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To toast or not to toast?

That was the question up for debate when Dan guest hosted a special all-food edition of The Leonard Lopate Show recently.

No matter where you get your bagels, the controversy over bagel toasting is real. Is the toaster the enemy of all good bagels or is toasting a legitimate means of resuscitating stale ones?

Food science guru Kenji Lopez-Alt (above), of Serious Eats, has strong feelings:

"Toasting a good bagel will eliminate everything that made that bagel good," he argues. "Why don't you just go buy a bag of bagel chips?"

Cookbook author and food blogger Deb Perelman, of Smitten Kitchen, admits that toasting can improve a "bad" bagel (ie, from a grocery store). But she warns bagel toasters to proceed with caution:

"A really great bagel has this dense chewiness inside but...if you add the toasted level to it, you're really taking a lot of that away."

Listen in to this bonus episode to hear Dan, Kenji, and Deb's strategies for bagel preservation, resuscitation, and (most important) consumption.

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Music in this episode from Black Label Music:

- "Hip Hop Slidester" by Steve Pierson

Photos: FlickrCC/Matt DeTurck; FlickrCC/Magalie L'Abbe; Vicky Wasik (courtesy of Kenji Lopez-Alt)