Recently I watched a Panera Bread commercial (the YouTube ad is viewable just below) about some new limited-time bagel sandwiches and the content in the commercial got me a bit worked up. You can view that commercial below but I am pretty sure I shouted at the screen and said, “What the heck? That bagel doesn’t have a hole!”
I just checked with my wife and she confirmed that is what I said.
Panera Bread, a national sandwich chain that lists more than 2,200 locations in the United States, has recently launched three new sandwiches, all using what they call an Asiago Bagel as the bread. But the commercials which show top-down views as well as interior sliced views show no sign of any bagel hole.
Where’s the bagel hole? Where? I decided to get to the bottom of the hole issue.
Panera’s version
I left the comforting interior of my house and took a trip to my local Panera to do some research about the holes or lack of holes. During that visit, I kept my expectations low and I ordered one of their Asiago Bagel Stack sandwiches. The sandwich I received ended up inspiring me to make a really good sandwich and create a recipe to share with you. The Zesty Tuscan Asiago Bagel Stack (what a name) is what I tried and to be honest, it was better than I expected.
I have no connection to Panera Bread and I paid for these sandwiches with my own money.
This is NOT sponsored content. #notsponsored
Panera Asiago bagel sandwich review
As I said, I went in with low expectations but I was happy to find out that the Panera Bread Zesty Tuscan Asiago Stacker was good but not great. I felt like it has the potential to be better though. The sandwich itself has sliced chicken pieces, 3 or 4 slices of soppressata, provolone cheese, garlic aioli, “zesty” sweet peppers, arugula, and basil. I’m assuming that the name comes from the zesty peppers, which are sweet and a little bit tart like pickles, and the sopressata which sort of comes from the Tuscany region of Italy.
It just so happens that in my experience, those two sandwich components were the most important to the flavors in the sandwich. The sandwich I ate had only a small amount of chicken and that and the provolone were both just a bit understated in the flavor department. The peppers brought a lot of sweetness to the sandwich and the sopressata had just a touch of spice that would bring a little zip to everything.
The bagel itself was a little chewy and it had been toasted so the edges were just a little crispy which worked well in the sandwich. Overall like I said, the sandwich was good but it could have been so much better with a bit more chicken, and if they treated the arugula a bit more like a salad and hit it with a bit of a simple dressing the whole sandwich could be elevated. We’re going to work on both of those in my sandwich as well as just try to elevate things a bit more to create a better experience.
This is not really included in my review, but my wife ordered the Chicken Roma Asiago Bagel Stack and she was not that happy with it. The tomato on her sandwich was off-colored (you can see it in the background of the photo above) and she removed it entirely because it just looked kinda gross. Overall she thought the sandwich was fine but boring and she ate most of it, but said she would not order it again. She thinks the sandwich would be a lot better with a good slice of tomato and that it could use more mozzarella because there was very little in the sandwich she received. Apparently, I ordered the best chicken Asiago Bagel Stack option.
Overall it was a fine experience at Panera, but not necessarily one I want to revisit. But the sandwich that I ate did inspire me that those particular components could be put together in a way to be great. So that’s what I set out to do.
What is the Panera Bread Asiago Bagel then?
Is it a bagel’s cousin, the bialy? No, I don’t think so. A bialy is very similar to a bagel, but if we keep things simple, a bialy is given a “dimple” in the dough instead of the full-on, fully poked-through hole that a bagel gets. So a bialy might have what appears to be a hole when looking from top down, but when you flip it over, you might not see any indentation and you definitely won’t see a full hole all the way through. A bialy also does not go through the same boiling process as a bagel, and often there’s a difference in the type of flour used, but that’s going a bit too deep down the rabbit hole. These Panera bagels are not bialys.
From what I experienced on my trip to Panera, I think it should be considered to be a bun with the chewy consistency you expect from a bagel. I’m not proclaiming to be a bread scientist and I’m certainly not someone who is afraid to embrace new combinations of sandwiches or ingredients, but a bagel without a hole all the way through is certainly a bun or a roll. Is it still a bagel? Panera thinks so.
As you can see in the tweet above from 2022, Panera acknowledges that the Asiago bagels do not have holes which confirms that I’m not just a crazy person. The people in charge at Panera simply don’t care about holes. This isn’t a new thing either. Apparently asiago bagels at Panera have not had holes in them for at least 7 years according to this Reddit thread.
Bagel Wholes
Philadelphia Cream Cheese also has an issue with the bagel hole. They created the Bagel Wholes campaign early in 2024, partnering with several well-known bagel bakeries in various large North American cities to produce bagels without holes. They wanted to create more room to spread cream cheese on. This campaign didn’t seem to go over very well with some bagel-loving Redditors in the r/Jewish subreddit though.
These are similar to Panera’s hole-less bagels in that it appears that the bagel was created in the normal way, but the dough was shaped so that the hole would close back together during the final rising and baking time. Basically, they shaped the dough so that the hole would intentionally close, instead of forming a large hole that would keep its hole shape after being baked.
They wanted to make the bagel more Whole.
Does a hole help or hurt a bagel sandwich?
The next two sections of this bagel sandwich blog post are fairly subjective. This means the words I type here are based on my personal opinions, so your feelings may differ. Feel free to get into the comments at the bottom of this blog post if what I write makes you angry or very happy.
Do holes hurt a bagel sandwich?
I don’t think the hole hurts a sandwich that much. But the hole definitely does give the sandwich a bit of a structural issue. Of the bagel sandwiches I have made and/or eaten in my life, it’s almost always that some of the cream cheese, mayo, or any sauce squirt out of the bottom hole. You can avoid a lot of this if you are making/baking the bagel yourself because you don’t have to make the hole very large if you know it will end up being the bread in a sandwich.
Does the bagel hole help?
Right off the bat, I can’t think of a reason that the hole in a bagel could help a sandwich.
If you’re considering the baking process I do think the hole might be beneficial. I think the hole is likely helpful during the baking process in making sure that the bagel is fully cooked through, and the hole also adds extra surface area that gives you more opportunity for an extra bit of exterior crust. So maybe in that way, the hole could have a benefit to the sandwich.
Anyway, I somewhat enjoyed the sandwich from Panera Bread and I thought we could make one that’s way better in our own kitchens. And apparently no one needs a hole in their bagel anymore so let’s embrace the chaos and make some bagel buns.
Asiago bagel bun
Bagels are supposed to be somewhat dense and a bit chewy. Some people have mentioned to me that this is one reason why they don’t necessarily enjoy them in sandwiches. I get it. The force required to bite all the way through often means that you might squish the sandwich ingredients around or force them to attempt to exit the situation entirely. This definitely happens. Despite this issue, I still enjoy a good bagel sandwich. And a decent bagel isn’t that hard to make at home.
My normal bagel recipe—the one with holes—does not churn out New York or Montreal-style bagels. My bagels are not quite as chewy as those are because I am usually trying to make bagels that produce good sandwiches. The same can be said of these bagel buns. They’re not super dense or extra chewy and the fact that they do not have a hole means that we’re missing some of that extra crust that the baking process adds to the center part of the bagel.
Bagels are similar to pretzels in that they require a wet pre-cook in boiling water prior to the baking process. I did this with my bagel buns as well. As soon as the dough comes out of the boiling water, it’s basted with an egg wash and topped with your toppings—in this case, I used asiago cheese and everything bagel seasoning.
Here’s my new bagel bun recipe that you can try in your own kitchen. They turn out to be some really good, chewy buns and your cream cheese won’t slip out the bottom hole!
Bagel sandwich buns (Hole-less bagels)
This bun is just like a bagel with 100% fewer holes.
Get RecipeGrilled chicken
Panera doesn’t actually say how their chicken is prepared, but from what I saw in my sandwich it’s clearly from a whole piece of chicken that has been lightly browned and then thinly sliced. I also confirmed that it is whole slices of breast meat. So I cooked some butterflied chicken breasts on my indoor grill pan, allowed them to cool, and then sliced them for sandwiching.
Here’s my recipe for boneless grilled chicken thighs or breasts, but you can cook chicken however you’d like for this sandwich. You can sear it, bake it, grill it, or buy a rotisserie chicken and slice it into thin slices if you want. This sandwich just needs seasoned and cooked chicken.
Spicy Grilled Chicken
A quick and easy chicken marinade recipe for the grill. It's very easy to adjust the level of heat by adding or subtracting the sriracha.
Get RecipeSopressata
Panera is calling the sandwich a Zesty Tuscan. There’s nothing in the sandwich that screams Tuscany to me so I looked up the origin of Sopressata and found that some types of Sopressata are made in Tuscany (but not the type seen in the photo here).
Soppressata is a salume or a type of Italian salami. You might be able to find both dry-cured (or just cured) and uncured varieties of soppressata at your store. The difference between these varieties is that cured meat is cured with artificial preservatives and uncured meat uses natural preservatives. Because of this, the cured meat will have a much longer shelf life.
Panera’s problem with calling the sandwich the Zesty Tuscan is that Tuscany—in central west Italy—is not where dry-cured soppressata is made. The soppressata made in Tuscany, according to online sources, is uncured, and it’s quite different from what we typically see in delis, markets, and sandwich shops here in the US. Tuscan Soppressata is made from pig parts—like the head, tongue, and organ meat—, it’s uncured, and visually it’s not the same as the dry-cured soppressata we see in stores. Panera is not using Tuscan Soppressata, but maybe I’m just nitpicking here.
Regardless of the name, soppressata is delicious. It’s very savory, and salty similar to salami and/or pepperoni, and typically has some red pepper spicing that could make it a little spicy. As you can see in the photo above you might be able to buy it in various levels of spiciness. I felt this sandwich could use a bit of zip, so I purchased the hot soppressata which really isn’t that spicy, especially when incorporated with the other ingredients in this sandwich.
Provolone
The cheese component is probably the least important part of this sandwich but I do think it contributes some creaminess that is helpful to bring everything together.
I bought sliced provolone and broiled it to add a melty component to the sandwich which also helped to warm up the rest of the sandwich components. Provolone is creamy but otherwise, it doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor components that would distract or contribute to the overall sandwich. You could use a cheese like Swiss if you really wanted more flavor from the cheese to participate in this Zesty Tuscan.
Sweet peppers and arugula salad
I used the sweet peppers and arugula to create a little salad. I think a big thing you should be aware of on your road to sandwich enlightenment is knowing that a good portion of sandwiches are benefitted by adding a salad into the mix.
What do I mean by “adding a salad into a sandwich?” I mean that you should add greens and veggies but before you just go shoving those things into the sandwich you should dress them as you would a salad. In this case, I use arugula (a green) and I add diced sweet peppers, a bit of the sweet pepper liquid, some olive oil, and red wine vinegar. At this point, you’ve basically made a salad. I also pinch in a bit of salt and ground black pepper and then I taste it all. If the components of this salad taste good on the end of a fork, it will be perfect inside of a sandwich.
The Panera Bread version of this sandwich also called for basil, but I didn’t taste it and I just left it out of my version. But you could add some basil to your arugula and sweet red pepper salad and it would add some extra flavors to the sandwich.
Garlic aioli
There’s a whole bunch going on in this sandwich. I really don’t think the garlic aioli is worth it. I did not even taste it in the Panera Bread version. I used Duke’s brand mayonnaise in my versions of this sandwich and it was a great addition. Just buy or make some good mayonnaise and you’ll be all good.
Roasted garlic mayo
10 minutesA little bit of Zesty Tuscan sandwich art
I’m not sure if turning one of my photos into a paint-by-numbers piece of art will become a thing that I do for every sandwich, but I’ve so far done it for two weekly sandwich blog posts in a row (and at least one more is coming). Basically, just like last week, I used a digital tablet with a stylus and traced one of my sandwich photos and then colored everything and added shadows, textures, and shading.
I do not claim to be an artist, but I’ve found this to be fairly enjoyable because it distracts me for a bit from some of the stresses of the world. I’m not an artist, but I can pretend to be one and maybe I will continue to fool around in digital formats to create fun-looking sandwiches.
The Zesty Tuscan bagel sandwich thing
I made this sandwich about five times over the past week. You can see all the photos down below. It’s a very good sandwich if you like bagel sandwiches. And no one has to worry about any holes!
Zesty Tuscan chicken sandwich on an asiago bagel bun (Panera copycat)
This is a super flavorful sandwich that's inspired by one of the new menu options at Panera Bread. The soppressata brings a tiny bit of spice that's wonderfully balanced by the sweetness of the zesty peppers.
Ingredients:
Arugula and sweet pepper salad- small handful of arugula
- 1 to 2 small sweet pickled peppers
- 1 teaspoon sweet pickled pepper liquid
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- splash of red wine vinegar (can use white wine vinegar)
- salt and ground black pepper (a tiny pinch)
- 1 asiago bagel (preferably use my bagel bun recipe)
- 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
- 3 to 4 slices of soppressata
- 4 to 6 ounces cooked chicken, sliced thinly
- 1 slice provolone cheese (can use gouda or Swiss)
- arugula and pepper salad (from above)
Directions:
Turn on your broiler to high. If you do not have a broiler, preheat your oven to 350 F (175 C).
Arugula and sweet pepper salad: add all of the salad ingredients into a small bowl and mix to combine.
Sandwich assembly: split your bagel or bagel bun and add a bit of mayonnaise to the bottom half. Top the mayonnaise with slices of soppressata, and pieces of thinly sliced chicken. Top everything with a slice of provolone cheese and add both the bottom half of the bagel/bagel bun and the top half to the broiler to toast.
Broil for about 4 minutes or until the cheese is melty and the exposed top half of the bagel/bagel bun is lightly toasted.
Remove from the broiler, add a pile of your arugula and sweet pepper salad on top of the cheese, and close the top of the bagel/bagel bun to complete the sandwich.
Serve and enjoy.
Check back next week
Next week when this blog post goes out, I will be coming home from a trip to New York City. And that sandwich blog post will hopefully be scheduled in advance. I will be writing about either another bagel sandwich or another non-bagel sandwich. You’ll just have to come back to find out. Also, the sandwich will probably have chicken or turkey on it. Maybe there’s a chance I don’t know what it is either. No one knows!
