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The Plain Bagel Rule: How naked bread is the ultimate test of a bakery

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The Plain Bagel Rule: How naked bread is the ultimate test of a bakery

Bagels on display at Katz’s Delicatessen in Manhattan.

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Bagels on display at Katz’s Delicatessen in Manhattan.

Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images

People really identify with what they eat. Our taste buds can even take on a personality. Seeing strangers on social media eat what we enjoy makes us feel part of a community. We get worked up when others misrepresent or disparage our favorite food. (Look no further than the impassioned foodies behind the evolution of the bagel emoji.)

This societal pressure is why I used to be ashamed about my plain-Jane bagel order. Why — given the exciting, ever-growing array of flavors out there — would my go-to be the plain bagel, the breakfast equivalent of vanilla ice cream? I must have an unrefined palate that has not matured beyond Uncrustables and Goldfish.

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So to dismiss any judgments suggesting I might have boring taste buds — and thus less of a personality than Wonder Bread — I have landed on some pretty airtight logic.

The naked bagel is a litmus test for the quality of an establishment. Just as a true chef must prove her technique with a simple omelet, so too can a humble bagel reveal the shortcomings of a baker without the crutch of seasonings.

More and more, variety and flamboyance are crowding out the plain bagel. Sometimes the only options left in the bakery case are poppy seed and sesame seed. There might be an errant rainbow bagel, jalapeño cheddar or maybe a mystery flavor that I’m pretty sure disqualifies the food from being a bagel. If there are plain bagels, there’s always the risk that the plains may have gotten too cozy with the everything bagels. Worse, there are those who dare to corrupt the plains by scooping out their chewy insides.

There’s no religious, geographical or cultural precedent that explains my bagel preference. I crave a dense carbohydrate as much as the next serotonin-deprived human. But I do not like my bagel to come with distractions. How can anyone appreciate the integrity of the doughy bread ring when tiny kernels of sesame or poppy are competing for attention? It’s simply impossible to disguise or enhance a bagel that isn’t quality in the first place.

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Cream cheese is loaded onto a bagel at Pick a Bagel in Manhattan.

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Cream cheese is loaded onto a bagel at Pick a Bagel in Manhattan.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

This purist makes the sliced bagel the perfect blank canvas for whatever butter, schmear or cured fish comes next.

In fact, the Plain Bagel Rule applies not only to boiled bread. Sauce on a burger? Don’t need it if the patty is too good to mask.

We owe the bastardization of bagels to Connecticut businessman Harry Lender and his sons, who understood the power of branding. To help sell a hole-shaped bread largely maligned as an “ethnic food” and enjoyed by Eastern European immigrants, the Lenders introduced cinnamon raisin, onion and garlic bagels to the masses when they “bagelized” America during the 1970s.

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It was Harry’s son Murray whose antics in marketing the frozen product eventually made him the face of Lender’s Bagels. According to bagel historian Maria Balinska, Murray Lender “stopped at nothing to really publicize their bagels.” His publicity stunts included jumping up on his desk and pulling down his pants to reveal “buy Lender bagels” on his underwear, dyeing bagels green for St. Patrick’s Day and serving up an oval-shaped bagel to Oval Office resident Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Lenders’ twisted takes were a long way away from the bagels in Krakow, Poland, as described for the first time in 1610. Back then, bagels — believed to be a descendant of the pretzel — were a fixture of Jewish culture, as they are today. But the bagel’s center hole was wider and the dough tougher.

There was no need to smother something that was already special to begin with. Hinting at the simple bagel’s luxury status, the Jewish elders in Krakow had passed on instructions about the proper time to consume bagels: They were to be eaten as part of the ceremonious rituals of the birth and bris of a baby boy.

With time, America has doubled down on food maximalism with its pollution of perfectly good culinary staples. KFC’s reprise of the sodium-laden Double Down perverts the classic fried chicken sandwich. You can now get everything-bagel ice cream. This elaborate fare is undoubtedly stunt food designed to draw buzzy lines out the door and for Instagram likes and TikTok virality. And we reliably gobble it up for the experience, the selfie, the irony, the feeling of belonging — or all of the above. Are our taste buds that bored? Or are we bored with ourselves?

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‘Wait Wait’ for September 30, 2023: Live in LA with Bob and Erin Odenkirk!

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‘Wait Wait’ for September 30, 2023: Live in LA with Bob and Erin Odenkirk!

This week’s show was recorded at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, with host Peter Sagal, official judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis, Not My Job guests Bob and Erin Odenkirk and panelists Jess Klein, Karen Chee, and Maz Jobrani. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.

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Bob and Erin Odenkirk take a selfie in California

Bob Odenkirk/LEDE Company

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Who’s Bill This Time
NFL: Taylor’s Version, All That Glitters, Three Strikes

Panel Questions
A Spy By Any Other Name

Bluff The Listener
Our panelists tell us three stories of the origin of a name, only one of which is true.

Not My Job: We quiz Bob and Erin Odenkirk on Kirkland Brand products
Bob Odenkirk is a comedy legend and his daughter Erin might be even funnier. They join us to talk about Zilot, their new book of poetry for kids, and to answer our three questions about Kirkland, Costco’s house brand

Panel Questions
Who’s A Bad Boy, Lose Your Voice

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Limericks
Bill Kurtis reads three news-related limericks: Identical Dental, Uninvited Guests, Walk Upon A Star

Lightning Fill In The Blank
All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else

Predictions
Our panelists predict who will go on strike next.

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Jada Pinkett Smith Responds to Arrest in Tupac Murder Case

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Jada Pinkett Smith Responds to Arrest in Tupac Murder Case

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Nevada grand jury indicts witness in killing of Tupac Shakur

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Nevada grand jury indicts witness in killing of Tupac Shakur

Rapper Tupac Shakur attends a voter registration event in South Central Los Angeles, Aug. 15, 1996. Las Vegas police said they have made an arrest, Friday, Sept. 29, 2023, for the first time in the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur.

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Rapper Tupac Shakur attends a voter registration event in South Central Los Angeles, Aug. 15, 1996. Las Vegas police said they have made an arrest, Friday, Sept. 29, 2023, for the first time in the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur.

Frank Wiese/AP

LAS VEGAS — One of the last living witnesses to the fatal drive-by shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas was charged with murder with use of a deadly weapon Friday in the 1996 killing, a long-awaited breakthrough in a case that has frustrated investigators and fascinated the public ever since the hip-hop icon was gunned down 27 years ago.

A Nevada grand jury indicted Duane “Keffe D” Davis in the killing, prosecutors announced in court Friday. Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo said a grand jury had been seated in the case for “several months.” DiGiacomo described Davis as the “on-ground, on-site commander” who “ordered the death” of Shakur.

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The charges were revealed hours after Davis, 60, was arrested this morning while on a walk near his home, according to DiGiacomo.

Davis has long been known to investigators and has himself admitted in interviews and in his 2019 tell-all memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” that he was in the Cadillac from which the gunfire erupted during the September 1996 drive-by shooting. Shakur was 25 when he was killed.

Las Vegas police raided a home in mid-July in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson that is tied to Davis. Police were looking for items “concerning the murder of Tupac Shakur,” according to the search warrant. They collected multiple computers, a cellphone and hard drive, a Vibe magazine that featured Shakur, several .40-caliber bullets, two “tubs containing photographs” and a copy of Davis’ memoir.

Clark County District Judge Jerry Wiese denied Davis bail.

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It wasn’t immediately clear if Davis has an attorney who can comment on his behalf. Davis hasn’t responded to multiple phone and text messages from The Associated Press seeking comment or an interview in the more than two months since the house raid.

Shakur was in a BMW driven by Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight in a convoy of about 10 cars. They were waiting at a red light when a white Cadillac pulled up next to them and gunfire erupted. Shakur was shot multiple times and died a week later at the age of 25.

The rapper’s death came as his fourth solo album, “All Eyez on Me,” remained on the charts, with some 5 million copies sold. Nominated six times for a Grammy Award, Shakur is still largely considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time.

In his memoir, Davis said he was in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac and had slipped the gun used in the killing into the backseat, from where he said the shots were fired.

Davis implicated his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, saying he was one of two people in the backseat. Anderson, a known rival of Shakur, had been involved in a casino brawl with the rapper shortly before the shooting.

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After the casino brawl, “Mr. Davis formulated a plan to exact revenge upon Mr. Knight and Mr. Shakur” in his nephew’s defense, DiGiacomo said.

Anderson died two years later. He denied any involved in Shakur’s death.

Davis revealed in his memoir that he first broke his silence in 2010 during a closed-door meeting with federal and local authorities. At the time, he was 46 and facing life in prison on drug charges when he agreed to speak with them about Tupac’s killing, as well as the fatal shooting six months later of Tupac’s rap rival, Biggie Smalls, also known as the Notorious B.I.G.,

“They offered to let me go for running a ‘criminal enterprise’ and numerous alleged murders for the truth about the Tupac and Biggie murders,” he wrote. “They promised they would shred the indictment and stop the grand jury if I helped them out.”

Shakur was feuding at the time with rap rival Biggie Smalls, who was fatally shot in March 1997. At the time, both rappers were in the middle of an East Coast-West Coast rivalry that primarily defined the hip-hop scene during the mid-1990s.

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Greg Kading, a retired Los Angeles police detective who spent years investigating the Shakur killing and wrote a book about it, said he’s not surprised by Davis’ arrest.

The former Los Angeles police detective said he believed the investigation gained new momentum in recent years following Davis’ public descriptions of his role in the killing, including his 2019 memoir.

“It’s those events that have given Las Vegas the ammunition and the leverage to move forward,” Kading said. “Prior to Keffe D’s public declarations, the cases were unprosecutable as they stood.”

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