Memoir [Revised Draft] - How to Make A Pizza Bagel, or Better Living Through Toaster Ovens

In the Westgate Shopping Center in Ann Arbor, just a few minutes' drive from my house, is Barry Bagels, or Barry's Bagels, as I've called it since I first went there as a kid. According to their online menu, Barry's Bagels has nineteen bagel flavors, and I'm sure most, maybe even all of them, are quite tasty. They also have an assortment of muffins and cookies, and the types of bagel-based sandwiches one would expect to see, and I'm sure many of these are also fairly appetizing. The truth is, though, that I've only gotten one thing at Barry's that I remember: the Pizza Bagel.

The Pizza Bagel is much as you would expect it to be: a plain bagel topped with pizza sauce and pepperoni, and covered in mozzarella (and I mean covered; I defy you to find an inch of exposed bagel). It was soft and chewy and greasy - and somehow, inexplicably, it was exactly what my taste buds craved. It was not the most high-quality creation. I'm sure if I had one now I would be sorely disappointed. But it was pizza...on a bagel. And that was, for me, the perfect combination.

Besides, the Pizza Bagel was not just food – not at Barry's Bagels, anyway. See, the Pizza Bagel, by its very nature, takes longer to make than other sandwiches. That means a kid ordered a Pizza Bagel at the cost of having to wait that much longer for their food, and kids are not generally fond of waiting. Fortunately, Barry's had a design feature that satisfied both the impatient and the curious, and turned the Pizza Bagel into an experience.

After getting my side and a drink, I would set them down at the table and head towards the back of the restaurant. Here, a couple of wide, shallow steps led up to large window. This window didn't look outside, though. It looked into the kitchen. Sure, I had to wait longer to get my bagel – but I got to watch them make it. Too be honest, I don't remember what exactly that entailed. I think that I was too young at the time to really comprehend what was going on, and so, while I was captivated by the scene, the details escaped me, as they wouldn't have meant much.

The combination of the endlessly fascinating bagel-making process and pizza quickly made the Pizza Bagel one of my favorite foods. One day, when I was maybe ten years old and had not yet realized that the Pizza Bagel was largely indistinguishable from the styrofoam container it came in, I requested a trip to Barry's Bagels for lunch. My mom, knowing that Barry's Bagels meant a Pizza Bagel, and apparently not having any errands to covertly add on to the trip to make it worthwhile, let me know that if I wanted a pizza bagel, she could just make one for me. I was somewhat skeptical, but willing to go along with her for the moment.

My mom took a bagel from the freezer (no doubt from the higher-quality Bruegger's Bagels, a legitimately apostrophied chain that started in New York), warmed it up a bit in the microwave, and put on pizza sauce, pepperoni, and pieces of string cheese, which I was amazed to find out was made from mozzarella. She stuck it in the toaster oven for fifteen or twenty minutes, and since the little window on the front of it was decidedly less impressive than the one at Barry's, I grabbed a book and settled down on the couch. When the bagel was cooked, cooled, and ready to eat, not knowing what to expect, I took a bite. It was delicious.

The homemade pizza bagel opened up a whole new world for me. This was a process I could understand. It was so easy that I could even make it myself, and pretty soon I began to wonder what else I could turn into a pizza. Tortilla got cooked in the grease it soaked up from the pepperoni, making it extra crispy. Sandwich rounds were a little smaller, a good snack option. Challa bread added a sweetness to the pizza, while matzoh was made surprisingly edible, if a little messy; both had the added flavor of irony, as pepperoni and cheese is decidedly not kosher. No two pizza creations taste the same, but they all taste good.

In addition to my pizzafication explorations, I discovered that the toaster oven was a much better alternative to the microwave. Hot Pockets, Chinese food leftovers, and of course leftover pizza all tasted at least twice as good. The toaster oven also provided me with new avenues to follow in my quest to prove that anything could be turned into a sandwich. Most importantly, it's small size made the toaster oven not nearly as frightening as the gaping, sweltering maw of the full-sized oven. I even figured out that I could put the food in before pre-heating, which meant that I didn't have to go near the toaster oven while it was on, and had the added benefit of making the food take less time to cook. It's little window might not be as impressive as the one at Barry's Bagels, but the food is better, and I don't just get to watch it being made - I get to make it myself.