The Best Fast Food Bagel Breakfast Sandwich Comes From This Chain

If you like your breakfast sammies to have a little bite, you need to order your eggs, sausage, and cheese in a dense, chewy, and characterful bagel. These plump, ring-shaped bread rolls are sturdy enough to accommodate a generously-loaded filling without falling apart and you can grab one from plenty of fast food joints at an affordable price. Need a rec? We ranked 8 fast food bagel breakfast sandwiches, according to reviews, and named Brooklyn Water Bagel as the champ. This Florida-based chain, which first opened in Delray Beach in 2009, offers classic breakfast sandwiches stuffed with any combination of bacon, egg, cheese, ham and sausage. However, there are also several signature breakfast sammies that are available all day, such as the Williamsburg (smoked salmon, cream cheese, tomato and red onion) and the Greenpoint (egg whites, spinach, mushroom, and Swiss cheese). 

While customers can order any of these options in a wheat wrap, hard roll, or rye bread, it's the bagels that patrons rave about. Made fresh daily, the flavors on offer run the gamut from Asiago, Black Russian, Black Russian Seeded, and Cinnamon Raisin to Everything, Garlic, Onion, Plain, Poppy, Salt, Sesame, and Whole Wheat. There are a couple of gluten free options too, which cost an extra $2. As for what makes these bagels so much better than the ones at other fast food chains, such as Tim Horton's, McDonald's, and Dunkin Donuts? Notably, it's the special water they're prepared with and boiled in.

Unlike other varieties of bread roll, which are baked solely in the oven, bagels are simmered in malty water first, which is what gives them that distinctive shiny crust. In New York the water has low concentrations of calcium and magnesium, which is believed to set the crust better, producing bagels with a dense and chewy interior. The team behind Brooklyn Water Bagel wanted to recreate those same conditions in Florida, and they worked with experts to create a special proprietary water system inside each franchise. The system firstly filters and purifies the local water to bottled water quality before minerals are injected back into it to replicate New York water. 

This "Brooklynized" water is then used to both make the dough and kettle the bagels once they've been shaped and proofed to bestow them with that typical shiny exterior and characterful chew. The chain's in-house coffee is also prepared with the same mineral-enriched water. Today, there are 21 Brooklyn Water Bagel locations in the Sunshine State but there are plans to expand into the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and Southwest. If you aren't in Florida, the most iconic fast food breakfast has to be the classic egg McMuffin. 

That said, in our opinion, the best McDonald's breakfast sandwich is the sausage, egg, and cheese McGriddles, which feature a pair of maple-syrup flavored pancakes. Just bear in mind that neither of these breakfast sammies are available all day, unlike the bagels at Brooklyn Water Bagel.