I spent the summer after my sophomore year of college working at a bagel shop in Portland, Oregon. I had gotten the job despite my utter lack of food-handling experience, and the first thing the owner taught me was how to cut a bagel "the right way."
I almost bristled at the instruction. After all, I was a Jewish girl from New York City—I had been eating bagels daily for years. When I was a baby my mom had given me frozen bagels to gum on:I had literally cut my teeth on the food. But, my new boss cautioned, bagel-cutting injuries are rampant(this is true). And no one is more susceptible to a bagel-related emergency room visit than a know-it-all college kid who likes to throw the word "hegemony" into conversations at a moment's notice trying to keep up during the 8am breakfast rush.
事实证明,尽管这么多年的confident bagel-eating, I had been cutting them all wrong. No more holding the bagel in the palm of my hand while sawing a knife back and forth through it. (One slip and that knife goes right through your thumb.) No more starting the cut with the bagel standing up on its not-so-stable thinnest edge. No more shoving a bagel into those awful V-shaped bagel cutters we all lined up to use in the dining hall. (They squish the bagels, and it can be hard to get the bread off the blade.)
The safest and easiest way to cut a bagel, I learned, is a two-step process:
- Start with the bagel lying flat, a serrated bread knife in your dominant hand. Position the knife parallel to your cutting surface and make a careful horizontal cut that goes about halfway through the bagel.
- Without removing the knife, stand the half-cut bagel up on its side, holding it by the top end to keep it steady. Work the knife down towards the cutting board, cutting the rest of the way through the bagel.
This slice-and-flip technique felt a little awkward at first, but after a few hours of taking orders, I was slicing, toasting, and schmearing with ease. I've been using the two-step process to cut bagels ever since—and I still have all ten fingers to prove it.
