Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is David, another host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center on New Stand Studios. Joined as usual, but not in the studio. She's uh probably chilling in uh on the coast of Connecticut. Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, how you doing?
Doing all right? Hi. You're not feeling? Oh, that's too bad. Quinn will not be with us today because he is also not feeling well.
That's unfortunate. But we do have Jackie Molecules in uh California. How you doing? I'm good. Good.
Fresh off my backpacking trip. Oh. Oh, yeah, we're gonna talk about remember, we're going through it now. We introduce a special guest and then we shoot the breeze. Yes.
Right? And then we shoot the breeze. And then we shoot the breeze. Uh rocking the panels here. We have Joe Hazen, as usual.
How are you doing, Joe? I'm doing well. You're looking good. Yeah, really? You're not looking that sweaty either today.
Really? Yeah. That's bizarre. He was when he showed up. Oh, okay.
Well, you know, I didn't know if you know if you don't know, I just got to tell you, but the AC is down today. Well, uh, I used a special trick. I kept my shirt unbuttoned on the bike up here and then buttoned it when I got close. Maybe that's what it is. Oh, the classitics don't like that.
Uh and of course we got uh John, how you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah? Yeah, beachy. Oh, you're doing as great uh as you were willing to talk about on the air.
I mean, there's water dripping in in the kitchen at the restaurant right now, and it's it's stressful. But yeah, there's nothing I can do, so no point in being there. I'm not a plumber. All right. So quesaras-rah.
Well, I don't know. That's what the owner reminded me. I was like, do I need the bail on the radio show to go deal with us? And he's like, no, there's nothing you can do. And he's like, you're you're right.
So I like that. And uh before I I apologize, we shot the breeze prior, right? Uh our special guest today. I'm super excited. I've only uh met once, uh, but she has a new book out.
It's uh Rose Levy Barenbaum, the uh author of all the cookbooks. Like all any cookbook with the with the word Bible attached to it that's worth reading, uh you've written. Welcome, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on. Well, thank you, and thank you for adding that's worth reading because since the first cake bible, since the first Bible, there's been bagel Bibles.
Everybody took that name because they thought that was the secret for success. Well, I mean it turns out you also have to write uh the book that's worthy of the name uh Bible. It's also like when people say the complete X, Y, or Z and and you can lift it, you're like, eh, not really though. You know what I mean? Like the complete whatever it is.
Um But I mean I think uh, you know, for those that for those that don't know your work already, where have you been? And uh, you know, but you're well known for um being thorough and exhaustive and also but never exhausting and uh always uh writing a lot of like very detailed instructions and testing your recipes. Would you say it's accurate? I would say that I would add reliable, because that's what people keep saying. They know that when they do a recipe, it's gonna work.
And you can imagine the pressure of having that name Bible and to live up to it. I dictated the entire manuscript into a tape recorder and played it back against the first version to make sure that there wasn't a single mistake in it. And there wasn't. Wow. So what's what word does your dictation software get wrong the most?
Well, I should be using dictation, but I tend to I'm a typist. I type 180 words a minute. It's very hard to use dictation. Why? How many things do you did?
I mean, dictation gets a lot of things wrong. So that's why I steer away from it. But the older I get, the more I think, better preserve my fingers. Typing like that can really wear you up. Well, our our mutual friend Harold McGee uses dictation software.
I believe he uses whatever one is called dragon something, dragon, whatever it is, dragon stone, dragon, whatever it is. That's what he used. But now on Word and with a Mac, you can't it's not compatible. And their dictation you can't teach really, so it's not quite as good. But what I do is I dict I don't dictate.
I h my husband uh Woody and I read back and forth. And when you dictate, you speak differently from how when you type. But the combination I think is the best of all. Huh. And let me ask you this.
What uh what program do you like to type into these days? I'm using Word. Ah, yeah, me too. But everyone hates it. That's what works for me.
So and when you type I know, I don't understand why. They all hate everyone hates it. I don't know why, whether it's because like people are doing more collaborative work now and Word sucks for collaborative work. But like McGee uses Scrivener, right? But it's just I don't know, I can't be bothered to use some sort of specialty software.
You know what I'm saying? I do, and especially when you use something. I mean, I've written 13 books on this word. And by the way, I just saw how l last week it was when he I was doing a book event at Omnivore and he stopped in because he lives right nearby to say hello. There's a really nice picture on social media that I put.
It's so great to see him. Yeah, can I can I tell you an embarrassing fact? I've never been to Omnivore books. How embarrassing is that? Well, are you on the East Coast?
Yes, but I mean I it's not like I've never been to the West Coast. You know what I mean? Like No, I'm I didn't mean to imply that. I mean, it would be really criminal if you lived here and never went there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It wouldn't make sense. Your book is there, isn't it? Uh I'll bet your book is there. So John and I both felt terrible because we'd also until last year never been to Bonnie Slotnik's. Well, that's too.
What about Kitchen Arts and Letters? All the time. Yeah. Matt Matt comes on the Matt comes on the show uh, I don't know, once every other month or so. He's our he's our current.
We used to have a segment called Classics in the Field where we would uh go over, you know, uh you know, we actually we've mostly chose classics that people don't read as much anymore, so your books haven't come up because most people still read them. But uh, you know, th th things uh things like that. By the way, uh for anyone listening on Patreon, call your questions to uh 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And John might tell him how to become a Patreon member.
Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Go there. Go for it, Rose. Oh, I was just gonna say that uh speaking of classics, we're working right now on the complete new edition and revision of the Cake Bible for its 35th anniversary. It's now 34th anniversary.
So, yes, it's so much has changed in 30 years, even. So and I was 40 years ago I started writing it. So you can imagine the work it is, but it's worth it. So have all new pictures, everything, but it'll be larger. Right.
But like, I mean, are you allowed are you allowed to say that? Because then people are gonna wait to buy the current book. Is um where you're eating into your own royalties here because they can buy it and be like, oh no and then we have to buy it right again, you know. No, we talked about that. But actually there's a lot of things that won't be in the new book that were in the old book.
And a lot of people are saying, well the two are going to be side by side. So I would encourage people to get it right away before it goes out of print. Uh-huh but there'll be a transition. I'm sure it'll be around for a while. So give us a little taste.
When you say things have changed other than the ovens are different and slash probably better at least different and more reproducible in some ways. What else what else do you think has changed? I think what I'm most proud of, and I wrote an article for the LA Time Syndicate about 25 years ago, it was called Way to Bake. I think over 90% of baking books now are weighing and the difference now between the original version and this one is that we've gotten rid of ounces completely. That was always so confusing because liquid ounces and weight ounces are not com are not the same.
And so it's going to be a cleaner design and since it'll be wider we can we don't have to have the sidebar. We can have a more easy to follow kind of um design. But that's just one thing I mean in ingredients have changed the proportion of yolk to white in an egg has shrunk because they're using younger laying hens and that makes a huge difference say in a genoise which needs the egg yolk and they aren't separated. So we're actually separating all the eggs. Flour they now have come up with what they call an unbleached cake flour and it doesn't work for many of the cakes.
So I was able to in the current printing actually add the word bleached in front of everyone. But I never I never had to write bleached cake flour because the only cake flour that existed was bleached. Right. Well I I had a conversation with Soton. I had a conversation with someone at uh King Arthur about this and I asked them what they add to their cake flour to mimic the chlorination which is what you need to keep the high ratio cakes up, you know, obviously.
And they add so I think they add some sort of um pre gelatinized wheat starch to it because they do add wheat starch to it. And I was but you don't think it's effective enough or is it brand by brand? No, as soon as they came out with the latest version I asked them to send it to me and I was so disappointed it looked like nothing. And I love King Arthur flour, but not the cake flour. It doesn't the cake doesn't look like anything like it is on the box, even though I followed the instructions the way I'd expect people to follow mine.
But what I advised them to do is what they do in England. And that's he they heat treat the flour and that's almost identical to the bleaching. The only difference is a slight difference in flavor because chlorine bleach gives a kind of floral quality but the point is it has that fine texture which it does not have an unbleached flour. I've really thoroughly investigated this because the entire British commonwealth can't use bleach flour. So it was someone in named Kate Colick in the UK in in Devon, England, who actually tried the heat treatment that they do in industry and found that it worked.
And I actually went sit with her I went to work with her in England to see the difference between our flour and their flour so that was a wonderful thing because people all over the world then were able to make cakes that that rose to the same height and had the same fine texture. I call it cake flour. So what's the uh what's the procedure then for the for the bake out. Well, I have actually a chapter in all of my books since the bake including the baking bible. Um what you do is I can't tell you exactly how long, but you microwave it for a few minutes, and then she says it's best to let it sit overnight because it gets slightly loses some of its moisture, but still would work.
And then it's just like another flower, fl uh like a bleached cake flour. Interesting. Uh do some research. I will do some I will do some research. Well, she was wondering why her cakes came out so much lower than mine, and then she started checking what they do in industry because the cakes that you purchase commercially were fine, and she found that that's what they do, they heat treat.
And I think it's made it available now to the consumer in England, which is wonderful. Well, it's not a U anymore, but well, you know, our USDA is so strict that you would think that they wouldn't allow it if something was bad and and chlorine dissipates, so I don't really understand, but I don't get into the politics of it, I just do what works and and I'm glad that we can still have it. I mean it's added to half of our water supplies. I think the issue. Yeah, I think that the uh the issue is that there's such a revulsion against um the level of intervention in something like flour and how far it's gotten away from uh you know, wheat as a as a as a thing, that they you know, they're throwing away the baby with the bath water, and I would bet that 99 out of a hundred people don't understand that the the bleaching isn't just about because there's there's other ways of bleaching as well, right?
That don't that don't have the effect that you and I want, right? It's chlorine bleach specifically isn't just about making the flour white, it's about it's about increasing its uh ability to uh hold water so that you can do a high ratio cake, right? So it because of our ingredients. Right. So because I see it as a functional ingredient, it there's nothing at all bad about it.
But whereas people see it as like, oh, white flour is bad flour, therefore if it's whiter, it's more bad. I think that's what it's from. I don't know. Well, and also there's a whole political issue of GMO. My current editor wouldn't even allow to put GMO.
I had to say um, what is the other word with when something is oh organic for these cornstarch? And actually Runford is not organic, it's GMO, and that's why it works better in the Genoise. It makes it the finer texture. Using the right amount of egg yolks and the non-GMO cornstarch, you get the finest texture. And this all began because somebody wrote to me saying, well, the sudden question was of course, and it never had been.
And I thought, okay, well, I don't know what she's doing, but how can I know? And then I it happened to me on a 12-inch wedding cake, Shen was, and that's when I got in Z and found out it was the the lap of the full amount of the egg yolk, and it was using non-GMO cornstarch that would make the that would help. Well, so what's uh I wonder I'd have to look at it what the difference in the starch grace also that's another thing nobody really thinks about is the actual structure of starch granules being different from starch to starch. You know what I mean? It's like something that people Yeah, this is the thing, and the baking powder, the aluminum baking powder, you might not notice in a cake, but in a pie crust, if you use aluminum based baking powder, which is more commonly available, it gives a nasty taste.
I remember we were doing the photo shoot for the pastry bible, and Maria Guarnishelli said, This tastes awful. And I said, Well, I asked Roscoe Betzel, who was the stylist, I said, What what kind of baking powder did you use? And he said, just the regular one, argo, whatever it is. And I said, That's it. And in a cookie, you can really taste that.
Because there's so little else going on. With a cake there's so many elements, maybe you can get away with it, but not with cookie or pie crust. So speaking of cookies a lot of people don't even use baking powder. It's being a cookie on a pie crust because Yeah I don't use it either. You use it you you like it?
I don't I I I don't really I don't use it much. I try to do everything to keep it as as you know not puffy as possible. I dock the heck out of my when I blind bake I don't you know I dock the hell out of it so that it doesn't puff up 'cause I don't use pie weights. I hate pie weights. I hate them.
I don't do that. Well yes and no I sometimes use pie weights because I don't want if for example making a pecan pie, I don't want to have any holes that may not fill up because they'll stick ruthlessly to the bottom of the pan of the plate. But yes, but with cookies in order to keep them from puffing up it and Hal would agree, I'm Harold McGee, that if you use baking if you use um unbleached flour, then it ties up more of the water and doesn't puff as much and also doesn't spread as much. And those I mean cookies are very simple but there's so few ingredients but to understand what the different ones do gives you control to get what you want. And a lot of people say well I want crunchy, I want flat, I want puffy this is how you get it by this few simple ingredients and how you use them.
Like baking soda, it will make the cookies brown more and more quickly. It doesn't just take away acidity if you're using brown sugar, it's also used for browning. So there are a lot of interesting things to know. And you know the thing is people say cookies are so easy, and they are, except that compared to a cake. If you're making one batter, you just put it in the pan and it bakes.
But if you're making cookies, you have to shape at least twelve. So it's a little bit more labor intensive, but they are more forgiving. But you can take a pinch of dough off of it, the batch, and see is it spreading too much? Do I maybe need to add some more flour? It's too sticky, or it's not sweet enough.
I can knead in more sugar. Can't do that with a pie crust. It would become a cardboard pie crust. Going back to leaveners and the British, you ever play around with uh ammonia-based leaveners and those thin cookies that they bake out dry so you can't smell the ammonia anymore? I've never tried it.
I did try it once and I didn't wasn't impressed. I'd rather use something that well, it's more like baking powder, baking soda, but where combination is already done for you. I saw no difference, no benefit. And I have a lot of really skinny cookies on the cookie bible. Yeah, I wonder why they use it over there.
Was it cheaper? Is it just what they're used to? Like I I never understood why bother getting into something that if you don't fully bake it out, it makes everything unpalatable. I never understood it. Really?
Yeah. Yeah, I didn't either, to be honest. Maybe they didn't ha they didn't have availability of the other stuff, you know. Maybe. Uh and also it doesn't have a shelf life the way baking powder does.
Really? I I I guess it probably would because it's volatile, right? So it'll go off. I mean, literally, go off. Uh it will but if it's not if it's not stored, but baking powder, even if you store it tightly is after a year.
That's why I always date money stopping as effective. Well, one of the things you write in the cookie bible is that uh is that the the volume to weight ratio of baking powder is very dependent on your humidity. Did I write that? You did. I absolutely do not remember that.
Yes, you did. Because these days humidity is pretty well controlled in most places. That's true. I mean, I find here I am yeah. What's your humidity?
What's your like my average humidity is a lot lower than I thought because I have the air conditioner on in the summer, so my average humidity in my house is a lot lower than I would have expected. And my flowers therefore are a lot drier. You know what I mean? Like w and what I'm writing a book now, um, most supposedly. And uh, you know, I was kind of really worried about water in my dry ingredients, like how much moisture is there.
So, you know, I did a pretty careful measurement of uh, you know, with very calibrated humidities, and it's quite a huge difference. And my house uh but then my house is a lot drier than I thought it was. Do you find that the average person's house is drier than they think it is? Well, you know, thermoworks now that they have this wonderful thermopen that is accurate too within a second. They also now have something that will measure humidity, but I don't go around to people's houses taking the humidity level.
Although it's tempting sometimes. But I've worked in you know all over the country and I have not found any difference really in how things work other than meringue. If it's really humid, there could be a problem with meringue. But that's something also that is in addition to being proud of having converted people to weights over volume, is that also uh using the right amount of baking of cream of tartar with egg whites, you'll never dry out the egg whites. You know, all the instructions say beat until stiff but not dry, and if you dry them out, they break down so that you lose all your aeration in the like an angel food or chiffon.
But if you use an eighth of a teaspoon of cream of tartar, which isn't acid, uh that uh to one egg white, which normally had been thirty grams or uh two tablespoons, each could can be till the cows come home. Well cows may not come home in the half hour, but I've beaten as long as a half hour and it never breaks down. The thing is that if you don't weigh or at least take the volume, you're now getting more yolk or more white because if there's less yolk, that means there's more white. You know, so that's one of the things that's really invaluable to know because it makes a big difference. And why do you prefer cream of cream of tartar humidity?
Right, right why do you prefer cream of uh tartar as opposed to other acids, let's say lemon juice, just because it has less of a flavor impact or easier to dose for you or all the no, not that it's easier to dose, but that it's the right level of acidity. And it's just as natural it's a byproduct with the winemaking industry. Well I'm for it. It has an unnatural kind of chemical yeah yeah it's just it works and I've found that it never gets old. You know another in other words it it doesn't dissipate.
But you've also lemon juice would probably work too, but you're right. It would give it flavor. And I don't necessarily want that. And you wrote that though if you add either too little or too much it doesn't stabilize it. Like there's a very sharp kind of peak of stabilization.
It's right around that that level of um that level of uh added acid, correct? Well this is the thing I tested and I kept increasing it little by little and at a certain point it went the other direction and it didn't help. But that's another issue is that no two sets of baking of measuring spoons is the same. So if you have to have a little bit of leeway. Now the one thing that really changes the weight by measuring is baking powder I've discovered.
And the only way you can get an actual total standard is either by weighing or by sifting it into the spoon and then it's always the same. But salt is always six grams per teaspoon. Um baking soda's always the same five point five. But baking powder varies. And it's not because it settles.
I don't maybe it does. I just have never gotten to the bottom of it. What and that's why I have a really fine skill for weighing. At least I can set the standard. Yeah wait you what what brand uh what brand of salt do you use by the way?
What's your go to salt? Well I'm glad you asked me that because I can never understand why people would use kosher salt for baking. I I use a fine sea salt. I always say well you're not closer to God because you're using kosher salt you know I mean it's great for your salting chicken or meat but not for baking. I don't k I use it And I use Balan but any fine salt.
I use uh I use it for everything because it's what I have you know what I mean. I only stock kind of finishing salts and and diamond kosher but um but I get your point and so it's also like on a stove top kosher is so much easier I mean I I I get your point with baking, but you know on a stovetop kosher is so much easier to dose than um you know if you're just doing it by hand. You know what I'm saying? Um exactly right so what I do is I always dissolve my salt in the liquids and not in and never put the salt in with the solids. I guess that's the way I get around it but it would be brilliant.
Yeah. Well yeah I guess otherwise I was going to say it would be hard to distribute evenly but but dissolving it in the liquid is perfect solution. Yeah. No way I'm impressed. I hadn't thought of it.
Well you know who thought of it is uh my uh is uh Monroe Boston Strauss. Uh yeah. They uh who I live. Oh a pie marches on? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. And then you want to hear something really funny about a mu our mutual friend Ha Harold McGee. Sure. I wrote to thank him some years back about thanking him for coming up with a wonderful technique of rolling the the butter with the flour in a fuel bag to flatten it out to make pie crust more fl flaky, which works beautifully. And you know what he broke back?
You were the one who taught me that. I mean, here are all these people not giving credit and acknowledgment for what they've learned from other people and here we are trying to pass it to each each other. Well, you know, uh that's something I notice in your writing is you always take some time to say where you got a recipe from or where you got an idea from. And there was a period where people I don't think were doing that as much, but I find that in the long run, in the long term, it makes the world a richer place for people to reach back in their writing and sh and that allows it it just allows for I I like to think of a like like a scholarship of a recipe or of a technique, and it just is so generous to say where something came from and also makes I think the writer look smarter, saying, you know, that this is where they got it from. Don't you or no?
I love that you said that. That's the way you said it. It's so beautiful. Yeah, that's the kind of history I'm interested in. We all build on each other.
I mean, I if I try to think about something I really invented from scratch, I do have one thing. It's chocolate rolled fondant, which is now being produced commercially in Australia, but there was no such thing. There was plastique which wasn't worth eating. But I didn't create fondant. I based that on a white fountain.
So yeah, I mean, there's nothing that people invent totally. So it's really interesting to see where things come from, how they evolve, and how they changed when the ingredients change or the technique changes. I was talking to somebody, you know, r randomly, right? And they were like, Oh, I do w everyone just gets their information off of YouTube and TikTok now. Everyone can know everything.
And I was like, Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah. Everything has become much smaller, is all I can say. First of all, TikTok is great for quick tips.
And I love tips. But for recipes, I wouldn't go there. I mean, the thing is that initially I thought that video was the way to go. And I did video and I had a PBS show. But the best way is really seeing it step by step.
And only one of my books, Roses Baking Basics, has step by step for every recipe. And even I like to look at those steps and oh yeah, that's the way it's supposed to look like at that stage or this stage. But if you're trying to do a video, you have to keep stopping it with your sticky fingers, you know. Oh, I didn't miss that part. You know what I mean?
Right. Well, yeah, and I also like what you said that you go back and look at your at your own stuff, and I think people I mean, you you've been writing books since nineteen eighty-one, right? Roughly since nineteen eighty one. And so when you've been doing something at a high level for a long time, it's like when you're cooking in a restaurant, like you get really good at a particular dish, and your hands and your brain and everything is tied together. And then if you don't do it for five, ten years, it's not that you've completely forgotten it, but it's not you're not at the same place.
And it's unreasonable to think that anybody could stay at the same place forever without doing it all the time. You know what I mean? Exactly. I've often thought of that because people say, well it's your recipe, why don't you remember it? After 13 books and they're big books.
I can't remember my recipes. Maybe some of them I do, but during COVID I did so much cooking that I actually did remember a lot of things. What's more, it was kind of liberating because I didn't have to follow what I'd written. At one point I said, well it says blah blah blah and I thought wait a minute it's me. I'm the one who can change it.
I don't have to follow you know although y you are very clear that and and you know this is something that anyone who writes recipes has to has to worry about. At least make it once the way it's written. And just it's make it once the way it's written please. That's exactly what I say. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah and if you want to substitute at least substitute just one ingredient. You'll really appreciate this having had the same editor as as I, Maria Gorna Shelley. And we were at um Macy's Degustadus I was doing it an event and her husband came John came along and somebody stood up and asked the following question can you s substitute something for the banana? And I said in the banana cake?
And before I could say anything more, I mean like why make the banana cake John pipes up with yeah ban watermelon and it was just the perfect New York squelch. You know the first thing you learn and then it that's perfect. The um the first thing you learn in basic science in high school, you know junior high school is the variable. Don't do more than one variable at a time because otherwise you don't know what is creating the effect that you're getting. Yeah it really depresses me when I read I don't like that word substitute.
Yeah, when I read uh reviews of recipes and like either they hated it and they subbed out half the reci uh half the recipe or they loved it and they subbed out half the recipe. I'm like, neither. Neither, please. You know what I mean? Uh it's just somebody re Yeah, somebody just somebody recently just wrote to me that that uh which of the c are cookies and the cookie bible are my favorite that aren't as sweet as other ones.
I thought, oh god. You know, the thing is that I don't like cookies that are too sweet. None of them is too sweet except for meringues. And in order like a macaron, I never liked them because they're so sweet. But Thomas Keller came up with a wonderful concept of making moussoline buttercream as a kind of barrier with lemon, the lemon curd version of it, and the lemon curd in the center, so it really mitigates against all that sweetness.
So what I came up with is an answer, first of all, the peppercockers have a lot of spice, so you don't get a sense of these are too sweet. But the ones that really aren't too sweet at all are the jumbles because they have just a bare amount of dough enough to hold together all the nuts. And nuts are unsweet. If anything, they're a little salty, which is nice. But it was hard to answer.
At first I thought, okay, I'm not answering. And my husband would he said, Well, you have to answer, you know, because we answer everybody. And that's the benefit of having a blog because every book has errors in it. I mean, it has a really interesting production error. One of my favorite recipes is the oatmeal cookies, and well, I I had the the volume is correct, I think it's one and a half cups, but the weight was ninety grams and it was correct in the galleys.
You know, you're you know, not everybody knows galleys is the first stage that they send out for advanced copies. And they're maddening, they're so they're maddening. They're maddening. It's so much is wrong in a galley and they don't want to change anything. I know.
Well, wait until you hear what happens. So then the hard copy and the PDF comes out and the ninety grams becomes fifty-two grams. Nobody can figure out how or why. So you wring your hands. Yeah, but there is the benefit of having a blog where you can put errata, which we now have changed to corrections because people thought it was a porn thing.
It's not erotic, it's errata, which means which means error in Latin. Although I guess I guess we could combine them. We can we could do a com combination of the two and something. Uh so this reminds me of a funny story. I won't call out the actual author, but Nastasi and I have a mutual friend who when they did the the galleys, they put in the low res uh images into the galleys.
Okay. Wait for it. Stas, you know what I'm gonna say, right? I'm not gonna say who it is. But uh yeah, don't give away.
I won't give away who it was. But then for the first printing, they actually printed it with the low res JPEGs. So it looked like uh like a a high school science report circa like nineteen ninety-eight. And I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, publishing paper. I didn't see that one, and I get a lot of cookbooks you could imagine.
Yeah, that was depressing. He he he oh, the other thing that um again, Stas, don't worry, I'm not gonna say who it was, but like he is also extremely meticulous person. You know what I mean? So it's like I don't know, I think it almost killed him. Anyway, uh I'm pretty sure it almost goes.
So uh interesting, interesting. But at least the recipes will still work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. It's just people no one will no one will bake 'em because they're gonna be like, why is it so fuzzy?
I'm not gonna bake that. It's too fuzzy. You know what I'm saying? People are the worst. I mean actually that ha actually that happened in one of my books too.
I can't even remember which I think is the PhD Bible, and not in the first printing, but somehow they came out fuzzy. And you know what happened with the King Bible is that I was gonna send it to Oprah. I did send it to Oprah Winfrey because she was considering getting married at that time, to offer to make her cake, and I signed it and I opened it up pretending I was Oprah to see how she would feel, and it was upside down. Everything was upside down. Oh, I know.
And then on Amazon, if that happens, they're like, Book was printed upside down, one star, and you're like, Come on, people. Exactly. They make your book look yeah. Yeah, people they can ruin you. For no reason, for no apparent reason.
Uh, there's a there's a book that I saw. Yeah, that like yeah, that had like the first printing was wrong, and if you look at their Amazon review, the Amazon review, and then people don't buy the book because of the Amazon review, 'cause no one reads to see why it has a low Amazon review. I like to do that because I love to hate poorly done reviews. Like I love to go on Amazon, find reviews that I find are made by execles execrable stupid people and figure and like just like go to town on them. And my wife's like, Again, Dave, again with the reading the Amazon reviews.
And I don't do it on my own because that wouldn't be too heartbreaking, but I do it like on other people's work and it's just like, eh, yeah. You know? Well, this I've gotta tell you the funniest one ever awful one that I ever got was the woman who said she threw the cake bible in the garbage and that and then she her moniker was horse lady, and I I couldn't resist. I wrote my comment back was if I were a horse, I sure wouldn't want you on my back. Yeah, I mean, I couldn't help it.
And the head of Amazon at Willie Morrow said, Rose, never put something negative, take it right off. Never respond to a negative way. But you know, sometimes I get the my sense of humor gets the better of me. And of course, she she criticized me for being inappropriate. So you you you say that you throw like, so Yeah, my work in the garbage and I can't say anything negative back.
Doesn't make sense. It is not smart to do though. You're whoever your contact was was correct in that it's not in general best not to engage. But on the other hand, I don't, you know, cra crap on uh crap on that person, crap on horse lady. That's all I'm gonna say.
I don't know who I have to tell you that somebody else who c co-criticized me and told me I should cut my hair and have a mole removed on my face. And you know, I wrote to her I mentioned that Nigella Lawson has even longer hair and that you know that this is I I just answered her in a nice way and she turned out to be my greatest ally. Turns out she was in South America and she loved my work and you know, it's just w it's true, it's a truism, but it really works that if you can respond with kindness, maybe you have a better chance of getting a good response back. But you'll never get a good response back with a negative. Right.
Why did she care about the length of your hair? Like why was that even germane to like like your cookbook writing skills? Because she thought it's a baker that it wasn't appropriate to have hair that might get into the baking. But the problem is that if you have short hair, you can't see when it gets in the in the in the battery, but if you've long hair it's very obvious. So it's almost an advantage.
Yeah. Ding ding ding ding. Yeah. So people want to look. They j they just want to criticize, but they have to find something to find fault with.
Ain't that the truth. Some people that is and nowadays basically I feel it's even more hardcore because uh it's much easier to criticize something than it is to than it is to f like actually understand and say something constructive or nice, and so that it's like there's just so much criticism out there because it's just so much easier, you know? Criticism is so much easier. And people enjoy reading that more too. Yeah.
Yeah. So uh before we talk more cookie, and I have a lot of cookie to talk to in the next uh uh in the next 24 minutes and 39 seconds but uh I want to hear a little bit about this so you wrote for you know up until like 2002, 2003, 2004, right? So we're talking about you've already done cake Bible, you've already done uh pastry Bible, you've already done or had almost finished at least uh bread bible and uh and all by yourself. Not me, I'm not gonna say no one's an island, but you know what I mean like not with a collaborator. And then all of a sudden you start corresponding with this guy, Woody Woolston, and becomes your collaborator.
And now after your your husband passed in 2019, now you're married and collaborating. Like what's that like at the at like after you've already done so much work to have a collaborator with you, what what is that like? I never would have expected that I could trust somebody on that level. And when I first met him he baked wonderful cakes from the books. He actually brought two that he'd made but he didn't really have the knowledge of baking the way I do.
So he was totally trainable. It reminds me of when I went to study at Wilton cake decorating and I never squeezed anything out of a page tube bag and they said this is great. You'll learn the Wilton way that you don't have to unlearn stuff. So over the years he kept getting better and better and what a miracle it is to have somebody who can actually help me do stuff and come up with things and have a different point of view who excels at Excel I have a horror of the spreadsheet. You know, I mean he offers a lot of things that I wouldn't have.
And I remember when I worked for Dr. Goodbuddy many years ago, that's Mary Goodbody's father. She's one of the people who she and Chris Kimball started Cooks Magazine. And when I worked with him, he said marriage is the double barreled approach to life. And I'm not one who shoots guns, so I didn't know what he meant.
So I asked for a definition. And he said that you have a larger vision than just looking through your own personal one. So working with Woody now, I don't think I could do that revision for the cake bible. It's too massive if I didn't have him to work with. It's just the greatest gift to have this.
And of course, when we were about to finish, it was about to go to press, the baking basics, or the ice cream book. Or no, maybe it was the cooking book. Anyway, the point is that it was about to go to press and they said you cannot make a single other change or correction. And I said, Woody, this is it. It's our last chance.
And I wrote to the editor, Well, I do have one more to make. And that's instead of saying to Woody, my assistant or my associate, I want to add, and now my husband. And I got the response back, wow. So that must be the cookie Bible, because it's recent. And here's how it happened.
I mean, I felt like we were married by then because before my my late husband died, uh Elliot, he said to each of us separately, Woody, you should move in and take care of Rose. So it was just like a a blessing that he gave and a very loving thing too. So Woody one day said, Could I have a wedding ring? Could I get a wedding ring? And I said, Here is my Honda keychain key ring.
And it was a perfect fit. And so the ring we designed for him is one like a key ring. I like the original one. It's kind of sentimental. The Honda.
Yeah. I've lost uh I I don't take my my wedding ring off when I um when I cook or when I do anything, and yet I've lost one of them was crimped around my hand and had to be cut off. And one I lost a lot of weight and I lost it in the surf. Another I lost literally milking a cow. So I'm like on my fourth ring.
Isn't that weird? You should have it, you should just have it tattooed on. I know somebody who does that. That'd be easier. You know what you know what I have now?
I'm not into tattoos. My brother, my brother-in-law, Wiley, you know, Dufrein chef, so he loves anything stainless. So he's really yeah, he turned me on to stainless steel rings. So my wedding ring now is stainless, very chef friendly, stainless ring. Yeah.
I mean, obviously gold. I have a second one. I have my grandmother's well, mine is from 19, my grandmother's is from 1933. It's that circle of diamonds. And so I had one made to look like a key ring.
That's a circle of black diamonds. And then that ring finger for some reason started getting swollen. And I thought maybe black diamonds have a bad effect. I'm not sure it's good for the body to wear things full-time. I mean, without ever taking taking it off.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Stainless is so inert. So far, I haven't taken it off. Yeah, I haven't lost this one yet. That's why I'm thinking stainless is brilliant.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and also Wiley living these days. Wiley lives uh uh he lives in uh I don't care what what's that neighborhood that's right to the right to the uh west of Union Square? Like right to the west and just it's not Chelsea, maybe it's kind of below Chelsea. It's I don't know what the name of it is.
It's without name. It's not grand. It's not grammarcy, it's below Chelsea. It's like, I don't know. He can walk to Union Square Green Market very quickly.
Sort of West Village, maybe. I mean, I've lived in that area almost all my life. It's above. Anyway, I love Wiley. Please say hello to him.
Yeah. For those who for those who who know him personally, he lives in the house that he grew. He lives in now in the apartment he grew up in. They bought it from his mom. So his mom decided to move up to uh uh Connecticut.
Uh and uh yeah, so they live in in that apartment now, so it's nice. It's nice. And my wife did the redesign for it because my wife's an architect, so you know, keep keep it all in the family, keep it all in the family. Really? Yeah.
Uh oh, it's nice getting to know you here. I I mean, we only met that two seconds, and maybe we we actually had a chance to exchange some real information other than cooking. So speaking of real information, so one of the so your first book, by the way, uh the first book that you wrote was Romantic and Classic Cakes, right? And it was for the Great American Cooking School series, which I don't own. It's one of those weird series I don't own.
Why don't I own that series? We gotta have that on Classics in the Field at some point. Like, what do you think of that series? Oh, Irena was amazing. She really gave me my dress rehearsal book of how to write a cookbook.
In fact, I had submitted it single space. That was before computers are the way they are today. I think it was the word processor, and she had to pay somebody to retype the entire thing. We were all learning. And I also learned to proofread without watching television at the same time, because it's one mistake.
It was I think the flower had to be three quarters of a cup, and I had made it one quarter of a cup. At least the the volume, I mean the volume wasn't correct, but the weight was correct. I think I'd weights, so I've I've always had weights. But Arena, oh I remember when I went to Gene to Gina DeLuca and I said to Georgia with great pride, I have a cookbook coming out, and maybe you'll carry it here. And he said, what is it?
And I said it's part of the Great American School Cooking Series. And he said, Oh, we don't carry series here. But guess what they carried the series because it was so well done. Yeah. Well and you know I find especially you know in the in this sixties, seventies, eighties, and I don't know, I I stopped following it after that.
Some of the best cook some of my favorite cookbooks are series, right? I mean like even if they're not really cookbooks like Time Life series. Everyone loves the Time Life series. Like why would you be anti-every one of those he was kind of a snob, you know? But I can't false them totally because they started something that was really unique and wonderful.
I live two blocks away from Dina DeLuca. I knew when I went in there my life would change. So yeah. Well he got over it. Your and your books have outlived Dina DeLuca so there you have it.
Not all of them. My two my two savory books tanked. I think I asked Julia Child if I if she thought I could write a savory book if it would be accepted and she said it's very hard to cross that border. She said some people have done it but it's not easy. And she was right.
And people treasure those two books is melting pot. I think you can get it for fifty cents on Amazon. Oh and certainly Kitchen Arts and Letters can get any book that's been remainder. Uh they don't call the the remainder that's not a nice word but melting pot and celebrations are the two books. No check 'em out people.
Check 'em out while they're still cheap. We we'll get all the people to uh you know to to buy 'em and then they you know then they'll become collectible. Uh but that series had some things once you put something in print, it's always there. It's always out there like for better or worse. Well uh you know what I don't have a copy of and I feel a little bit bad when I found out one of the things that was in it and the pictures are on your blog.
Your blog by the way is uh real baking with rose and you take questions in like month blocks and then answer them in month blocks. Is that how it works or in like two month blocks no we answer them within 48 hours. A couple of them were on book tour. Oh and even then we've been answering questions like that low sugar one. Right so you can ask you can ask you can ask questions and have them answer if you go to real baking with rose dot com.
So you you had your original out of generosity. But the thing is that it it it benefits us too because we find out what things people need to know, what things people have a problem with. So it's a wonderful community of bakers actually all over the world but where I had a million over a million a year now it's down to so much less because everybody's doing the TikTok, the reels, the Instagram, the Facebook but we're still keeping it because it's worth it to have a way to reach people and to have people reach us. So you did a I saw this only on your on your blog, but you did a cookie book Christmas cookie book in I don't know when ninety one, ninety something like this and in it you're 91 you look good. You do a a gingerbread cathedral of Notre Dame and you have a picture Dam Yeah.
Yeah well the an architect actually did the drawings of putting it together and when Notre Dame was burning and it's my favorite structure in the universe I actually posted that picture then. Oh, that's me. Uh yeah. You know what inspired it? Is that in in in the first place is that the stained glass cookies.
I thought what a wonderful Rose Cathedral window it would be, you know. So I always thought I would do a cathedral with it. But I didn't even put it in the cookie bible. I don't mean Notre Dame, I mean the stained glass cookies because I've tried every conceivable candy and none of them melts without making holes in it. So the only way you could do it is with isomalt, which I don't even use.
It's a cake decorating kind of thing. Where it's a sugar and you can tempt it. If somebody was determined or wanted to enter a contest. And yet people have entered contests with using my recipe and my instructions without credit to me. I'm but you don't get credit when you enter for a contest.
And somebody even won a second place ribbon someplace with it. I love when people are doing things, especially when kids use the book for or any of my books and win f uh 4-H Fair prizes and their parents tell me that. And you know, the thing is when my editor said I should do a book for kids, I said, Kids are doing a better job using my books than grown-ups because they follow directions. They don't think, Oh, I know better. You know.
But then I said, I'll do a book for kids. If you can give me step by step I thought that would be the deal breaker. I went step by step of every recipe. And she said, Sure. And that became Rose's baking basics.
Huh. Funny how things happen. Yeah. Uh so speaking of decorations on cookies, let's uh let me get to some of my questions because I haven't even asked any qu I haven't I haven't talked about Jack's backpack trip. I haven't done anything.
I'm I'm I'm a bad man. But let's go let's go. Maybe I'll go in reverse. I'll go in reverse. On egg whites.
You are very clear on egg whites that you like to crack them several days before you're going to whip them. Now, I always I know about uh you know not using hyper fresh egg whites, right? And you know, interesting about eggs, the longer they are around, the more alkaline the egg white be becomes. But what's the advantage of cracking out the whites a couple of days ahead of time? I don't think I say that for every time you whip egg whites, it's just for the macaroma that are so sensitive to everything.
And I have learned about studies at La Notre. Couple recipes you do. Okay, because I'm gonna now it's have to check. Because with a macaron, when I studied baking in at La Notre and uh was at the time not in Paris, but Plaisier, and they said older egg whites are the best, and you just leave them at room temperature for a week. Well, I found out with macaroni such a thing as too old in egg white.
And we're not talking about health issues here, we're talking about how they perform. So if they're too young and they're too viscous, it's harder to get as much you know, but there's a big controversy about that because if you use, for example, a cold egg white, it will be more stable, but it won't whip as quickly or maybe as high, but it won't break down as much. And of course using a claim of tartar obviates the whole problem. And don't shoot me, but you you said if I use my airpod that I might blank out, and sure enough I got the second warning. But I have a second airpod, so don't give up on me because if it does suddenly stop, I'll just plug in the other one.
Only for only for you. Only for you. All right, go ahead. Uh the airpods are so great. I mean you get such good quality.
All right, so uh so about so did you want to know anything else about my feelings for egg whites? The biggest issue is not getting a single trace of oil or fat on it. And if you even get a spot of egg yolk, you can suck it up. It's like a vacuum using the shell, it will take it out. But if it's a big blotch, there's no getting rid of it and it will never whip with all the queen of tartar in the world, it won't whip.
Well, and you also are uh uh So that's why you have to really rinse the glass. You're a fan of uh of the small bowl white by white, then into the big bowl. That is the that is the I think the only way to do it. And the cleaning Yeah, because I remember once making the uh Genoa a cake yes, a white cake with ac actually it was uh a wedding cake, and so when I was on the twentieth egg, that's when the yolk broke. I thought that's it.
That's it. That's it. Now you have to make some sort of putrid egg white omelet with it, some sort of horrible monstrosity. Uh you want to hear something else about eggs? I love duck eggs, but the whites don't whip well.
So when I'm using something like a lemon curd, I'll use the duck egg yolks. Oh my god, they're so flavorful and the consistency is thicker. Yeah, try that. I even tried an ostrich egg because I was tired of separating all those eggs. You know, and I thought, let me see w uh you don't have to do it once.
We have it on our I think it's on the Instagram and Facebook, how we had a s what he had to thaw the egg in half. It's very hard to crack an ostrich egg. So he wanted to just drop it on the floor onto a sheep pan, but I said, but then it may the yolk will break and then we can't test it. You know So we actually have all this written up. So it's disappointing.
I thought that will be the answer to having to crack all those eggs. But of course, commercial pee in the commercial industry, you can buy the egg whites or the egg yolk separately. I think you can get egg whites in the supermarket, but you can't get the yolk. Well, you actually said that uh you don't mind whipping uh you don't mind whipping box whites. You say they whip fine in your book.
Yes. Because they have acidity added, but the eggs that are pasteurized in the shell, this is very interesting for people who are immune compromised and for things that don't actually cook the eggs completely, is that if you use pasteurized eggs in the shell and you're using your egg whites, you have to use double the queen of tartar and whip longer and it's more stable than any other egg white. Quite amazing. Took a while to get that to get to the bottom of that. How did the ostrich egg whites whip?
You know, it was so disappointing, I can't even remember. I think that wasn't the test, but I can't remember what it was that we were trying to do. I saw the egg yolk was so pale and I was expecting it. Maybe it wasn't a free range ostracized. I have to go back to so you still have to take more than one thing out 'cause they're multiply yolked.
I mean, yeah, there's kinda they're kinda weird. They're ca they're a weird thing. Really? Yeah. Mine wasn't.
Oh, I know. Mine wasn't multiple. But you know, it was a it was a gift from Miro Oskokovic, who's the pastry chef at Gramacy Tavern. He knew that I was dying to try it. So we ha we happened to go to the restaurant and there was this box with a present and it was an ostrich egg.
So maybe it was a little old. That could have been long. Everyone I know that has used them uses a Dremel with a cutoff wheel and then scores them with the Dremel all the way around and then washes the dust off before they crack. They're a pain though. They are a pain.
Uh all right, now really. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. So Homintoshin, you solve the Homintoschen problem. For those of you that don't know what the Homitaschen problem is, the problem is is that you either have to make a subpar dough or they spread out too much.
So what's your solution? Yeah, I used to think they were like Kniches and I didn't like them either. I wanted a delicate one. But the solution, which sounds laborious but it's so worth it because you have the best humming fashion in the world, is that you make little circles of of discs of preferably heavy duty foil that can be reused. And then you shape them with using the foil so that the corners stay up rather than flattening into a flat disc.
You know, I'm talking about the dough and the filling. It really works. Now is that clear the way I described it? Yeah. You put the dough on top and then you form it with a foil.
Yeah but you the foil then ends up like a triconner hat or something, right? To hold it? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh yeah and it unmolds perfectly and then you just rinse off the foil for the next two. Yeah. Uh now I gotta I gotta ask your your Madeleine recipe is based on your a cake thing. It's not you first of all you say that your Madeline's will last three days and John's looking at me like like I've got three heads because you know everyone knows you're supposed to bake them, eat them. Bake them, eat 'em, bake 'em, eat 'em.
And you can keep the dough, but you bake them and then you eat them. But you have a recipe you swear will last three days after it's baked, but it also doesn't use brown butter. So why don't you tell me about the wh the whole your whole take on the Madeline's here. I remember having them at restaurant Danielle and they you have to be a very special person or you don't get them at all. And when you get them, they had just came out of the oven and yes, they get so stale and dry.
So I have two solutions. One is to make chocolate ones and brush them with a syrup and then they stay beautifully moist. And the other is not to use the classic medeline battery but to use the lylin and toppy seed which is one of my favorite cookies. Can you hear me? Yeah.
I'm just listening. Yeah. Oh, good, because I yeah, I just want to make sure when when there's a silence that my airpod hasn't decided to say goodbye, Rose. Okay. But the uh is that what the answer you were looking for?
But I do love using brown butter. In fact, in a chocolate chip cookie, not only do I brown the butter, but I use the brown milk solids and adds immeasurably to the flavor of the cookie. Right. Yeah, I've read a couple a couple of the clarified butter recipes that you have. I can't remember which ones they are, right?
You know, when you clarify it, they go a little brown. What about people just subbing in ghee, which has even more of that brown brown milk solid flavor? Do you are you a fan or not a fan? Well, I don't think ghee is as dark as I make it. No.
I mean, my friend Shilpa, who is now the ed editor of food art of Bonapet Tea, um, when we went to dinner at her and Nero's house, she gave me a whole jar of ghee because she had flavored it with curry leaves. But it wasn't and I've I've been in India. I don't find the ghee that I never bought commercial ghee in this country, but I don't find ghee as dark. Well it's yeah, it's darker than clarified butter, but not as dark as brown butter. It's like in between.
You know what I mean? In between ratio. I did just lose you there. Well, but if you can hear me while you're getting the other airpod in. Uh I have I have to get to the hi.
One second. What's that? Uh oh. I got Dave, you'll carry it for a second, won't you? I will, but I'm nervous that I'm not gonna get to the two Patreon comments for for Rose that uh, you know, I want to hear very nice things people have said.
So she'll come back on. She'll come back on in a second. While while we're waiting, Jack, backpack, what's up? Jack, we sorry, I was unmuting. Um I'm here, I'm here.
Which freeze drive takeaway? Which freeze drive was Supreme? None, because here's the thing. We were like 12k elevation, and I did not realize that the water ratio on these packages would not be accurate. And so, you know, we followed all the instructions exactly, and and everything was just really soupy and not good.
So my question to you is why why is that? What what is it about the elevation that changes? I would have guessed. Oh, this is so funny. Yeah.
I just heard you say my question. Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello. Hi, yeah, we got you.
Okay, I missed the whole I missed the whole part before. I don't know why it took so long to do that. While you were while you were swapping out, I was asking Jack about freeze-dried foods because he just went on a backpack trip and was trying a bunch of freeze-dried foods at altitude over 12,000 feet. And he said all the recipes came out very soupy. And I would have actually expected that they might not work right, but I would have expected actually the opposite because uh water boils off so quickly at high uh altitude that I would have guessed that you would have had to add one more water.
So that's kind of interesting. Unless it wasn't hydrating properly. I've been a class for crafty at high altitude. Yeah, actually the cookie bible, bread works well. Cookie Bible says go to the USDA.
Gives a bunch of places to go, uh look for high altitude, high altitude stuff. Um, Susan Purdy wrote a book Pie in the Sky, and she actually went to three different altitudes, almost had a divorce because she left her husband for so long to do it. I mean, the baking community. She wanted to actually see how things work at different altitudes. Otherwise, you can only speculate.
You just can't know. It's like the proof is in the pudding. It was Cecily Brownstone of A P who is my mentor, and she said, Rose, never be a typewriter cook. And as a typist, I thought, well, what what's wrong with being a typewriter cook? I asked for a definition and she said a typewriter cook is someone who thinks, okay, this will work.
I don't have to test it. You always have to test it because you just never know. So I want to read these things from our Patreon guests. Uh this is from Will Robinson. Not a question.
But if there's time to mention it, my bread journey started uh with Rose. I read the bread bible cover to cover in one sitting in the fall of twenty thirteen. I had just met my wife and needed to be cooler, so I taught myself how to bake in two weeks when she was at a conference. So basically RLB changed my life. That's from Will Robinson.
Uh and then uh Christat writes in RLB was my entry into baking as a science. Her book is worn stained and ganache smeared. Until then, cooking was a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I was uh and am not an intuitive cook. I didn't get it.
She introduced me to cooking, I could study, measure, reproduce reliably, and be confident in my results. I am the cook I am today, a passionate amateur and love cooking because of the cake bible. In twenty seventeen I was diagnosed as celiac, uh a blessing for my health, but devastating for my passion. So now I I'm a cook instead of a baker, but I'm learning to use precision, ingredient knowledge, and repeatable results as my guide. Thank you, RLB.
Those are from our listeners. Uh oh, those are beautiful. Oh, thanks. And then I mean, don't thank thank them. And then uh in the little time we have left, we shared uh an editor and uh a person for a while in Maria Guarnicelli.
You wanna leave us with some Maria Guarnichelle, some choice Maria Guarnicelli uh info on the way out. Well, she was one of the most intelligent people I've ever known, but also in her own opinion, one of the scariest. She said, Yes, I'm crazy. Everybody knows I'm crazy. And one day I was at the uh Grammar Sea Tavern where they had the annual pie contest, and her daughter, who I knew since high school, and since she was in high school, uh, Alex Guarnishelli, she stood up and gave her opinion about five minutes without a single pause, a single um, and she said, Oh, I don't want people to be afraid of me the way that they are of my mother.
And I said, You're the most articulate person. When I listen to you speak, I and I I speak to you, I feel like I'm stuttering. And she said, Really? Because that's how I feel about you. So the they say the apple didn't fall far from the tree, and she's also brilliant.
But her daughter, Maria's granddaughter, is maybe the smartest of all of them. I follow her on Instagram. I just love her. So Maria left me with a great deal, and without Maria, there wouldn't have been a cake bible, and there wouldn't have been all these other books. How do you feel?
I mean, uh I I loved her and Nastasi also loved her. Nastasi, I think, loved her especially because she did scare the crap out of me. Like uh in a good way. You know what I mean? Like, and maybe, you know, now that she's gone is the reason I haven't come out with the second book so far.
Who knows? Who can know? But she definitely was one of a kind. You know what I mean? Yeah, well, I was with some friends uh after Omnivore Celia Sack and Diane Jacob, and she said they told me that one day they were sitting with a bunch of people, including Flo Breaker, who says he isn't alive anymore, and each person had some bad story to tell.
And they said, You're the only one who has kind word for Maria. Well, yes, there were only two moments where I let her have it because I've been so, you know, appreciative of who she was. And she said, I'm tired. I'm sick and tired, Rose of me being the monster and you always being Pollyanna and saying the sweet thing. Tell me what you really think.
And I said, Are you gonna interrupt me if I do? Because that's what she would do. And she said, No, I'll listen. And I said, Working with you is like being subjected to hazardous waste. Wow.
Wow. She didn't know that was in me. I didn't know that was in me. But after spending like ten years of taking her verbal abuse, which you know she gave so much, but she also let you have it, even if you didn't deserve it. She was filled with anger, and uh, you know, that was everybody knows it about her.
And she I think she believed that in order to be a genius, you had to be that way. I don't agree. She sure was a genius. Yes, she was. And there's a lot of love between us.
Yeah. We have been talking with Rose Levy Bahrenbaum about her new book, The Cookie Bible, and a bunch of other things. Rose, thank you so much for coming on. Uh maybe sometime you come on again. I'd love to meet you in person.
Alrighty. Cooking issues. We should we should figure that out. All right. Okay, thank you guys, Nestie.
I mean Nasty. I'm mispronouncing your name, forgive me. Okay.
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