Bagels for Diesel

BROOKINGS — Of all the places Brianna Lind has lived, she might like Brookings best.

Long Island, where she grew up, will always be home. Maine was great for college. New Mexico was too much desert.

But Brookings was missing one key ingredient.

As anyone who grew up in New York — or spent much time in New England — can tell you, Brookings has a lot of things going for it. But you can’t get a decent bagel to save your life.

At least, until now.

Real bagels are everywhere on the East Coast. Fresh daily, decidedly not shelf stable, yeasty and boiled and baked.

“Long Island and New York have bagel places like we have fast food places, right? They’re everywhere. So I was confused when they were missing,” Lind said.

Lind, who is a post-grad researcher in geospatial science at SDSU, wasn’t prepared to do anything about it though.

Until her dog Diesel, a certified good boy and mascot for the Funky Buffalos kickball team in the summer, had some health problems.

“He got sick with a malignant melanoma in his mouth and he had two surgeries. Those were pretty expensive, and then he had a fairly substantial treatment protocol after that,” Lind said. “I decided to do what I could for him and give him the best treatment, but it was really expensive. But there’s kind of a happy ending here. He’s kind of out of the woods — he’s basically a cancer survivor, but there’s ongoing treatments that are also very expensive. So that propelled me to say, ‘I need to make some extra money.’”

But where was there a hole in the Brookings market for a new business?

“And then it dawned on me: People here are just like people everywhere. They like bread, and they like when bread tastes good. There’s already a lot of fantastic sourdough options in town, but bagels?”

And just like that, a business was born.

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Lind has rules. She advertises her bagels as “NY style” in a red heart, echoing the iconic “I heart NY” advertising campaign, in use from the late 1970s until today. And when she says New York style, she means it.

No less a food luminary than Anthony Bourdain routinely said his favorite meal in New York City was a bagel with lox and cream cheese from one of the city’s many famous delis.

And Lind’s bagels deliver. They come in plain, poppy seed, sesame seed, everything and cinnamon raisin — along with some other specialties she’s still working on. They are always rolled by hand, briefly boiled and then baked to give that distinctive crisp exterior and signature chewy texture inside.

And they are always, always made the same day. She ramped up by getting a table at the biweekly winter Brookings Farmers Market.

“The community has been super supportive, and that’s given me an opportunity to test the waters and see if people like the bagels. And for the most part, it seems to be going really well,” she said.

She started off making 48 bagels for the market on Saturdays in November. She’s now up to 120. And she has started to take orders for next-day fulfillment at home.

She’s had to put in a second oven to keep up with demand.

“I got a second oven and a better mixer, just to keep up,” Lind said. “It’s a limitation; I can only make a dozen per oven at a time. But I make them the morning of. I always make them fresh, because that’s what I want. I want a fresh bagel. I don’t have day-old bagels. I just give them away.”

The only bagels that have been available in Brookings until now have been the unfrozen grocery store variety. Those are generally steamed and made like shelf stable commercial bread. So it was a learning curve for Lind and her customers those first couple months.

“People seem to be pretty happy with them. I have had one person say it’s too chewy, and I understand that if they only know Midwestern bagels. Then they might feel the bagel is too chewy, sure. But a lot of people are like, ‘I’ve never had a fresh bagel. This is so cool.’”

“I like to explain that a New York bagel is chewier and has a little bit more density to it than what I’ve seen out here, and the boil makes a big difference on the crust or outer part of the bagel,” Lind said.

“Because to me, a bagel is like — let’s get some butter or some cream cheese. And that’s kind of a full meal. That’s breakfast. Well, sometimes a bagel and a half is breakfast.”

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Though debuting a new product has been an educational process, the results have shown a town more than eager to try different things.

“Brookings as a community is just so great. I am just so thankful to have had the opportunity to try this out at farmer’s market. That’s really the biggest thing — I never would have been able to get started without that,” Lind said.

And while Diesel is fully healthy these days, Lind’s business shows only signs of growth, so she’s going to keep baking as long as there is demand.

“People at the winter farmers market have really enjoyed them, and it really has picked up,” she said. “They are starting to venture out and ask for more exotic flavors. One that I have played with is blueberry. Which isn’t traditional, but one of the things about New York — you kind of go big or you go home, so I have been making a blueberry bagel that’s so full of blueberries it’s basically purple. And that has been a hit.”

Bri’s Bagels are available to order by calling or texting (631) 428-2826 a day ahead for pickup orders. They’re $15 for a half dozen or $25 for the dozen. Lind plans to continue to be at the farmer’s market on Saturdays for the foreseeable future — likely with Diesel in tow, so make sure to say hello.

“That’s truly what I love about Brookings — people really come out to support you. People are open, and people want to see you succeed. They genuinely want you to do well, and that’s so rare for anywhere.”

Linehan is the Beacon’s managing editor and welcomes tips and comments at BrookingsBeacon@@gmail.com