Schmeared with Love
One Cape Cod summer, Ellery Althaus met Claire Adams while both worked at Adrian’s, then a restaurant in Truro. He liked her and she kinda liked him too. Before long, they married. Adams’ dream of owning a sandwich shop was met when the pair opened Salty Market in 2014 at the former Dutra’s Market in Truro. “We were drawn to it, hoping to preserve its community connection,” says Althaus.
Adams, a Cambridge School of Culinary Arts graduate, imagined the cuisine, creating the prepared foods that filled the cases. Althaus oversaw the operation and its employees – selecting and stocking the myriad items that filled the shelves.
A baby arrived and soon, a dog too. Yes, it most certainly was a Basset hound. Things were humming along, yet Adams did mention missing one thing from growing up in Montreal. Althaus tucked this morsel away in his memory, and one day, he surprised her. Quicker than he could sing “Happy Birthday,” she snatched something off the tray he offered.
“Mmmmmm,” she smiled, her mouth full of warm goodness.
Those first bagels Althaus crafted weren’t that bad. Actually, they were pretty darn good. He kept on baking batches, fine tuning his technique. In 2018, they trialed selling three varieties at Salty Market: salt, poppy and everything. Althaus says, “Turns out other people liked them too, and we soon began testing more, adding new flavors as we went along. What initially began as a once-a-week batch had doubled by summer, and by the following summer, had jumped to five times weekly. When we left Salty last spring we were baking every day to meet demand.”
As they weighed the popularity of their bagels, they began to consider launching them as a stand-alone product at a separate location where they could have more room for production. “Somehow,” says Althaus, “we were going to try to keep Salty going and to attempt doing both.”
Unexpectedly, Liam Luttrell Rowland stepped in and made them an offer on Salty. They considered it and concluded that “maybe this was the moment to just end our time at Salty,” says Althaus. “Because Rowland was such a great fit with the same values we had for this community market, it was the right time. On May 22, 2022, as we stepped down from Salty Market, he stepped in. It was a really nice transition.”
Naming their new venture after their beloved bagel-snatching hound, Ellery Althaus and Claire Adams are one year into launching Bagel Hound, a small shop on Route 6 in Wellfleet where they bake and sell bagels. Instead of overseeing upwards of 3000 products, they began with a menu of 13 varieties of bagels. “I got to focus on one thing really well,” says Althaus.
Located in South Wellfleet at the site of a former pizza shop, Bagel Hound’s footprint is modest – there’s a small inner area for ordering and pickup and an equally small kitchen and baking area to the rear. Althaus begins each batch of dough at 3 or 4am the day before it’s baked so that it can rise, and later the next day, be hand-shaped, boiled and baked. “We make this space work for what we do,” says Althaus. “I’ve changed things even a bit more now that I’ve been thinking about our process over this past winter too.”
Just around the corner from the ordering counter is the kitchen. From left to right around the perimeter of the room there’s a small nook for dishwashing, an area for piles of supplies, including huge sacks of flour piled one atop the next, a commercial stove, racks for trays of the bagels waiting to be baked, one large oven, and finally, a second rack to hold the cooling bagels. In the center of the room is a metal prep table with a pair of employees laughing as they banter back and forth. They’re working from a mound of dough as they shape it into 4.5-ounce balls. They explain that the various doughs – plain, onion, egg, cheese and pumpernickel – each have a different feel, with some being more challenging than others to handle. They call out almost in unison, with Althaus joining in, “Cheese’s the dream!”
After the shaping, each bagel is batch boiled atop the stove in simmering water for several minutes. “This is what gives the dough its ‘chew,’ and crisps it a bit too,” says Althaus. “Then, we dunk all except the plain ones into the bowls of toppings which adhere to the wet surface of each bagel.
Finally, the trays of prepped bagels are loaded into the oven and baked. They quickly rise, turning a rich dark brown. “I estimate I’ve probably produced close to 100,000 bagels this first year,” says Althaus.
“We have an absolutely excellent crew of 12 here in Wellfleet. We were really able to overhaul our process as we went along, and by the end of our first summer, we doubled production,” says Althaus. “We’ve taken it to a really good spot. What’s a really wonderful change from Salty Market for us is the difference in the time of our working hours. Because we start early and close at one, this shift has worked out really well as a great opportunity for people on the Cape in the local workforce who do want to pick up a second job.”
Now with two children under the age of five, Zella and Vincent, and not forgetting the aforementioned Theo, Adams and Althaus have particularly welcomed this shift in their own work hours that gives them a bit more work life balance. That is, when they’re not fine-tuning their menu or strategizing new opportunities to grow.
Presently, Bagel Hound features 13 varieties – plain, salt, poppy, sesame, egg, and everything, plus an onion dough, onion dough with everything, pumpernickel dough, pumpernickel with everything, cheddar, cranberry white chocolate and a crunchy rum raisin, a pairing made with a generous dose of Truro Vineyard’s Twenty Boat rum.
Plus, there’s schmears. Yiddish for smear or spread, these are hefty dollops of cream cheese, placed onto one bagel half and then topped with the other. Aside from standard veggie, most of Bagel Hound’s schmears are custom blended – influenced by one of Claire’s or Ellery’s gastronomical memories. With several kinds featured daily, options like Cape berries, jalapeño bacon, salmon, cucumber dill and strawberry cheesecake rotate through the menu and are available in various sizes to take home (this year in cardboard containers – yay, less plastic!).
Bagel Hound does bialys, too. Similar to bagels, minus the opening, Althaus begins these with a slightly smaller portion of dough. He creates an open dimple in the center without pushing completely through the dough. Before baking, he spoons dollops of prepared mixtures into these openings. Althaus imagines future collaborations with local growers of fresh produce to create seasonally-inspired fillings.
With tight space constraints it’s tough for Bagel Hound to accommodate summer’s crowds, yet they do offer choices for bagel fillings, including egg and tuna salad, BLTs and lox. In the off-season they add pre-made breakfast sandwiches. Dictated by the chef’s fancy, each combo includes eggs, and some combination of cooked meats and cheese layered between two bagel halves. Snowy Owl hot and iced coffees and bottled drinks add to the fare.
Plus there’s merch: black and white baseball hats, tees, sweatshirts, onesies and neon orange knit hats. Most are emblazoned with the slogan Death by Bagel and the image of a giant bagel straddling a body. The graphic is an homage to the beloved Frank Cain. It was the logo of Cain’s business, Uncle Frank’s Donuts, a cult coffee hangout once at the location of present day Ceraldi’s. Originally created by Althaus’ mom, the Provincetown artist Susan Baker, “It was easy for her to sub in a bagel for the donut in the artwork,” says Althaus.
Bagel Hound has consistently donated bagels to local organizations to help stem food insecurity. Over the winter months when they opened only for random pop-ups announced on social media, Althaus also left wrapped bagels outdoors after hours. Using an honor system box, there was a sign posted with prices, but also noting to leave what you could and nothing at all if you couldn’t pay at all. “This system worked beautifully and was appreciated by those who used it,” says Althaus.
On the wholesale side, Bagel Hound bagels will continue to be featured at the Salty Market in Truro and Viv’s Place in Orleans, and will soon debut at Snowy Owl locations. “We don’t want to extend our reach too greatly though, and not be able to satisfy demand,” says Althaus.
Bagel Hound Provincetown opens in the spring of 2023. Much smaller than their current location, this peanut-sized shop at 385 Commercial Street will be a point of sale for the bagels and other products created and baked in Wellfleet. Althaus sees a niche he imagines their bialys may fill. Using local ingredients, perhaps mushrooms raised in Truro by Uli Winslow, stuffed bialys may become the next street food to munch while strolling Commercial Street.
Equally exciting, Bagel Hound hopes to be a vendor at multiple farmers’ markets. Follow Bagel Hound’s social media to learn the locations, days and times of the Cape Cod markets that they will attend for the 2023 season.
Their culinary adventures ever evolving, Claire Adams and Ellery Althaus love sharing good food with the community where they’ve made their home.
Writer Michelle Koch absolutely remembers tasting her first bagel at the age of two sitting in a cardboard box house with a friend who lived in the apartment upstairs from hers. Wearing paper crowns they also dined on slices of cheese wrapped around little pickles. She remembers them thinking this was the coolest thing ever.
Bagel Hound
955 Route 6, Wellfleet
385 Commercial Street, Provincetown (opening spring 2023)
bagelhound.com
