boiled at all.

Credit: Alexander Stein

Credit: Alexander Stein

What should a great bagel look like?

The texture of a great bagel does not resemble the cottony fluff of sandwich bread. Biting a bagel takes a little work. That’s the point. The first thing your teeth should register is a slight resistance.

There is a sort of elasticity to a properly prepared bagel. When you squeeze it, it should spring back. When you tear it open, the interior should show a network of small, even holes, not the misshapen potholes you find in a great loaf of sourdough.

“I want a crumb (everything inside the crust, i.e., the bready part) that’s tight and bounces. It should be able to hold up a sandwich from the corner deli,” Wilde said.

Every bite should be a little chewy. That comes from a combination of high-protein flour, aggressive mixing that builds the protein strands known as gluten, and proper hydration. Too much water and that springy crumb turns spongy. Too little and it eats dry. It’s a balancing act, and when it’s done right, you get a bagel that feels substantial without being heavy.

Why a bagel’s flavor and aroma matter

A great bagel tastes like more than flour. There should be a gentle tang from fermentation, a subtle sweetness from developed sugars and a savory backbone at the end of the bite.

“A bagel should have a slight maltiness to it,” Wilde said. “It should be a little yeasty. You should get a little expression from the grain used to make the flour.”

Bagels that taste flat usually signal the use of a low-quality flour or a short ferment. A cloying sweetness often points to too much added sugar or not enough of a rest to let the yeast in the dough transform that sugar into something more complex.

Chef Matt Marcus of Roswell’s Truth Be Told revealed what makes a New York bagel taste different from everywhere else. “The secret is adding barley malt syrup into the dough and into the water that you’re boiling the bagel in.”

The aroma matters, too: It should be almost nutty, a sign that the dough has been given the time it needs to develop depth through a long fermentation.

Credit: Courtesy of Lauren Curling / Lauren Lynn Media

Credit: Courtesy of Lauren Curling / Lauren Lynn Media

There is a proper shape and size for a bagel

According to Wilde, size matters. “A bagel should just obscure your palm. Unless you’re in the NBA and have huge hands. That is not an OK bagel size. It should be between 4 and 5 inches wide.”

Oversized bagels tend to bake unevenly, resulting in an inferior crust-to-crumb ratio. Undersized ones don’t give fermentation enough real estate for the dough to develop a distinct tang and a subtle sweetness.

A bagel should also have a clearly defined hole and even thickness all the way around.

Wilde said: “Nothing drives me crazier than when I know you didn’t finish the final shaping and proofing right because your bagel has now become a bun with a belly button. That is not a bagel.”

The process behind the office taste test

The morning of our taste test, the Food & Dining team bought every bagel fresh, plain and inside the Perimeter because, let’s keep it 100, we still had to get to work in Midtown on time. Each bagel was labeled, sliced and tasted blind. No toasting allowed.

The contenders:

A note for the record: The General Muir was not open at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday. Don’t come at us. Their bagels are choice, and we really wanted them to be a part of the taste test. But deadlines are deadlines.

Credit: Henri Hollis

Credit: Henri Hollis

How Atlanta’s bagels stack up

Across the board, Atlanta’s bagel scene is better than its reputation suggests, but consistency is still lacking.

Some bagels nailed the crust but fell short on flavor. Others had excellent fermentation but missed the chew. A few leaned too soft, drifting into roll territory. One was thrown down in disgust by a taste tester and labeled a “grocery store bagel.”

The standouts shared a few traits: visible bird’s eyes, audible crust, real chew and a flavor that developed as you ate, not one that peaked on the first bite and vanished.

What surprised us most was how clearly technique showed up without toppings and toasting to hide behind. Plain bagels tell the truth.

So, what is the best bagel in Atlanta?

After three hours of “highly scientific” exploration (read that in the most sarcastic voice you can muster) and a total of 12 votes, a clear winner rose up like, well, a proverbial bagel.

The Bronx Bagel Buggy in Chamblee, which specializes in (shocker) New York-style kettle-boiled bagels, won by a landslide, winning 42% of the votes, a total of five votes. They got the crust, the crumb, the flavor and the size right.

Credit: Courtesy of Julie Dragich

Credit: Courtesy of Julie Dragich

Much to the Food & Dining teams’ surprise, PopUp Bagels and Emerald City Bagel tied for second place, with two votes each.

Brooklyn Bagel Bakery and Deli, B-Side and Spiller Park Coffee tied for third, each receiving one vote.

Goldberg’s Fine Foods, which has been open since 1972, didn’t receive a single vote, a reminder that longevity alone doesn’t guarantee excellence.

What this tasting ultimately revealed wasn’t just a winner, but a moment. Atlanta’s bagel scene is no longer aspirational; it’s competitive. The best shops aren’t chasing New York so much as respecting the process that made the bagel worth chasing in the first place.

Atlanta will never be New York, and frankly, that’s the most amazing thing about this city. The ATL isn’t trying to be a replica, and neither are its bagels. They’re trying to come correct, and increasingly, they are.