Though I did once manage to make baking bread explode in the oven.

It’s true  though- while a decent substitute for lox, smoked salmon is not proper lox which are brine-cured. Of course, brine-cured lox might be cold-smoked for flavor. The cold smoking doesn’t cure or cook the salmon.

Here is a link with a  few brief definitions:

http://www.jewishrecipes.org/jewish-foods/lox.html 

But seriously I really do roll my own —  it’s not that hard. I have my variations, but here is  a link to a good basic one that is identical to the one I found 15-20 years ago:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Lox-at-14-the-Cost/ 

For shits and giggles I will add a tablespoon or three of stuff like scotch, tequila or some other liquor.

The “bagel” came in a sealed pouch. It was bagel shaped, but otherwise almost exactly like a Kaiser roll. Only softer. It was dusted with sesame seeds.

My grandparents (now both passed on) lived in Mattoon, and every summer when we’d visit we’d go outside to sniff the air to see what might be baking that day.  That was one of my favorite memories.

A story told by a friend’s father (maybe apocryphal): he was traveling down south in the early 70′s, around the time so many Yankees were retiring to Florida, and he stopped at a small diner along the I-95 corridor (Georgia maybe), and on the wall was a dusty, rock-hard string of bagels.  He asked the waitress what they were doing there.  Her reply: “Oh, them’r ‘bay-jels’, we’re not sure whut they’re for.”

oy-vey.

But yeah, I ate Lender’s bagels in college.  We kept them in our marginally-legal dorm fridge, and toasted them in our definitely-illegal toaster oven that we had to plug into the hallway socket to get around the dorm room circuit breakers.  They weren’t great, but they were available, and toasting helped.

Let me tell you how I try to be a mensch.

My company has a Free Bagel and Donut breakfast on Fridays. They’re Noah’s bagels, a few steps above Lenders. I’m OK with Lenders and these are better, so they’re appreciated.

Three or four times a year, I show up early and put out a platter of smoked salmon from Costco, a sliced up red onion, and a jar of capers. It costs me about $27, about three times what a salmon bagel sandwich would cost me at a bagel shop. But in addition to the one I get to eat myself, I get to see a dozen or so co-workers enjoying this awesome thing.

Even with faux-lox, a salmon bagel with the trimmings is glorious, glorious, glorious!

With poppy seeds.

But they’re not, like, bagels. More like chewy toroidal buns. A real bagel is shiny and hard on the outside. You need good teeth to tear off chunks.