This episode brought to you by Appeal, helping you to enjoy your fruits and vegetables at peak freshness and reduce food waste. Learn more at appeal.com, APEL.com. This week on Meet and Three, we dive into the science behind munchies, the history of coca, the therapeutic powers of psychedelics, and mushroom infused recipes. One of the biggest questions we get asked a lot is does heat degrade psilocybin? The coca leaf was used as a sacred plant.
So as a plant that could communicate human beings with gods or mother nature. What you can start to appreciate here is that cannabis is activating and hijacking the system throughout the body. Tune into Meet and Three, HRN's weekly food news roundup wherever you get your podcasts. And you know, sometimes we go over. Nastasia might bump off if we go over because she hates it.
She'll give you the book of goodbye. Speaking of which, we have uh from her undisclosed location is somewhere in Southern California, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? Good. Yeah, yeah, we have uh John uh is back in his customer service Heidi Hole in the uh upper east side of Manhattan.
How you doing, John? Yeah. We have Matt in his Rhode Island booth. We're doing the COVID, we're all over the map. How you doing?
Mm-hmm. Checking off an extra state for you. Yeah, yeah. Rhode Islander Providence Plantation. And here, we don't know what state we're, but we have special guest, Melissa Weller here today, talking about her new book, A Good Bake: The Art and Science of Making Perfect Pastries, Cakes, Cookies, Pies, and Breads at Home.
Welcome. Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me. Where are you right now? I'm still in the same place as always.
I'm in Brooklyn. I'm in Williamsburg. Ah, nice. All right. Like which part of Williams?
I mean, you don't have to say exactly. I'm not saying you have to like call out with the city. I don't mind. Anyone can anyone can know. It doesn't matter.
I am in, I'm on Bedford Avenue, close to North Eighth. Geez, what's up, Fancy Fance? What's the fanciest person? You're the fanciest person in the whole world. Jeez.
I try. Do you know? I used to work in that neighborhood in the in the like early to mid-90s. Oh wow. Yeah.
And uh a little bit different. Yeah, a little bit different. I've been in the same apartment for 16 years. 16 years. So what does that take you back to?
2004. Okay, so 2004. All right, okay. So uh was Plant Eat Thailand still existing back then? It was.
It had some kind of like swing, like swing chairs. Yeah, so for those that you don't know, like Williamsburg was kind of an industrial, it was like half industrial, half residential. There were still some old like kind of Polish places. There was um a thrift store right off the subway where you know I used to go buy pants when I shredded my pants at the Brooklyn Brewery was over there, still is. Uh I I used to work for a uh famous sculptor named uh uh John Kessler, whose studio was over there.
And uh yes, we used to go there, but like the restaurant that everyone was like Pliny Thailand. That was like the height of eating in Williamsburg. So, oh, plenty Thailand. Oh, oh not planet, it's like plan eat. Anyway, and it and like, and then like they were like a little hole in the wall, and then they went through a renovation and they got big and they had some sort of sculptural boat in the middle of their thing.
And it was like the place. And then it just went away, right? I yeah, it's gone. I don't I don't even know what's there now. I haven't actually been down that street for a little bit.
Yeah, and my memory gets blurred because it was so long ago, but um I can't remember. Was Cash's Williamsburg or is that Greenpoint? No, that was Williamsburg. Yeah, I think that was Williamsburg. Is that also gone?
It I don't think it no, it's not there anymore. Yeah, yeah. And the thrift store's gone. The thrift store is a Chase Bank now. Oh, jeez.
Yeah. This is like this reminds me, uh, like, did you guys see that like a couple of days ago Bob Dylan sold his uh entire song catalog for $300 million? Yeah. Oh wow. Yeah, I can't wait till like Chase Bank has Bob Dylan songs for their thing or whatever kind of cash grab, like lunacy.
And the thing is the guy's still alive, he's gonna have to turn off his TV and like turn off the internet so that he doesn't see. I mean, it's only a matter of time before there's like a uh a G.I. Joe tambourine man, you know what I mean? Like you know, no, I don't know. Every time he sees that, it's just gonna be like that is the sound of money.
Yeah, so like the idea that that thrift store, which was not a bad thrift store, by the way, it was pretty I donated many things to it, yeah. And it was right there, and it was an old school one, so like it wasn't like it wasn't one of these thrift stores where you walk in and you're like, Oh, that sweat is nice, $50. What? No, it was like a a thrift store, and like you could get like if you needed a pie plate, because how many of you okay? Let's let's get into this for a second before we get into the book.
Melissa, how many times does happen? It doesn't happen to you because you specify glass pie plates, right? So yeah, well, we'll talk about this. I'm sure because like whenever I take a pie to someone's house, basically they get to keep the pie plate. So I can't go through glass like that.
That's true. That's true. Although I do use aluminum like in a bakery, so I don't have to worry about that too. Do you use black aluminum or do you use the regular silvered aluminum? The silver aluminum that you can buy at a bodega.
Oh yeah. No, it's fine. If you know how to bake with it, it's fine. But you know, for home, if you want to be perfect, um, get a glass plate. Like dimples and everything, like a Greek salad tin, or do they make one specially for pies?
They make one specially for pies. All right. Okay. So, like, how do you so for those of you that like uh don't think about cheat trays or whatnot, you you have to adjust how you bake to the stuff that you're using. So if you use something shiny, it affects very much like how brown the product is gonna get because it you're reflecting away all the radiant heat from the oven.
So how do you compensate if you're gonna use glass, which although it takes a while to heat up, is a is fairly good at absorbing radiant heat. So, you know, that's gonna give you a a particular kind of brownness on the bottom of the crust. How do you adjust when you're switching to shiny disposable aluminums for your dirtbag buddies? Yeah, I I actually I think I use those aluminum tins primarily at work. So I have a convection oven, so the bake time's different in the convection oven than it is at home.
So actually, I'd have to think, I think I probably bake them about the same length of time, same amount of time in the convection oven with the aluminum, but then that that gets a little bit more complicated because when I'm baking pies for for work, I actually uh freeze the I make a a a large batch of pies and then I freeze them all, and so I'm baking them from frozen in an aluminum tin versus just one pie in a glass pie plate at home. So you're saying it's like not instantly mentally translatable, like what they're so many differences. Yeah, I can't do that right now. Yeah, all right. Well, let's for those of you that for those out there that are not familiar with uh Melissa's work.
By the way, we we have like so much like almost overlap in our lives, it's crazy. I know, yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. I was thinking about the French Culinary Institute. I think we were almost there at the same time.
Well, you I came on probably right after you graduated. Well, let's go through some people. First, so first so first of all, you you started as a chemical engineer in Pennsylvania. You're from Pennsylvania, right? Correct, yes, I did.
And I started work as an engineer in Pennsylvania. What kind of Pennsylvania are you from? Are you like a eastern or western Pennsylvania person? I'm central, central Clearfield County, Clearfield, Central, West of State College. Okay.
All right, all right. But then you you went to work like literally as a chemical engineer in Allentown where they were shutting all the factories down, it's getting very hard to stay. AA exactly, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, what were you what were you chemically engineering?
What was your what was your specific? Hydrogen and carbon monoxide plants for um petroleum refining. Whoa. Uh I didn't know that was a big business in Allentown. I always think of that as like Elizabeth or like you know, closer to the coast.
They they they did a lot of refining stuff over there. It wasn't ref there, wasn't refining happening at it was at air products, so there wasn't refining happening there, but all of the design was happening there, and then all of the plants were located around the world. So I traveled to Houston a lot that year, the year I graduated from college. I was going to Houston all the time, and once I went to Korea, and another time I went to um Puerto Rico, it's just all over the place. You know who else has a an Allentown connection or almost Easton connection is Nastasia.
Oh my mom was born there. Well, my mom lived there, yeah. Oh wow. Wow. That's that's why Nastasi will never buy an off-brand crayon.
Only Crayola. All right. So then you move from there to San Diego, and that's when you decide like crap on this, crap on this chemical engineering stuff. Like you didn't use you weren't weren't down with it anymore. Like, what was the career change like?
Because I think we get a lot of career changing. It took a while, actually. I actually moved to Berkeley to San Francisco, and I got a job in uh I got a I got a couple of jobs in the front of the house at different restaurants in San Francisco, and I tried to make that work, and that lasted for a few months, and then I got cold feet, and I started to look for an engineering job, and that took me to San Diego. Um, and I worked as an engineer in San Diego for a couple of years, and I just didn't like it, obviously. Um, and I wanted to do something more, I wanted to do cooking and I wanted to be creative, and so it was in San Diego that I started volunteering to work at this nice fine dining restaurant.
Um, it's a very small restaurant, and they needed somebody to do um pastry, so that's what I did. Now, were you this is so funny? Uh I don't think I've mentioned this on on on the air before, but um, I was when I graduated from from college, I was a paralegal. I was the world's worst, world's worst paralegal. And I was like, to hell with this.
Because at home, like I was baking bread all the time is what I was doing for fun. Oh wow. Yeah, this is in like 90 whatever, ninety three and uh ninety-four. And um, you know, there wasn't a lot of information, there wasn't the internet, I wasn't very good at it. That's not the point.
But like there was a bakery in New Haven, because you know, we stayed in in town after we graduated because my wife had like a really good job at she was my wife at the time, she was my girlfriend, but she was working for Caesar Pelleys, who's a great architect anyway. So, like I had to stay in town. I was a crappy crab. I was so bad at being a paralegal. I'm just not good at it.
Um I think I was awful at being an engineer. I hated my job. I had to spec out safety valves for these large plants, and I I hated it. I just wanted to be able to do it. Well, you gotta be careful about it.
I mean, you gotta be careful, you know. Yeah, you have to be very careful. I was the I was my first job was as a safety engineer. Yeah, well, that's an important job. Yeah, yeah.
You had to figure out how much how far the if the safety relief valve released, how far and in what direction would the carbon monoxide plume vent into the atmosphere? And I had to go through all of these parameters to make sure that the valve was placed in the right angle. That doesn't sound yeah. So it makes me feel comfortable that the entry-level position for anywhere is a safety engineer. Hey, hey, look.
Throw the new guy at this, yeah. Just because she was entry level doesn't mean she wasn't skilled at it. I I didn't like it, but I I did my I was good at my job. I probably I'm pretty self critical, but I I I remember we had to be reviewed, and I thought I did a horrible job, and my my boss is like, Why are you being so hard on yourself? You did fine.
Um I I think that's that's the sort of the story of my life. Have uh uh okay, well so so real quick, I I threatened to leave my job and become a baker and I had it all lined up. I was going to go work, but the thing is I couldn't get up at five in the morning. You know what I mean? Like and I ended up doing database design instead, and that's how I paid to become the person that I had for those people.
But yeah, I came like within like a hair's breadth close of like saying crap on it and going to work for who is the best, you know, the best bakery in um New Haven at the time. Oh yeah. That's so similar to me, actually. Yeah. Yeah.
So like, but did you have to do it at like 4 a.m. or were you able to work like normal pastry people at like hours? What were you doing? I didn't. Well, I think I'm it's easier for me to wake up early.
I'm not very good at staying up late. And so some of the jobs, I think my well, the first job that I had in the restaurant industry in San Francisco was at Rubicon, and it was a hostess job, and and it wasn't early or late. It just required people skills and being friendly to people. And I and it's not that I'm not friendly to people, I'm a little bit introverted, but I it wasn't a great, it wasn't a great fit at all. And it it was like I hardly made any money, and I'm I was just like, what am I doing?
And I got cold feet and I quickly moved back into engineering. Yeah, host is so tough. It's so tough. You just don't make any that's why, like, you know, when it's the owner, like the owner, like the owner FOH does it, like that's one thing. Yeah, but like you just don't make a lot of money.
You have to like you have to like look really presentable. You're the first thing people see when when they show up. You have to be nice to people, you get all the abuse from the person that can't get the table, and you just don't make that much money. And you're the first person cut in the FOH. It's crazy.
I don't understand it. I have a lot of respect for people doing the host job, you know? Yeah, it was, and I think, you know, I think when I started, I was like, well, I just want to take a job and work my way up and I want to learn about how restaurants work, but I I would have taken a server job. I just had no skill set at that time. And the host is the job that's like the entry-level front-of-the-house job, or was at the time.
That was the only thing I could get. And it just, it was like, I didn't, it was it was pretty miserable. That's mostly what I remember. I remember carrying platters of drinks to people's table. Um, if they were at the bar and I had to move their drinks to the dining room.
And I mean for me, that was super stressful. I'm like, I'm gonna spill the drinks. Um now I think it's sort of I can't believe, you know, well, now is now, but back then that was like in the 90s, that was in the late 90s. That was pretty stressful, and I just didn't like it. Yeah, yeah.
I don't blame you. So then you you decide you're gonna uh you're gonna go to uh culinary school, and you ended up in New York at uh my old uh institution, the French Culinary. And you did the pastry program, right? Yeah, I did. I was there in 2004.
Yeah, I did the pastry program. I loved it. Yeah, it's such a sh look that like in 2004. So I I got I came on at the end of 2004. Um that school that school is really firing on all cylinders, man.
The the the chefs there were so good. Like uh who did you have for pastry? Do you remember? I had Tony Lynn Dickinson. I she was amazing.
And Pierre Rodriguez, too. Yes, so awesome. Love care. They were a team, actually. He had just started, and so they worked together, and I just I loved it uh so much.
I learned so much from both of them. Chef Kier, ex-monk. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Uh no, though they're they're they're great. Uh it's such a shame what what happened. They're closing down there. The end of that, the official end of the of the program is in December. I'm probably gonna go one more time because the museum, um, the museum, like they donated their library to the museum.
And guess what else the Museum of Food and Drink has? We have all the old DVDs of all of the old demos. Oh wow. Oh wow. I used to love those demos.
I remember Jacques Peypin. He did so many amazing demos there. I was really drawn to that. Oh yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I mean the guy is what is he, like a million? What is he? He's like a head in a Futurama jar at this point. I think you can still bone a chicken in like 17 seconds or something like this. Um anyway, yeah, the FCI FCI was uh all right, so so you go from there, and then you went, did you go directly to Babbo from there?
No, I had a little job in between. I was working at Chelsea Market at this petisserie called Goopal and DeCarlo, and I was making croissants there. Um and that wasn't a good fit for me. And I it lasted for a few months and then and then I started looking for like the right job. And I really wanted to work in a bakery, but at that time in 2004 and early 2005, there weren't a lot of good bakeries to choose from in New York.
And so I I was reluctant to take a restaurant job, but I really wanted to work with Gina De Palma and Bobo was such a happening restaurant at that time that when I saw the job opening there, I'm like, oh I I I really want to do this job, even if it's not at a bakery, I'll learn a lot. Um and and it just it opened up so many doors for me. I just I worked so hard in that job and and as a result I the doors just opened and and Gina, my mentor, just you know, helped me get whatever job I wanted afterwards. Now she used to come back and do demos and events at the FCI a lot. Did you meet her there?
Like when she was doing a demo or something? Or did you use it separate? I didn't. I only I met her when I trailed for the job at Babo. I hadn't met her before, but I was familiar with her work.
And I went to eat. I I went to Baba before my trail so I could try the desserts. Um and I I used to do that at a lot of different places back then. It's just go sit at the bar and order dessert so I could see what different chefs were doing. And I I really loved she was doing, she was very classical, but she was also employing a lot of savory ingredients, and that was new at that time.
There weren't that many chefs who were doing that, and I was really drawn to that. And so I trailed with her and it we just hit it off and and I just started working there right away, pretty much. Yeah, for those of you that aren't familiar, uh Gina De Palma was a like among pastry chefs, just like a revered figure. Like everyone always kind of got the opinion that somehow she always, even though she was well known, she always managed to get like a little bit snubbed by like uh oh yeah, by I don't know, awards and whatever else. I mean, it's not that she wasn't recognized, but everyone who knew her work always kind of felt that she was getting a little bit snubbed.
Do you agree? Yeah, absolutely. That was absolutely the case. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It wasn't until her cookbook came out that she was she finally got the recognition that she deserved. Yeah. And she was around in the era of the famous pastry chef. So, like again, for people who don't, you know, remember, like from about 2000 and one or two to about two thousand and eight was like the was the decade of the pastry chef, really.
Like they were like every, you know, uh in terms of public awareness. Yeah, you're right about that. No, that's so true she was Claudia Fleming's sous chef at Gramercy Tavern who you also call out her book as being an influence for you yeah it's no exactly and I think that that I think knowing that Gina had worked for Claudia was a big factor in in wanting to also work to in wanting to work for Gina yeah and and I only knew her tangentially like I met her a couple of Gina uh but uh you know she you know tragically got sick uh with cancer died you know very very young and like continued to work while she was sick right it was crazy wasn't it yeah she was yeah no it's she she was diagnosed with cancer in 2008 and then she passed away in 2015 and and for most of that entire time she was working yeah yeah it's nuts it's nuts anyway so go look up her work check check out her work pastries universally she's universally revered in the field uh at the time while while she was working universally wouldn't you say that's true or no I absolutely yeah absolutely so then from Babo you go to work with uh everybody's favorite bread lunatic uh Jim Leahy yes very very apropos yeah I mean what a nutbag right yeah he's crazy but I think that's part of what makes his bread good or what he's does his bread good yeah yeah Nastasia almost worked with with him almost took a full time job with him she was deciding between working with us at the French Culinary or with him over at Sullivan up at the in the 50. Were you up in the 50, 50 yeah 47th Street, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And she unwisely chose to come to the FCI, right, Stas? I was working with him. I was his come at the opening of Co. on 2020. Oh, wow.
Oh, wow. Okay. You overlapped for like a couple of months? Yeah. Remember, we go back and forth.
What a nut, what a nut. Anyway, he whenever he comes on the show, he like invariably curses a blue streak. And we shared an ed we shared an editor. Uh if you ever want to see like get like what you want to do is Maria Guarnicelli, who is that was Gina's editor too, by the way. Oh, really?
Um if I ever get to speak to Maria again, I'll have to ask about that. But like if Nastasia, Maria loves Nastasia, like loves her. I think she's she signed me so that she could have lunch with Nastasia on a regular basis. Would you say that's accurate? Yeah.
Oh wow. And uh in like Maria, so Maria Guarnicelli was one of the great editors, cookbook editors of all time. All right. Just see if you don't know who she is, that's who she is. Um, and her daughter is Alex Guarnicelli, well-known chef.
Um so, yeah, but she always scared the daylights out of me, Maria did. Like scared the hell out of me. And one of like Nastasia's favorite things to do is we'd get Maria in a room talking about Jim Leahy, and then like the next day we would get Jim Leahy in a room talking about Maria. That is a fun game. Oh my god.
I would can I be present the next time I want to be part of that. I mean, I don't I don't know if those those times will ever be recruited. No, that's true. No, it's true. Yeah, probably not.
I um I met Maria at a food conference, a food writing conference in back in like 2001 in Napa. I think that's a that that sort of is as long as I've wanted to write a cookbook. I went to a food writing conference back then and I met her there. I introduced myself. I was very I knew who she was.
I used to read the acknowledgments in all of the cookbooks that I was reading. So I knew who she was, and I just introduced myself and that was pretty much it. But then I actually met her basically the second day I started working for Gina. So I knew she was I knew her from Gina, and she never ever remembered me. I kept running into her and I'd be like, she was sort of like a superstar to me, um, because I really wanted to write a cookbook, and I'd be like, There's Maria.
And so I I I knew her through Gina, but she she never remembered me. And then I knew that she was doing Jim's book. And then and I was working for Jim when he was working on his book with Maria, which is sort of ironic. And then I think I ran into her at when I was working at Roberta, she was having a lunch. And finally I I told her again who I was, and I'm like, do you remember me?
And she I think I don't think she remembered me, but she was so flattered that she sent me a cookbook. Um Yeah, it was really nice. Yeah. Well she ate it Roberta's when Nastasia and I were talking with her because I think that was when Roberta's was was trying to pitch their book out to different publishing persons. Oh wow.
Okay, so then I was there making the bread at that time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so speaking of Leahy, while we're on the subject, one of the recipes in the book is inspired kind of by the no need stuff. So might as well knock that out while we're talking about it. Yes.
Yes. So uh you do a so instead of uh water, you use carrot juice in it, right? It's carrots, currants, pecan bread, and it's but it's all it's a classic, it's in a Dutch oven, very high hydration. Yes. Um, but so I wanted to like mention as you talk about it for a second one of the the interesting things to me about it are one it's even higher hydration than Leahy's like standard mix and you also call for bread flour instead of AP and I'm wondering A is that why you have the higher hydration and then you also use like rye flour on the outside as your as your dust how messy is that sucker to flip you want to talk about that recipe for a second oh and let's it's got different size air holes in the standard uh leahy so it's not as and I wondered whether it was the ingredients that did that it's not as one tiny bubble one giant bubble as a lot of his stuff it's more like a normal bread crumb so go okay oh yeah so let's talk about this bread so I it's it's with carrot juice and it's it's not sweet it's a savory bread and it was it I helped Jim with all of his when he was when I was working for Jim I would help him with his bread classes and he was teaching no need bread classes and he was tea he was all of the bread dough that we made at the bakery was no need bread dough um that we would bulk ferment for nine hours at a time and um and I was helping him with his classes and he was working on the recipes for his cookbook and this was this was this is a version of a recipe that he had done and I loved it.
All of Jim's flours at that time were coming from a silo and so it was like one type of flour and I think I just think over the years I've just adapted to flours that work I think that work best for like I think bread flour it takes a little bit longer for the gluten to break down with bread flour I thought that that worked better for this I generally try to use, well, no, that's not true. I'm very specific about my flowers, but I did think that the bread flour worked best for this dough. It wasn't sort of as like wet, if you will, as like a like if you used all-purpose flour. I use all-purpose flour. I use King Arthur all-purpose flour.
That's a pretty King Arthur All-Purpose Flour has a pretty high percentage protein content. I think it's more like 12.9%, which is, is it 12 or no, 11.9? So it's almost 12%. That's almost like bread flour. Um, and I I think Jim always used bran, wheat bran for everything.
And I like wheat bran. I think regardless of what you do with no-need bread, if it involves flipping and flour or bran, you're gonna have a mess in a little bit of a mess in your kitchen. And so um, I try to keep things simple and not have too many ingredients going on. I I feel the same about sourdough starters. I don't try to have six different starters, I try to keep it to just like one, maybe two.
Um professionally, yeah. It I I've had to deal with having all of these different sourdough starters professionally. It's a lot of work, it's a lot of labor. It causes a lot of, it's difficult for the bakery to maintain all of those. And so I generally try to like like wheedle them down to one liquid starter based on wheat flour and maybe a rye starter and then um a poolish generally.
Um, and so for this dough, it I it's you know, I have to say I love the photo in my book of the carrot breads beautiful, but man, that bread over fermented for me that day because I was trying to get all of the all of the products ready for photo shoot and also work. I was at High Street, so I was also in charge of the the production at High Street, and I remember that day, I was like, oh my god, it overfermented. Is it gonna be okay? And the crumb's really beautiful, but I was a little nervous. It wasn't as like I uh his bread definitely has some big holes and some little holes.
And if you do the if you do the regular white um white bread, if you will, um uh no need bread, you do get that variation. But I also think that I also think that there is uh and I'm just guessing here that there's residual sugar in the carrot juice that's causing it to ferment a little faster, and it it would be more responsible for and also the I'm going all over the place, sort of jumping all over the place, but I also think that the higher hydration also um is that true? See, I have to think through, I want to think through it. The higher the hydration, if you have a strong, if you have the right flour and a strong flour, it should be able to handle that. But I actually think that I probably fermented it a little long that day.
Or actually, not fermented, but proofed it too long, right? So you think that normally it would have like a little more of that big whole little hole thing? Yeah, I think normally it would, yeah. I mean, like, by the way, I like all kinds of bread crumbs. Like I know people go like crazy, they want one specific thing.
Yeah, as long as someone can control it and make it taste good. I mean, I'm for it. You know, I think that's yeah, no, I think that's the most important thing. It has to taste good, it has to look, I think it needs to have this like pretty like a beautiful rusticity to it. It's good, but I it the most important thing is how it tastes.
Um, speaking of which, well, we'll get to it later. So then after after Leahy, you go to work for a different kind of crazy, you go to per se. Yeah, that's definitely a different kind of crazy. I mean, one of one of the favorite people that uh Nastasia and I worked with at FCI went to go work for per se, and we're like, dude, you nuts. And that's crazy, right?
Yeah, it's crazy. It was so hard. I can't even begin to describe how how challenging it was. I learned so much. I'm so grateful for that experience, but it was really hard.
Yeah, and plus uh what was it like working in that sp in that space in the in the in the in the Time Warner building. I mean, that's just a the whole thing. It's like imagine being in that kind of a kitchen, but also like in that like the location. It seems like all kind of crazy, right? Or not?
It was it was hard. It felt like I felt like the products felt like where we were. I don't know if that makes sense, but it felt very the Time Warner Center is a bit like a shopping mall, and I felt like everything is on display, everything's perfect, everything looks perfect, and I felt like that's how my breads were too. They were on display, I was on display while I worked, and everything had to look perfect, and and generally it tasted good too. Right, right, right.
Yeah, no, but like in but it was so weird because you're in that area of like hyper control inside of per se, but then outside at the bakery, you're selling to people eating at cafe tables in a mall. Yeah, you know, yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think it's just interesting, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was hard. Yeah, yeah.
So then in and so you you were like, and uh you were the you were the head baker there, right? Yeah, I was, yeah. And then you went from there to Roberta's. Oh my god, what are you like? Yeah, I'm probably pretty crazy.
You know, I'll you know what? I'm I feel like I'm pretty ambitious with my career, and I really I like this opportunity at per se to be the head baker came up, and I have to say, I had hardly any experience baking bread and managing a team at the time that I was hired. Like I had only been working, I was hired in 2008. I started working at Bobo in 2005. That's only three years, and I only worked at Sullivan for one year, and they needed somebody who understood bread and understood fine dining and had that skill set.
And I I had a good tasting, I presented myself well, um, neat and tidy. Um, and and I was hired, but I wasn't prepared to manage even a small team at per se. There was so much pressure on my shoulders, and it was I it was a big learning curve for me. It was hard, but I'm grateful, I'm really grateful for the for the opportunity. But then I was pregnant, I got pregnant while I was at Per se and I wasn't sure how I was gonna handle my pregnancy, but I did leave per se and I took time off because I don't think I don't think it would have been realistic at all to have had a baby and continued to work as a head baker at per se.
I just don't see how it could have worked. I was working like 14-hour days, not taking it was lucky if I had a day off a week, and I don't know how you can divide your time between having a you can't have it all. I don't think you could have that job, that particular job, and have a newborn. And so I wasn't sure what I was gonna do. I was pretty burned out.
Um, and I was like, well, I'm burned out, but I still really want to make the kind of bread that I want to make. And right around that time I got uh I got an email or uh a text message from a friend of mine saying that Robert's was looking for a head baker, and that was appealing to me because I live in Williamsburg and it's not that far away. So and they didn't care what I did. Uh honestly. That checks out.
That checks out, yeah. Yeah, they said, I we don't care what you do, we just need you to sell some bread. Just make some bread for the restaurant. We don't care. And I was like, okay, well, this is like, this is like my free car to do whatever I want.
And I can create my own schedule around my child. And that was really like one of the most important things for me at that time was to create a schedule so I could be home as much as I could to take care of my son. And so I stayed there for a night. But Roberta's was definitely a different kind of crazy. But I also, you know, I also got to start to make my own things.
I don't feel like anything that I made at per se was, it's not true. I mean, I did make I did make my own breads there, but really something that reflected me, I feel like that was what happened at Roberta's, was that the products that the the bake bakery items that I was making really reflected me. So you think like Roberta's at its best, like as a concept. And so like, you know, I don't know, like I'm always with with Nastasia at Roberta's, and especially because we've been going for how many years, over 10. How many years we've 10, 10, 10 something years?
Yeah. Oh wow, yeah. We're like, how is this possible? Right? It's like, how like how are they not getting like they they're not following any rules?
How are they not getting shut down, et cetera, et cetera? How are they able to just like do all this stuff that doesn't make any sense, like in terms of you know, if if it makes sense from an outsider perspective, but if you're you know even like tangentially involved in the business, you look at it, you're like, how are they doing this and not getting like smacked around by the authorities at be or whatnot, but you're but at its best, it really you think allowed you to kind of be who you were. Like their lack of rules allowed you to be who you wanted to be. That's it, it's nice. Yeah, at the time I was baking in a wood-fired oven that was outside in a shipping container, and that's pretty illegal as far as I can tell.
Like there was no, there was there was no one was monitoring that oven. It was just sort of out there, and we'd build a fire in it, and then I'd go out in the in the early morning and clean it out and bake some bread in it. And I remember I remember we'd be careful, you know, like it's in the yard. This sounds awful to say, but the DOH would come by, but they would come by to Roberta's and not to the yard. Huh.
Um, and I think that that was sort of part of it at the time. But you know, there the rent, the rent was so low there. It was just incredible. I still remember the I seen the numbers, and I still remember the numbers, just incredible how low it was that it made so many things possible because the rent was so low. Well, they they uh didn't they Nastasia didn't they like redesign the entire courtyard to take advantage of a fancy pigeon that had like decided it was gonna live in that yard?
Yeah, yes. I don't remember that. It was like, or it seemed like that, like I don't know. Yeah, no, I would believe it. I believe it.
I maybe I was was I still there at that time, I'm not sure. That fancy pigeon, it was a very fancy pigeon. I'll have to say the pigeon was extremely fancy. So then you hooked up with major food group and did Sadels, huh? Yeah, yeah.
Do you know? I still I still haven't been because I know that I will bankrupt myself on salmon if I go. Oh, that's a good thing. Nastasia's been several times. Oh wow, okay.
Wow. So I I wanted to leave her, I was ready to leave Roberta's. So, you know, I'm a career changer. So I just remember I had just turned 40, and I was, it was New Year's Day. It was like two in the morning on New Year's Day, and I was like dealing with a lot of people who were still at Roberta's partying.
I was just trying to get my bake done. And I'm like, I'm sort of done with this. I'm done with this. I said I'm a grown-up now. I'm done.
I need to leave. I need to get my own business started. And so my idea was at the time was I'm gonna do something at I'm gonna sell bagels at the Williamsburg Smorkusburg while I work on a business plan. And I I knew that the bagels were a good idea, but I didn't know how, like, I didn't know if they how how they would catch on. And I just thought it was, oh, this is a good idea.
People want something small that they can take away at the at the Smorgesburg. And you know, at that point, New York magazine, um, uh Robin Riesfeld and and Rob Patronite were fans of the city. Great, great people, by the way. Great people. Yeah, I love them so much.
And they were the first ones to really write about my stuff, and they picked up that I was at the Smorgusburg, and they went with it and they included it in their magazine. And I it was through that article in the magazine that I was connected to an investor for the major food group who connected me to the major food group partners, and I dropped some bagels and sticky buns off to them. They were sold, and we agreed. I thought I we agreed to partner. I thought partnering with them was a good idea at the time.
And so we partnered in 2013, and we spent two years designing and recipe testing Sadels, and we opened it up in the fall of 2015. Yeah. So I have to say this. So for those of you that don't know, like Major Food Group is like uh Carbone, Therese, all of this, and anything they take on, they take on kind of in a in a big way. And this was like their, you know, your and their take on kind of like what would it, you know, kind of like deli on crack, right?
I mean, like, yeah, yeah. And uh, but it like the other thing is strange is that it was kind of like all your stuff in the daytime and then a different restaurant at night, right? Yeah, it was. It was like, oh yeah, it was like a a uh like a New York deli with bagels and locks during the day, and at night it was this Russian restaurant that it never never really caught on. Yeah, yeah.
Well, because you know what people like, they like bagels and locks, it turns out. It's true. I don't know whether you know this, uh, but you know, so now we have to get down to bagels. We're gonna have to have a little bit of a bagel uh thing. I I read through this book twice.
Yeah, I think I looked in the index. Yep, no bagels. No bagels. Are you contractually obligated to not write a bagel recipe? Oh, I held back on the bagels, they're in book number two.
All right, all right. Because you do have boiled doughs, you do do pretzels. Yeah, no, uh, the bagels are so there's so much for me to say about bagels, and to me, bagels are really savory, and I wanted to include more savory recipes with the bagels that they didn't feel like they belonged in this book. This book's more sweet. It's got sweet cookies, pies, laminated pastries, and I just felt like bagels deserved their own book.
So they're not gonna be. You have like, you know, you have some savory stuff in this book, though. I do, I do. But not the way that I felt that bagels, otherwise, it'd be like a thousand page book. So you're gonna do like a bagel only book for book two?
Book two is gonna be bread, and bagels are bread, by the way. And so, and so there will be sour like really sourdough bread, um, baguettes, bagels, like things that are like really more bread baker focused to bake at home and sandwich, and I'll probably do some fun sandwiches too, but not not really sweet things. So now on bagels, you uh I gather are not a fan of the Essa style puffy bagel. No, or you don't want to make it yourself. I'm not saying you hate them, but that's not what you're interested in making.
Let's put it that way. I yeah, I want to make good bagels that are true to New York. Well, but at this point, S has been around since what? And at this point, it is a New York style. That's true.
Um looking at yeah, no, that's true. You know, I mean, like, I get what you're saying, and like a lot of the old like who do you who do you like other than your own stuff? Who do you like in the city? I like absolute bagels. Oh, what's up?
Like, do you ever live up there? No, I've got people bringing them down to me. But the thing is, absolute, those guys started at Essa, they changed their stuff. They started. Okay.
Oh, that's interesting. Unless I'm getting confused. No, I believe that. I believe you. Yeah, that makes sense.
They're run by a Thai family, right? Yes, yes, they are. I've been getting their bagels and sort of looking at them, and I've been thinking about my own bagels, and I'm working at at GERTI right now, by the way, and we're working on a bagel recipe, and I'm excited about it because I wanted to change my bagel recipe a little bit and make it a little bit more. You know, what happened? What happened was I was making the bagels at Sadel's, and then I also made them at High Street on Hudson, and um what the owner of Bubbies came in, he read an article about me being at High Street, and he he had my bagels, and he started telling me about he grew up in the city, and he was telling me what bagels were like in like the 70s or 80s, and how they was just he used to just get this bag of like really hot, doughy like bagels, and he was just talking about how doughy they were, and I was really intrigued by what he said.
I'm like, you know, I really I'm always I I really love food food culture and food history, and I was like, I I'm really intrigued by this. But you know, my bagels aren't like that. I like my bagels, but I'm wondering if I changed them, how would I change them? Would I try to make them more like like those bagels you'd get in before they got really oversized, but like maybe they'd be like bagels from like the 80s size-wise, but have flavor to them. And so I've been thinking about that lately, trying to make them more like big York bagels.
Yeah, I mean, the 80s puffies bake puffy bagels as I remember them, a lot of them were like a little bit sallow and not just puffy, but like doughy in the under in the under baked in the gummy sense. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's how how are you baking the bagel? And I know bagels are trendy to bake right now with bread bakers, but like how do how are bagels are not supposed to be baked like a loaf of bread, actually, because people don't want an artisanal thick crust on them.
I feel the same about a baguette, actually, because those are those are such a thin piece of bread that if you try to achieve a really thick crust on them, like a bread baker would an artisanal loaf of sourdough, it's too thick. You're gonna tear your teeth out, and then that's not what people want out of a bagel. Um, they want something squishy and they want some doughess. It's just how much doughiness is the right amount of doughess. But do you do you like blistering on a on a bagel crust or no?
I do, but it really depends on the type of oven that you're baking it out of. What are your thoughts on the uh go-goy go? Well, you know, if you're I get blisters if I bake it in a convection oven really pretty easily. I don't get blisters when I bake it in a bagel oven. It's the way it's the way the dough is moving through the chamber.
Um, and I know that those are both types of convection, but there is some there is a difference, and I don't get blisters in a in a bagel oven. So I think it depends on the oven that you're using. Like if you're What do they bake bagels on? Rotary decks? They bake them on like revolving, yeah, rotary decks, exactly.
So that the deck goes around like a ferris wheel, um, and it has this like heat source at the bottom of the oven down, you know, down near the bottom, like like any home oven would. Um, and then the bagels just rotate on this deck um until they're baked. And what's I thought was really interesting because I did so much testing of bagels. Um, I did so much testing of bagels on um in a convection oven, a blodget, because that's what I had. But then when I switched over to this revolving tray oven, the bagels got really pale, they got shiny, they were shiny and pale.
They weren't taking on color just because of the way they were moving around in the oven. And then I would bring the bagels around to different bagel shops, and this is with Sadell's some RD before we opened, and I would bake the bagels in their ovens, and I'd use their kettles of water, and every bakery was offering me to add sugar to the water to some type of sweetener to the water, whether it's like barley malt syrup or brown sugar, everyone had their own concoction. I'm like, oh well, this is this is to brown it up. Exactly. I was like, this is pretty fascinating.
It's there's no other reason except to cause some browning. Um, and I thought that that was pretty interesting. Huh. It is interesting. Yeah.
Uh and so like all the people who freak out that you need malt, it's just any reducing sugar in that water is gonna is gonna do the browning for you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, what are your thoughts on the Montreal style of bagel? This is a I like the size.
I like, you know what? I love when the sesame seeds hit the wood-fired oven and they're toasted on the bottoms and the tops. I really think that that's that's cool. I think the I like the flavor there. I wish that they had more salt in the dough.
Um, and I don't I don't necessarily like how they're I if I remember the ones that I've had are are a little sweet, um, maybe a little too sweet for me. I like the size. What's with the lack of salt? Have you ever had anyone accurately describe why they do that, or is it just their ornery? I think it's just the way I don't, I think it's the way the recipe developed there.
And I don't think I think a lot of like, look at like maybe maybe I have too much of a salted palate at this point. Because if I if I go to Europe at well, when I was going to France and eating in France, I was noticing I'm like, wow, like my palate's really salty. I need more salt in a lot of things that I used to not need. And if you look at old recipes for like pastries, there's no salt. Salt's sort of a new thing.
I feel like more salt being added to baked goods is a newer, a newer thing. And I I just think it's the history of how salt came to be in the Montreal bagels, or there was no salt in the bagels. Some whoever whomever started making them just didn't make them with salt. Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes progress is progress.
Salt is a good thing. Yeah, I think so too. Speaking of progress, you uh you say that you've switched out a cornstarch for the for the vast majority are using arrowroot. You really think it's worth the extra money? Um, I like it.
It's not that much money, I guess. It's not that much more money. Yeah, I don't think I use that much arrowroot. It lasts a long time. Ditto for the cornstarch.
Like I'm not using those all the time. So you're not a fan of the cornstarch swap in a in a flour recipe. I yeah, I think I try to I try, you know, I do use cornstarch, but I think for the most part, if I can swap it out or try to swap it out, I'll I'll swap it out. Yeah. You really like my book.
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Learn more at appeal.com. Oh, uh, Chad had a question about ultra-low sodium diets. Any suggestions for baking for people on ultra-low sodium diets, bread in particular, but also other items. Salt is so vital for so many formulas, and I haven't found much way around it. Ah, I I remember at when I worked at per se, we had to accommodate every diet, and I remember I had a saltless bread.
I don't think that there's I think that you can, you know, you're not gonna get the same thing. You can totally reduce the amount of salt or maybe take it all out, and you're not gonna get the same product, and the bake isn't gonna be the same, and the browning isn't going to be the same. But that's not to say that you can't make a good loaf of bread without salt. And I remember at Sullivan Street Bakery, we made the um the green olive loaves and the green olive rolls. There was no salt in that dough because he relied on the salt from the olives.
And I really loved how and and that's true for Italian breads where there's a lot of like salty like ingredients or or cheese or whatever you're gonna put on the bread itself, that they don't salt the bread. And there's something about that that I like. I think I think if I was going to do more like salt-free baking, I'd start to explore like Tuscan style of breads because they don't use salt in their baking. Yeah, unfortunately for them, right? Yeah, maybe so.
I mean, I'm sorry, look, if you have a thing, you have a thing. I I don't mean to be a jerk about it. Uh but that's a tough one. Uh detest. I detest it.
That's pretty cool. I've had it in Tuscany. I'm like, oh, I have it in America and I hate it. Let me go to Tuscany. I'm sure it's good there.
Nope. Oh, wow. Do you eat it with salty things? Or you you're just eating it plain? I've tried it plain.
I have tried it with uh a nice pecorino. I have tried it with olives, and every time I've tried it, I was like, you know what would be nicer if this bread had flavor. Oh no. You know what I mean? Like I had the absolute bagels, and I was like, whoa, there's hardly any salt in this dough.
I th I was very intrigued by that. I was like, well, there really isn't much salt in these bagel in this bagel dough. And I'm like, that's very interesting. And sometimes I wonder, because I get a lot of accolades for my my stuff, but I'm like, is it because I'm using more salt? Like am I balancing the salt out?
And then, you know, I I wonder about that because I use more s I use more salt than than some bakers do. Yeah, 2.2. Like usually people top out at 2%, and you're at a 2.2. You're a full higher. 2.2 is exactly what Jim Leahy used.
And then I think I when I got to per se, they were like, no, no, that's not enough. You need to add more. And they were kept making me add more salt to the point where I'm like, no, absolutely not. So what's your standard? Like what's your what's your mental go-to per salt percentage?
Somewhere between 2.5 and 3, but not above three. But then if you have a lot of add-ins in your your form, and that's baker's percentage. So say you have a lot of nuts and seeds, then you take the total, the total weight of the dough, and you take the percentage at 1.1%. And I can cross compare that with like 2.5%, and I take the higher amount. So on salt, like anything over three is gonna start messing with the yeast though, right?
Yeah, it does. I remember because I got to experiment a lot with salt and dough at per se because everybody they the my boss has just wanted so much salt and and then the the the actual dough would start to be affected by the amount of salt. And I remember that the baker before me at per se, he's like, well, just say you're gonna add more salt, but make it the same, and then tell them that you added more salt and see if they taste it and like it. And if they say, Oh, this is good, then don't change the salt. So I think I did try that a couple of times.
It worked. Huh. Well, yes, I'm I'm usually like a almost like a flat two. Maybe I'll try going, I'll try going higher. Like my ment my mental, my mental brain, my my like recipe brain works at a flat two.
But I watched, you know, I would never I almost never use two at this point. I think I always assumed based on what I learned at Sullivan that it should be 2.2. And then because I was at per se, I was like went up to 2.5. I think I feel like tartine, I think Chad's formulas are at least 2.5. They're they're above two, I think.
I have to go back to the five. Do you have a lot of things? I'm only looking at his his cookbook recipes. I have had a loaf of his bread once, but I can't remember. I wasn't like, it wasn't like, oh, where where's the salt?
It just it felt really balanced to me. Um yeah. I use salted butter though, which I know you'd hate. Oh no, I'm not sure. That's the one thing I refer.
I refuse to b bow to professional uh. Oh, you mean when you're baking, you put it in your oh wow. Oh wow. I only stock one kind of butter in the house. Booker will not eat unsalted butter, and so I just do everything with salted butter.
Oh wow. Well, that makes sense. I have I get the fancy French like butter from Brittany, and I I the salted butter, and I I usually smear that on my toast. Oh nice. Well, speaking of uh that you have uh the all these recipes, which you know, I've never tasted one of these.
The Queen Queen Amand, which is spelled K-O-U I-G-N-A-M-A-N-N. Yes. So why they're first of all, in the re in the book, those things are just so freaking pretty. They're so pretty. You know what I mean?
You want to describe this? For it's a newer, it's a newish thing in the US. Yeah, it's a big one. But I'm sure John has had it because he's a Frenchie French cooker. It's a new trend in the US, and it comes from in it's comes from Brittany in France, and it's it's Breton.
Um, and so it translates to butter cake, broken, is it butter cake, because Brittany, part of France is known for their butter production. And so the Quinamon and Brittany are not like the trendy things in my cookbook. Um, they're like way more classic, big, large round ones, and just really full of butter and caramel and sugar. Um, I guess caramel caramel, not caramel in the tradition, like caramelized from the baking, actually. Um, and I I liked I liked the Quinamon that I had been trying around first in the city here, and then I was in France, and I was trying them in France, and I'm like, oh, these are really good.
And I think I just started playing around with the recipe. Yeah, but and the ones you have, it's like folded almost like a dumpling fold in. It's like lay layered and then folded in, so it has this kind of awesome look. Yeah. When you when you when you guys get her book, check it out.
It it's real pretty. It made me want to have one. But the one thing that I'm sure Nastasia would love to have, because she is a huge fan of this, you do a Concord grape pie. But what a pain in the butt that looks like. It's true.
It's a pain. I'm sorry. Nastasia, she freezes. She freezes Nastasia and then cuts each individual Concord grape in half and takes every freaking seed out. Yeah, I do do that.
But now you you can buy seedless Concords. I think they're called Concords. They're not real. They don't taste the same. No, they're not quite the same.
You're right. They don't have, they're not quite the same. But if you were so opposed to doing this with your grapes, but you just had to make a grape slab pie, you could get Mars grapes or Tomcord grapes. And I mean, Tom Tom Cords, Nastasia would punch me in the face if I handed her a Tomcord because she is like Nastasia Lopez is an aficionado of Concorde grapes. Ah, yeah.
And if you live in a place where Concords grow or near it, there is very little that is more intoxicating than walking into a farmer's market when the Concords hit. Yeah. And just having that boom, if you don't mind the bees. Because bees just like swarm in. Like in fact, um I remember we'd have a Concorde drink at the bar, and uh and we would open the packages from the farmer's market and bees would fly out into the bars.
Oh wow. Oh wow. Yeah, because yeah, at the market, you always have to be careful. And yeah. Yeah.
So the freezing is just to keep them in shape while you're cutting them. Yeah. Have you ever tried to take the seeds out of a Concorde grape? Because the skin separates super easily from the middle, but then you can't get the seeds out of the middle. They're like stuck there.
And the only way to get them out really, unless you want to eat the seeds. So I was at when I was at Baba, this was our pro this was our process. Every evening, um, while we were waiting for the dessert orders to come in, we had to, we had to grab a quart container of grapes and and and take the seeds out of them. We were making a schiacciata dessert at Babo. And then when I got to Sullivan Street Bakery, Jim was like, no, no, we're not doing that.
He just ate the grape seeds and all. Well, he's a lunatic. Yeah, sort of, yeah. Yeah. I I find Concord Grape seeds to be an unpleasant texture.
I agree. I can't I can't do it. I just don't want it. Yeah. But you know, uh if Nastasi and I ever work in a kitchen environment together to get where we have other people who will do that work for us when we'll try that recipe.
That's a good idea, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so also um, so other things that are uh interesting. Hala, you do a lot of stuff on hala.
You have uh like a lot of good braiding pictures. You have some severe braiding skills there. Yes, I do. Have you seen my hair? Uh no, not recently.
Yeah, I usually wear a bun and it's usually braided and well, that's sort of a joke. But I guess the braiding and the hala, yeah. I think I think that, you know, I have all of these different experiences um working in different different types of bakeries and restaurants here in New York. And I enjoyed making hala a lot. I like love my recipe.
Um, it's a sourdough hala, and I and I also spent a lot of time teaching teaching bakers how to braid the hala. And you know, that's to me that's the fun part of it. Yeah, I think I feel like a lot of people are going down a hala hole during this COVID time. So they should get your book and check out the braiding on it. Yeah.
A couple more things before before we before that we get kicked off. First of all, your hot dog buns, you don't use potatoes, starch, or flour, like you know, so like normally when I'm incorporating potato, use actual cooked potato in your hot dog buns. And get this. People, she cooks them, then uh lets them cool down, and then beats them with the skins on. She's using Yukons, but she beats them with the skins on.
What's that all about? What what what is there what well potatoes are starch, right? They just absorb into the dough. Um, and I think you know, I I had learned that a long time ago, I made a sourdough, uh sourdough potato loaf at per se. And that's that was the that was the process is you just to save time.
The mixer is so powerful. You don't try to don't try to mash the potatoes, you're just wasting time. Just throw, and I love the skins are so flavorful. Just throw the whole potatoes in, and there you go. And I I really loved that idea of using whole potatoes in the dough like that.
And I think even my gluten-free bread, my my think my trick is to put roasted potatoes in the dough because it just adds more flavor. It's also starch, it's like vitamin food for your, you know, for your dough. And right, right. Yeah. Well, and it's pre it's pre-cooked, so especially in the gluten-free, it's gonna give you the structure that you're not gonna have because you've already functionalized the starch.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but uh, so but this wouldn't work with burbanks though, because the skin's too thick, right? Uh I well, yeah. You you want something with a thin skin. And do you find that on your hot dog buns that you have to be more careful with the temperature with convection with the potato?
Do they get browner faster? Um, with the buns. Hmm, that's a good question. I haven't some of the yeah, I would say yes, absolutely. But I think I play around with the convection oven quite a bit with the baking, because I'm always I'm always a fan of trying to keep the the inside of it as moist as possible.
And when you're doing your baking in a convection oven, you've got the air circulating, things can get dried out. So I think I used to be I used to bake in the convection oven at 350 for like 15 to 20 minutes. And then recently I've increased the temperature to 375, and then I reduce the baking time because it doesn't take as long, and then it's darker on the outside and just more moist, a little moister on the inside. Oh, there's a there's a pan you have a a whole section on speaking of pains in the butt, but a very detailed section on panetone and in uh in in the book, including like how to put the skewers, how to turn it upside down. Yeah you have a hilarious, you have a hilarious uh part where you like in order to get the percentages normal, you literally say, take 220 grams of the dough and throw it away.
You're like I you're like, you don't have to throw it away. You can make donuts, just get it out, get it out, get it out of me. Make it go away. You know what I mean? It's a hilarious section.
That's true. I'm glad you're laughing about that because you know, I think when my editor saw that, she's like, People won't throw dough away, Melissa. And I think I just do everything in such large badges in the bakery, and this came from the bakery, and I was like trying to make it friendly for home bakers and trying to bring down the percentages, but I needed a certain amount to be like pre-fermented. And finally I'm like, no, no, no. We're just gonna do it the way I do it in the bakery.
And we don't really throw away a huge amount at the bakery. We have this little little extra piece, and usually I just give it to my team and they can make staff meal from it, or they have fun with it, they do whatever they want with it. And I was like, Well, what am I gonna do with this extra piece of dough? If I say throw the dough away in a cookbook, that's sort of sacrilegious. And so I was just trying to figure out what would I want to do with the dough if I had to make staff meal with the extra dough, and I think donut I like donuts, so yeah, if you have a fryer going for sure.
Yeah, so while we're on panettone, and it's like like it looks like a real deal recipe, and the pictures, everything looks real deal. Where do people get those liners anyway? Just get them on the internet now. Yeah, you can get them on the internet. I used to get them at New York Cake and Baking in the city.
I if it's still open, it probably isn't. It is still open, yeah. They've reopened, and I I feel that since they've moved locations, they're not as viciously mean as they used to be. Oh, yeah, no, that's true. They're it's very different at their new location.
And I think I used to hate the hell out of them. Yeah, I know. They're not very nice. Yeah, they can be mean. Um, and they're hurt with most people, and I think that they have changed.
They probably have a slightly different, maybe the staff is different, but yeah, you can get the panettone liner, panettone liners there, and you can get all different, they're all different sizes. I think you can get them on Amazon at this point too. Um, and I don't think they uh yeah, I don't think they have the giant no baby stroller sign anymore. I just like you know, dude, it's anyway, yeah. Yeah, all right, yeah.
But like, yeah, so like the turning upside down, otherwise the sucker's gonna deflate, right? Yeah, yeah, that's happened to me so many times at home. I'm like, oh damn it, like I just made this beautiful loaf of bread, and I just took it out of the oven and I wasn't ready to turn it upside down quite yet, and it already deflated. And that's one where you use bread flour for the structure, right? Yeah.
Exactly. Um so we have a question that's been floating around for weeks, and that I have not answered. I didn't answer any questions outside questions this week. But uh Michael Vahavi wrote in, uh, hey uh Dave and Nastasia, I've been making uh panettone this year using a stiff starter or a pasta madre. I'm hoping you can shed some light on why the stiff starter, and you wrote about this in the book, which is why I'm pitching this to you, on why the stiff starter is maintained in water and why it's necessary to give the occasional bath and very dilute sugar solution.
So far, it's been working and they have a great rise and low acid, but is all this necessary? It feels like nonsense folk science to me. Thanks, Mike from Toronto. So maybe you can talk about why it's stiff, which you talk about in the book, but then maybe whether some of these other things are actually necessary. Well, I think it's it's historical, right?
You had a stiff starter, and you were the baker and you had to do everything, and you're basically sleeping in the room where you're baking in. And so you needed something where you didn't have to feed it so much. So the less water and the more flour you give it, the stiffer it is, the less you actually have to feed it. It's actually it was it it made sense from like a workload, it made it easier. But you know, anytime you have something that's stiffer like that, you have a different flavor profile.
You usually have more acetic acid in in dough that has more stiffness because of the it ferments more slowly. It get it it has more bacteria and it produces acetic acid as a result. And so, but I think I think I wanted just an approachable, like if you're making it at home, you could go the route of making a really, really traditional panettone. And I wanted to do that, but I also wanted to make it approachable, like approachable for somebody at home, and approachable for me, actually. And so approachable for me means not have not converting because remember what I said in the beginning.
I really abhor when there are like five different starters that you have to maintain. And so there's no way I'm going to have uh uh a stiff starter going and a liquid starter going and a whole wheat stiff starter going and a spelt starter going. I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna have just one starter, but then if I need to convert it to my to my recipe, and I found that this one works better if you do convert this your liquid starter to a stiff starter, that I would convert it, and then I also, you know, I also add yeast to my panettone, commercial yeast, and traditionally it's supposed to be solely raised with um with the with the sourdough starter. Yeah, a lot of people are afraid to do that, and hey people, it works, yeast and sourdough works.
Yeah, no, it I think I think I got a question recently because they're like you can put yeast and sourdough starter and it doesn't kill it, and it's it's so so much of a bakery thing. I think all professional bakers do that because it controls the fermentation. If you have yeast, it ferments it a little faster, depends on the amount of yeast you use, but also that changes the thickness of the crust. So, like most bakeries use a combination of the two, and so I use a combination of the two in all of these recipes. I don't think there's one recipe in this book that is just sourdough starter, and I think that that was one of the things that was important to me in this book, which is a more of a sweet baking book, was to not have it all just because once you start to talk just about sourdough starter, and that's the only thing that's leavening your bread, you have to get more technical about it and be more.
Not that this book isn't already precise enough, but you need to know what you're doing, and there's more, I there is more science to it. Yeah, yeah. So, and uh here's a I don't know, there's Zet Nastasia dinging me uh ding me waiting. Here's here's five. We do have to go so here's a here's a piece of writing.
When you see writing like this, you know you're dealing with someone's disconnected, I don't know why. Oh, yeah, oh uh here's writing that's clearly from a professional. I love this. To me, this is the kind of uh insight that you hear only from pros. Uh so there's a recipe for a tahini white chocolate chunk, but you're like you'll understand why, but it's like not long ago.
This is the quote, not long ago, it seemed like all of a sudden many bakers I know started baking with tahini. And this is what it is like in the real professional world is like you're sitting there, you're doing your work, yeah, and all of a sudden this recipe starts popping up all like this ingredient starts popping up all around. It happens with in baking, it happens in kitchens. But I think the average person at home, they only notice this stuff when it's on the internet, but these things are it's not an internet thing. This has been happening since before people were sharing recipes on the internet, things just blossom and bloom.
Yeah, so true. Yeah, you very rarely see people write about it in the way that you wrote about it, and I'm like, yeah, that's an experience I understand. That's really nice to hear. I'm like, am I following? I usually try not to follow trends, and I'm like, but you have to to a certain degree.
And I'm like, am I a trend follower that I want to use tahini in a in a cookie recipe? And I think I wanted to be able to rationalize it to myself. Yeah, but it's like, I don't know, it's like when you're doing any of this stuff long enough, you just realize it's so weird how these things like all of a sudden float into existence and then flow shut again. Yeah, no, that's true. I just used ube powder in a shortbread cookie.
And I was like a year ago, I'm like, I am not using ube, I refuse. I'm not making anything ube. And now here, look, I've got an ube cookie, and I really like it. Yeah. Yeah I mean it's I it's it's uh it's funny.
Uh so are there any recipes that they're gonna kick kick us off soon any recipes I haven't brought to attention that uh that uh you you really want people to know about I I like that you covered the panettone I like that you covered the Quinamon those are like really and I like that you touched on some of the bread recipes too that's cool. I like that. And what and obviously you're you're a I mean if you look at the cover you're a babka lover you're a babka style person. I didn't mention that but you have several different not just several different types of bodka babka seven styles of dough for babka you like it's like a there's it's it's quite in depth on the babka so I didn't bring that up to this book is not light by the way people listen to this that's the yeah yeah yeah yeah oh the book made the book sound yeah it's a heavy book babka I started making babka before it became trendy and I wrote a really good recipe for the bobco that was featured in Food and Wine magazine in January of 2016 and it was such a well written recipe that they put the babka on the cover in January on Food and Wine magazine which is pretty unheard of for a sweet to be on a magazine in January and it just sort of blossomed into this babka trend and I had no idea it was going to be a trend but I had been making these very like ashkenazi styled babkas like so so bready not not laminated babka for for Sadels and then I just everybody loved it so much that I just started making different flavors and chocolate and cinnamon and then just went from there. Yeah.
All right. Who's uh who's uh you call for unbleached uh pastry uh whole wheat pastry flour who do you use you use bob's for your recipe I use bob's yeah absolutely and it when I'm here in New York I'll use um uh uh oh it's a local like a local whole wheat pastry flour you can substitute all purpose flour if you can't find whole wheat pastry flour because I know that that can be a little bit tricky. Several times in the book you mentioned that you don't own a blender why the hate I like oh you have a I have a small apartment there's no hate it's just you know I'll do stuff at work I have a RoboCoup at work I have um a Vitamix at work but at home I just don't have enough space and I found that I can mostly do everything in a food processor at home. And uh also you uh like like all great pastry chefs I've known have something against beet sugar. What is it?
Oh you call out cane several times I I don't even know why anymore. I think I used to know why maybe 15 or 20 years ago there it was about the process and the aftertaste and I'm trying to remember whose book I would have read were to have given me the idea that beet sugar was bad. Maybe I used to say it through a scum during boiling work, right? So like they they they used to say like uh and at the FCI they used to teach us maybe that's what we're doing. Yeah no there was it definitely went it goes way back to the time that I was living in San Francisco and and I was just like oh no no I have got to get cane sugar but now I don't even know why.
So I think that I think you're right. It must that must be part of it. Well the the I mean I I I've never you know thankfully for for me never had to spend like day after day boiling sugar but that's what they that's what they really used to say it was a kind of a a a big deal. Oh wow. All right.
So uh I didn't answer hardly any questions uh there came in, and I'm also probably not gonna answer that many next week because next week we have uh Joey Scladani on. Joey wrote a book called uh basic. Now, John, it's basic bitching, right? Base basic bitching. Now listen, normally, people, this isn't like normally like what we what we were talking about today, a good bake with Melissa Weller is more normally our our speed, right?
Uh, but I received uh Joey's book and I read it. I have to say, the the attitude of it is you check it out beforehand, the attitude of it is uh he you know, he spends his day writing and thinking about like high-end, well thought out food, and he wants to come home and just be a basic, you know, whatever. So which by the way, uh I can appreciate that, especially i in the COVID times. So uh uh Joey's gonna be on uh on the next one. But this week we've had uh Melissa Weller with her new book, A Good Bake, which was featured by the New York Times, was it not?
Yes, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, featured by the New York Times. Fantastic. Pick it up at uh, you know, if you can, if you live in New York, get her from Kitchen Arts and Letters, support those folks. It's a big hefty book with a nice what do you call this color anyway?
What is this? It's not peach, it's not, it's not, it's like peach with cream. What color is it? Pink. Pink, yeah.
Pink. I think it's like a yeah, masculine pink. Yeah, and a very dark, like sauce-covered vodka thing on the front, like a real, like, like a good good bake in the in the way that the Europeans would say, like, you know, cooked, like cooked, cooked dark, right? So it's like a nice, like rich. Yeah, bien quin.
Yeah, yeah. There you go. There you go. Yeah. John, you can say it for me, because I can't uh I'm not gonna do the pronunciation.
Bianc. Um, yeah, nice. Uh well, anyway, thanks for coming on. Uh, I enjoyed having you. Pick up uh a good bake.
Um then you know, maybe maybe someday, you know, when this is all over, we can, you know, go uh have uh bagels or maybe even maybe a concrete grape pie. Yeah, that's that's yeah, I'd love that. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun.
All right, well, thanks. Cooking issues. Cooking issues is powered by Simplecast. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you.
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