If you build a better bagel, they will come. Well, I will at least.

I'm about 15 years late on this one, but I'd never seen a Flagel-a flattened bagel-until this week. So what is a Flagel and how is it made? Sauce Magazine tells us:

Skip the bagel, have a flagel
What the heck is a flagel? It’s a flat bagel. First created at Tasty Bagel in New York in 1993, a bagel becomes a flagel just after it is boiled. That’s when it’s flattened to be twice as wide but still have a hole in the middle. If you’ve ever seen someone dig out all the bready middle of a bagel, you know why this “slimmer” bagel is popular. Some might think it has fewer carbs and fewer calories, but what a flagel really does have is just lots of chewy crust. Flagels are very popular on the East Coast even though they are a pain to cut in half. (Please be careful with that serrated knife!)

It's very true that a flagel is a lot trickier to slice than a bagel. So do be careful if you try to slice them on your own. But I've been slicing bagels thin for years. More that below.

This reminds me of the muffin tops on Seinfeld. Elaine would discard the stumps of the muffins because the crisp tops are what she likes.

I totally agree on the muffin top thing, and think bagels are the same. I've noticed over the years that some people ask for the bready insides of the bagel to be removed. The person behind the counter will then pull out the bread, leaving mostly the crusts.

It might seem wierd for me to describe this, but I buy my bagels, bring them home, and then cut the bagel in 3 across the bagel, leaving 2 thin slices at the end and a fat bready middle. I save the middle for later and toast them up for bagel chips, but savor the crusty top and bottoms. Essentially what I'm left with is a flagel. But the only problem is that what I make with a sliced regular bagel is probably about half the size of a flagel, since a flagel contains the same amount of bread as a regular bagel. Not a really a problem, though since I can share with someone else!

So in case flagels haven't made it to your bagel shop, or to your part of the world, now you know what thy are. "Top of the bagel to ya!"