Yeah. Good to be back. Yeah, good to be back. Also got behind me, because I'm not in my normal position. Joe Hazen rocking the panels.
What's up? Hey, welcome to the studio. Hey, hey. Over there on the West Coast, we got uh some Jackie Molecules. How you doing?
I'm good. I'm good. Awesome. Fantastic, huh? What?
Fantastic. Oh, yeah, yeah, super packed. Yeah, it's like, it's definitely uh beyond what we're probably legally allowed to do over here. And uh, I think also Nastasia the Hammer of Lopez, how you doing? I'm good.
Now, I rocked in here s so hot and sweaty. So hot and sweaty. You familiar with the song Tifus by uh 300 pounds of goo? No. Yeah.
Well, it there's theory the story of the song is is that they dropped out of college, didn't need it. You spend that money for no reason. I told my mom she won't believe this, I put 500 on my Tifus. It was like a huge hit, like I don't know, like 10 years ago in Daytona Beach, and they never made it up. But Jetson made was the producer, so you know, good song.
However, the one line that always goes in my head is it goes, I popped a Molly and now I'm sweaty. And so whenever I'm super sweaty, that's like even though I've never tried Molly. I hear it's a great drug though. I've never tried it. Anyway, uh I came in here so I was I was super late.
I was biking like a lunatic. I'm super late because I was in a code hole this morning. You guys ever go into a code hole? I was writing some optimization program for a Lee Squares problem, and all of a sudden I looked up and it was like 10 minutes after I was supposed to leave the house. So I apologize for that, folks.
So what I'm not sure is do we have Quinn in the upper upper left? Because I know he's been sick. I was hoping he was gonna be well enough to be on the air today. Unfortunately, he can't join us today. Oh man, that's too bad now.
So we send out our regards. Hey Quinn, feel better. Yeah, feel better, Quinn. So uh we've missed a couple of weeks, just so you know, if you're listening on Patreon, uh, we are gonna do, I think, a makeup episode on Friday. True.
I don't know. Sure. I think so. We're we're going to do a makeup episode soon with Nick, the Captain Greasy, the Oily Spoon, Olive Man, Coleman. Uh, so stay tuned for that.
But we have two other guests coming on recent or soon as well. Uh Osai Endlin, a really great food writer, and then uh Chef David Steinbridge, who won uh this year's James Beard, Best Northeast for his restaurant uh Shipwright Stutter and Mystic. Yeah, Mystic. I haven't been uh have I been back to Mystic recently. Anyway, anyway, all coming up.
But today, today, the full house to which uh Jackie Molecules uh refers to, and uh by the way, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, uh, I think set this one up. Uh I'm very happy to. I think wait, Peter, have you been here before? No. So first time ever, Peter Hoffman, writer, and also with him, his like partner in writing crime, then none other than the bread lunatic himself.
What do you mean? Shaking your head like you're not a bread lunatic? Which is that you're not, not bread or not lunatic. I'm just bread obsessed. That's all.
No, I mean they're separate. The lunatic and the bread are separate. I've got fermentation issues. Oh. That's a new one.
You have a lot of energy. Uh are you sure you you've never tried Molly? No, I hear it's fantastic. It's it's this ecstasy. Yeah, I know.
It's just I'm aware. Yes. Where were you? Where were you in the after 9/11? I mean, everyone was doing X-Neven.
I know, I was already at that time married for a long time. So uh I never understood going to clubs uh if you're married, because who needs that? Who needs that? The drinks are terrible. The music is often bad.
You know what I mean? Yeah. You could do the Molly in your bed. That's true. Yeah, but then you know, I don't know, like um it's weird because I do like dancing.
Nostalgia, don't I like dancing? Love. I love dancing. So uh but you know, the thing is I don't need drugs. Like once you want like it takes a little bit to get me out onto the dance floor, but once I get out there, you yeah, it's like it's like you spin me up and that's it.
I'm a gyro. I just keep going until I until the music stops or I pass out. You know, so it's like don't need the molly. You know what I mean? And uh yeah, so I'm not gonna go home with anyone other than my wife, so I don't need that either.
So what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? Maybe someday. Should I try it? At this point, what does it do?
What does it do if you're just like hanging around? It's it's an intimacy drug. It was meant to help people. But it's true though, it was really helped initially it was d design designed or developed apart from post-traumatic stress disorder, but it was really designed of marriage, by the way. Um but it was it was really designed and and prescribed mostly for couples to like reconnect with one another.
I see. And become and become more intimate and friendly. Um there was money behind that problem back in the day. There still is money behind that problem even today. I mean, uh all right.
I mean, I didn't know that people I didn't know that big pharma spent money on on emotional problems. That's that's partners. It's called psychiatry. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Prescribe the drugs.
Yeah, okay. All right. So uh now is the portion of like LSD was a was a was very big on that too, way back in the day. Yeah, I remember it being more the CIA dosing people and the army dosing people so that they can see if they could f with them. Well psychiatrists were were given license to prescribe it in the 60s and 70s.
Yeah. So in fact, it was uh it was fairly close to here that uh that poor sorry guy jumped out of the uh or was pushed out of the uh hotel near uh 34th Street, who was part of the uh MK Ultra uh CIA program where they were dosing him constantly with LSD. It's funny, you know. I had recently I had the honor of having dinner with um Timothy Leary's widow. Oh about a about a month ago.
Why was she alive? She's well, she's great. She's really sweet. Wouldn't she be a billion and three? No, she's not that old.
So he married someone really young. She was uh either 70s or 80s, but she's an absolute sweetheart. Yeah, yeah. Now, does she share in all of his own? I I didn't I didn't I didn't tell her that I knew who she was.
Oh, what's that all about? Well so you couldn't have any real discussions about it. Well, I didn't want to. Did you know at the time? Uh yeah, but it but it but I at the end of the day, she she wanted to reveal that.
What? Well, never mind. No, it's out in Sack Harbor. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah.
So how long after the reveal were you there? Could it be like you'd be like, so did you save it all? Was it all shot in the space? Were all the ashes shot in the space? No.
They were not? No, they were not. Oh what's the best use of uh one's own human ashes? It's gotta be Lemmy. Lemmy from Motorhead?
Oh. He had I don't know. He had his ashes stuffed inside of 50 uh different bullet bullet heads, bullets, and then had them mailed to all of his friends. And so it was like you got like a Lemmy bullet. That's a good one.
I think Hunter Thompson was uh Hunter Thompson was shot out of a cannon, right? Yeah, that checks out. That checks out. Yeah, that's pretty good. I think Ray Bradbury was also shot into space.
That was checks out. Yeah, you know what I think seems good though. You know what I want? Nothing. I don't care.
Cause I'll be dead. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, uh, so off the death thing. Uh what do you guys go got going for this week? What's going on?
What happened in the past week? It's been the past three weeks, actually, for us, right? It's been a while. I've been air, I've been to I've been to Australia. I just got back from Australia.
Really? How is it? It's great. It's far away. I've never been before.
How many hours? Uh uh like 24. Yeah. I it's a little longer. If uh I had to make sure I made my connection, so I had to give myself more of an LA layout.
How long did you did you stay? Like four days. Oh, that's too short. Jeez. It's work.
I wasn't going on vacation. You know what I mean? But still. Yeah. You travel that far, you might as well like hang there for a bit.
What part? Sydney only. Yeah. Have you been before? No.
No. But will you go back? Yeah, I would. I mean, I would like to go back for longer. I would like to go to more of the places.
You know what I mean? Like people from Australia, I think go all over Australia. Even though Australia is freaking ginormous, like they go everywhere. You know what I mean? They're like, have you been to Melbourne?
Oh, they call it Melbourne. I'm like, no, I've not. No, I'm here in Sydney. I'm working, and then I gotta go home. You know what I mean?
I want to go to Darwin. There is a woman who runs helicopter foraging tours in Darwin. How sick is that? Like Nastasi loves me. He loves helicopters.
I've never been in a helicopter and they frighten me like terribly because they don't want to stay in the air of their own accord on like an airplane, which is you know like a glider once the motor runs out. I mean, I know a good helicopter pilot, whatever. Anyway, but you would go out there into like, you know, because outside of Darwin, which is tiny, and in the north, you go outside of it, and oom, you're in, you're in it. You know what I mean? So she knows where these plants are, and she goes, and then she, you know, you go make drinks with them.
That's cool. It's cool, right? I can't believe you flew all the way out there and didn't go do the thing that you're saying. That sounds insane. Like, why not swim?
Well, here's what I heard. Dave, did you swim? Of course not. What? Why would I swim?
Because you're like right near the fing ocean. I'm sorry. I must say that. You're right near the I saw the ocean. Freaking ocean.
I I saw the ocean. I saw one of the most beautiful venues I've ever, uh restaurants have ever, it's called Iceberg, although I don't think they have a wedge salad. If your restaurant is called Iceberg and you don't have a wedge salad, what is wrong with you? I literally turned to someone next to me. I was like, Do you guys have iceberg lettuce here?
You're like, yeah. Like, do you have bacon? Yeah. Have you heard of blue cheese? They're like, yeah, like, what the hell?
You know what I mean? It's like, how do you that salad is terrific? John, back me up on this. Yeah, it's delicious. It's a terrific salad.
Yeah. Hey, uh speaking of salad, crouton thoughts. Like, how? Like what? Feelings on croutons.
Um, I love croutons, but there's so many ways to make croutons. Okay. Crappy bread crouton. Favorite way of making croutons. You want to hear it?
Yes. Okay. Stale the hell out of bread. Get a whole loaf of bread, let it stale to the point where like if you were to touch it, it would fall apart. Soak it in water, the whole thing.
If you don't want the croutons to be too rustic, peel off the crust of the bread after the bread is completely soaked up all the water and has quadrupled it, probably quadrupled its initial size. And then squeeze out the water uh of the bread with your hands, and then make these like kind of large chunks and then let them dry like that. And they're like glass-like because the um the starch, the alveoli, the starch, the structure of the dough, when it dehydrates and you and rehydrates, it it kind of has more like a crystal-like it crystallizes actually as it uh dries, and when you rehydrate it with water, its texture and dry redry it again. It's like the opposite of what you would think. You get a loaf of bread, you rip it into a bunch of chunks, you put it onto a sheet tray.
New York Times says you should put some uh uh salt and oil and spices on it. Hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop, stop, stop, stop. What's that shade? What's that shade?
You don't you don't believe in salt and oil? What's the shade? What do you mean? What do you mean? You're like, oh, the New York Times.
No, no, I'm saying like this the standard uh whatever. Some some food blogger, some uh some whatever, some kind of old gray lady. No, no, no, tell me. Leave the old gray lady alone. She's fine.
But but it's it's what it is, it's all about like he still holds a freaking grudge about the article about the no-need article that went viral on the Times before the book came out. You still hold a grudge. Which one? Which one? The bit the original Pittman one.
That was Times, wasn't it? No, no, no. I don't have a grudge against that. No, no. When when my b no, no, I don't have any grudges at all.
People have a tendency. Okay. But wait, wait. There were four press releases before my bakery opened up. Four independent press releases.
You're a competent journalist, right? I mean, no. You're but at in context, in 1994, what what was the most important piece of food journalism in New York City? Times. Okay.
So the authority, wait. Second was time out. The authority, the authority of food, didn't do their research and see that the name of the baker was Jim Leahy. Not to be confused with John Dunsworth, but Jim Leahy. Theoretically, you think they would have said uh Jim Leahy was the baker, but I'm just the hands of the baker are are evident evident on everything.
And I realized in making that posting that people seemed to respond negatively to, that I had harbored an enormous amount of resentment toward the senior editor then and now context a long time, um toward the senior editor. And I didn't realize why for years after that piece of press came out, why I was so kind of like a miffed, annoyed at her. But then I realized I've I got over it. I forgave her. I think she's I think she's a brilliant You should.
Of course. It doesn't really matter. However, my bakery's 30 years old this year. Today, maybe. No, no, no, no, on the 21st.
What is today? You know, it's like that Earth Wind and Fire song, the 21st. Okay. Yeah. Oh, by the way, in in the scheme of 30 years, that's today.
Yeah. Yeah, in the scheme of 30 years. So you think. And people won't hear this till Friday, so I I've started tomorrow. Well, I reached out to the the paper a couple times.
I don't have a Oh yeah, don't ever reach out to a reporter. Don't it why? Don't because they then they don't want to give you anything in the future. Just let all mistakes unless they've accused you of something horrible. Yeah.
Just let it go. Yeah, that's true. Anyway, uh uh water under the bridge. Also, by the way, just so anyone can But you think that a j a competent journalist would have corrected that with the official opening of the bakery. According to the the authority at that time, you know.
First of all, first of all, I will just say this. But I want to say one thing. Obviously now the New York Times is not as relevant as it was then. Wow. But no shade, no shade thrown.
But we still want them to cover things. No shade on it. Only if objective. Peter is a smart man. No, yes, but only objectively if there's a reason to.
If they're if they decide not to because I throw them shade. No, I don't. My career would be nothing without Mark Bittman and Florence Fabricamp. They've they made me. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm joking.
Yeah. All right. You know, look, uh, I I I pitched I you know, I pitched Ruth Reichel on my no need bread recipe, and she wasn't interested way back when Well, no, it's not shade. I mean, she even acknowledges that that like probably wasn't I mean, based on his popularity, but at the time, in context, I probably did a horrible presentation. I probably, you know, I've probably messed up the the sales pitch, you know, because I I I have a tendency of doing that.
So it's not like Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. But water under the bridge. For also for a little context.
It's a cute story. For for people for people who aren't like in their in their 50s, for a little context here, right? In 1994, there were people making bread in New York, but I mean, there was there was a couple of people making bread that I would buy in New York. However, bread here sucked. Which which bakery did you like in 1994?
Uh I lived. I lived, well, the only bakery in um non-bagel bakery. Let's just stipulate non-bagal. Can we stipulate this? Yeah, yeah- and non non-Jewish traditional bakeries.
I'm stipulating non-Jewish, non- and also not like Orwasher style. You're a lot of exclusions. I'm talking about bread. Yeah, but the only place I used to go was Amy's. Interesting.
Because that was there. Yeah. Yeah, they were making good bread. I worked for her, you know. Really?
First 1992. Uh first three months that she opened. I was the bread shaper. So if you got bread that was misshapen, it was my fault. Uh probably.
Do you remember? Like uh, she used to make very stretchy, chewy loaf, uh like real glassy outside with olives in it, like in the little shade. I I yeah, those like twisty things. I forget. But I used to um, but I got my job working for her by not through my resume, which was kind of ridiculous.
I had no resume, uh, but by baking a loaf of bread and bringing it to her and saying, hire me. And she was like, Wow, you make good bread. You're hired. Nice. It was great.
And that was a flash in the pan. That didn't stake you with the bread. So in uh but I didn't like that I was just just shaping the bread. Yeah. Because I think that like a baker really needs to see the whole process from the the making of the dough to seeing the finished product.
And I and I thought the way she had her labor kind of like divided, there was one person who did dough, one person or a group of people who did shaping, and then a whole other crew that dealt with the refrigerated, then shaped and refrigerated dough to bake it, which is pretty retarded uh stuff back then. Well, yeah, that's pretty much the way that like most bakers, like it's that it's you know, it's the sourdoughs that you see with all the blisters all over it. Yeah, that's like classic refrigerator dough. Like, I mean, I I'm not throwing shade on tartine, but that's like just tartine. That's like here we go.
No, no, we're not. But this is just the way everyone works. There was a a bread consultant named Tom Leonard. I don't know. He was uh a big bread consultant, and he influenced a lot of like I think Nancy Silverton's La Brea style.
Um so a lot of it, a lot of that followed her recipe. Remember way back in the day, the uh cooking with Master Chefs, the uh freaking and she was the early one with the grape sourdough where she used grapes as the wild yeast format. Yeah, not saying that you need to do that, I'm not talking about the science, but that was like early, early like regular mo sourdough people. Sourdough's everywhere. I'm not saying you need grapes, I'm saying, but that was one of the first exposures that a lot of people, Julia Child was like, here's someone doing sourdough in LA, blah blah blah.
Yeah. Here's how you can do your own. I mean, there's a lot of there's still a lot of like mythology about bread making and bread bakers as a group or people who kind of like have like fermentation issues. Um people have a tendency of like gravitating to this sort of like weird kind of mystical, spiritual, magical thinking. Um, when it comes to like our affections for the making of bread.
Anti-mystical says the Molly Man. No, I'm not the Molly man. Okay. I'm not promoting uh I certainly sounded like it. No.
It's just what people did after 9-11. It seemed like everyone in their 30s was doing it after 9-11. I mean it's all the people I was hanging out with. So uh to go back to uh like the mid-90s, right? So um I remember I had never gone, so what the bakery we're talking about is Sullivan Street Bakery, if you've I don't know, never been to New York.
And uh I used to like, do you remember um um um what was the name of the bakery? Umis. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which later became named by people in the industry Itchy penis, just because it was kind of what you do when you're having the humor of it. Well, yeah, 11, yeah, yeah, 10-year-old.
Um but but Echie Panis was owned by the Santos family who owned Sign of the Dove, which was kind of the place where the elite Andrew Demika, Andrew Domico, uh imagery of like um was it Five Napkenberger, Marseille, Nice Matin. He was like their executive chef at the time. It was a very different world back then, Upper East, Lower Upper East Side. Um so Paula Olin, who was the head baker of is the head baker of Balthazar and someone who I admire immensely for her her vision and her skill. She was running the bakery at the time, and that was a very influential thing for me in the early 90s, because she was the head baker.
I didn't know who she was. I would see her, maybe I'd try to say hi, but I, you know. I used to be sent there by um two very wealthy women that I worked for as like their waiting. Um as their like gopher. Uh-huh.
As their I would get things for, I would make things together. What? Did they live together? Yeah, there were a couple. They were beautiful.
One was named they were just random women. No, they were a beautiful, they were a beautiful gay couple that lived on the Upper East Side, and they ran a beautiful little um button store called Tender Buttons. I mean, I like the whole button store thing. Up East Side, though. I don't think it's not feeling it.
Yeah. I'm not feeling a button store on the Upper East Side. I'm not like a butt button store. I'm with you. Couple?
With you. Upper East Side? No. Yeah. Well, I mean, they used to Yorkville, maybe?
Or like regular Upper East Side. Who shop? Right off right off of Lex. People, people, they had people whose I was gonna say blue haired, blue-haired women wearing chanel jackets missing, missing a button. And and then and then wait Japanese button collectors or French button collectors who would want to buy a rare closonet, cloisonet button or a rare ceramic button that was like 500 years old.
One day I remember managing a $30,000 sale of antique buttons. Yeah. So this is not what I was picturing. This now makes sense on the Upper East Side. This is not like Daytona fittings over in the garment district.
Yeah, but you could get you could also go there and get like a 20 cent button, too, for your whatever, your shirt or your blouse. And it came with a little bit of a where they spit on you when you walk out. No, not at all. It was very, it was very nice. It was very nice.
And let me finish. Craftsy people. Red was terrible in New York City in the same way that coffee was terrible in New York City. Well, these ladies knew that, and they wanted to make sure in a weird kind of way, the names were Millicent and Diane. They were adorable.
That's a great name. Millicent. Yeah, Millicent Sappho. Do you remember the movie? And Diane Epstein and Diane Epstein was literally a spitting image of Gertrude Stein.
Yeah. And hence the name Tender Buttons after a Gertrude Stein poem. Oh yeah. Yeah. It all it all made sense.
We're off the rails. Yeah, we're off the rails. But he wants to talk about the big thing. The bread, anyway, so for those of you that don't know, the bread was a revelation at the time. Sullivan Street.
I went there. The first time I went there was I think in ninety six or seven. That late, huh? I mean, I lived way up town. I lived at Columbia.
And then as soon as I moved down into the Garment District is when I started like, you know, coming like further downtown. Although I did go to art shows all the time because I wasn't art school. So I wasn't so ho quite a big. What art school did you go to? Columbia.
Okay. Yeah, fine arts. And I did go to Timoe because Timoe Sushet was the sushi was the best deal. Yeah. The best deal.
Yeah, it was. You wait in line and you get your cut-rate sushi. They no reservations. I loved it. Thompson Street, yeah, that's great.
One street away. Yeah. It's still there, isn't it? I don't know. I don't know either.
I bet it is. It's been a long time since I've gone for cut-rate sushi. Yeah. It is cut rate, though. Yeah, but it's a great deal.
Yeah, it wasn't. It was the portions were enormous. Yeah, for uh for freaking uh someone in grad school, it was like, you know, genius. Well, that was also a time when people that's when a falafel sandwich at Mammoons was only a buck fifty. I remember when I was like your Mamoons is garbage memoons.
We had the real Mamoons in New Haven. Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. Yeah, yeah. That's the original.
The origin. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So uh I went into Sullivan Street and you guys had the Bianca, the p the pizza bianca, which was like a spitting image for the these things I had had on my honeymoon a couple years prior, and I was like, this is the best. And then like, you know, your uh your uh whatever you call it, semi de sesimo, which I still buy that thing, you know what I mean?
And then you moved uptown and my sister-in-law, so like I've kind of like grown up, not grown up because I was already not young, but I mean like the past since since I've had it, like Sullivan Street has been often copied but never equaled. Well, there are man, yes, every major baking company has knocked off most or all of my product line and some minor. Like first, the first people to imitate me was a company called Hudson Breads. And I remember they would make a version of the Filone coded in breathe brand. And it was really about capturing market.
So I'd see it at like various kinds of restaurants or or delis, and I'd be like, wow, that's amazing. And then your old partner, Daisy, was it made a simple. Oh no, no, no. Then the next imitator was actually, I used to sell like so much bread to Gourmet Garage when they first opened that, you know, they literally were buying hundreds of loaves of bread a day at their store on in Soho on Broom and Mercer. I remember that store.
And I would even remember even in the winter time with a with a a um a shopping cart pushing fresh bread during the middle of a snowstorm because they called up and they were desperate because everyone was descending upon them to buy to stock up, you know. And then I guess the owner of the business or one of the owners of the business, I guess they kept trying to muscle me for a steep discount. Was it was it Andy? Probably. Actually, it was.
Um so anyway, he tried to muscle me for a discount and I wouldn't give it to him. So he got Keith from Orwashers to knock off all the breads that I was making. And then what they did was But in Ride. No, no, no, they did no, it was different. The shapes were different and the fermentation was different.
Just full of caraway. No, they but they basically slapped their label on it, put it where my product had been for like two or three years while I helped them build up their sales. But I'm not resentful at all. Not at all. Because no one shops at cream here.
No, because no one shops at Gourmag. It's the Jinwehe resentment hour. Non-cooking issue. Resentment tour. No, not at all.
No, it's cool because, but this is also the way, unfortunately or fortunately, this is the way that people do business in New York City. It's a dog eat dog world. You know, my you know, I could tell you stories about my business partner partner that would original business partner, Joe Allen that would make your head spin. That's day she's Daisy? No, Joe Allen, the restaurant.
For whom at the same time, because he did believe in me and invested in me, I'm grateful towards my former business partner, Monica. I've I'm grateful in the way that Anakin is grateful to uh you know Obi-Wan. Well, yeah. No, no, hardly. I wouldn't, I wouldn't even make that no.
Hardly. No, I mean it's like we've we look, we've we've we've all survived this together. At the end of the day, you know, it's like I'm I'm a small tiny little artisan bakery in New York City trying to sell to restaurants and chefs that that care about the quality of the food that they're so in the mid-2000s, right? You'd go to a restaurant and there'd be Sullivan Street on the table. Remember back when people used to just put bread on the table?
I was like, oh my god. And then be like, they're like, don't fill up on bread. I'm like, why don't you shut up? First of all, I'm not gonna fill up. That doesn't happen.
That's not a thing. And secondly, I want to eat the bread. But when we get the bread, I'd be like, awesome, Sullivan's. And now I would eat it. Whether with olive oil or butter, by the way, do you like what do you guys feel?
You want olive oil on the table and salt or butter? It depends on where I am, I think. For me, it's all about the quality of all three. If it's good oil and good butter. I mostly want oil.
If it's good oil and good butter and good bread, great. But if it's crappy oil and good bread, no. Salted butter or unsalted butter. It's just gotta be good butter. I don't care if it's you know, you don't care?
Well, I I'll uh well, I mean, I cares. I I I uh I I like uh like Vermont creamery. I love I love their butter. You know, my current favorite butter is not even cultured. What is it?
Is it Beppio Chelli's butter? Yeah. It's real good. Yeah. I like I like I we use Kerry Gold at home.
Yeah? I like carry gold. Yeah, that's my half, my quarter Irish. The closest good butter to me is at Essex Formaggio is the barat or how you pronounce it. It's good.
It's pretty good what John, what were you gonna say? You were shaking your head back there. Well, it's clearly salted butter. Salted butter. I was having this conversation.
But I have a affection for salt less butter because I spent so much time in Tuscany. Oh my god. Oh my god. And and I understand, I understand the psychologia. Psychologia.
Why would you spend time in the worst bread area in the whole world? It's it's not. It's it's you have to understand. We've had this conversation so many times. Peter, this is you on you now.
Ready? The flowers. Okay. Every time he's on the show, or every time I see him, crappy Tuscan bread comes up. And for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, Tuscan bread is world renowned for the worst bread in the world.
And the only reason is because they don't add salt. It's just trash. Salt is a functional ingredient. It's not just flavor, it's a functional freak ingredient. So the bread is like pasty white looking with this weird freaking bloom on top.
It just sucks. It's just bad. The texture's bad, the flavor's bad. It's trash. I am I am the only one who will defend it because I've actually had really good tusting.
Okay, and Jim's like, I'll make you good toast without salt. How many years? That's a good thing. How many decades? That's a good imitation.
Yeah, you're right. Yeah, and it's never happened. You know why? Because it cannot be done. I have to complain a little bit more though.
Of course it can. Okay. So I'm gonna I'm in a very good. It's not very good though. No, I wouldn't agree with that.
But he explained to me once it's because what you're supposed to eat it with is like I've heard the so many times. I hate this argument. But it is actually true. It's good about it. The sauce that you're or whatever you're eating it with.
We oversold everything else. Yeah. But I'm not defending it. I don't think it's disgusting. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Or Dunkin' and wine or something. You know, like anything. Or put salted butter on it. Salt.
So my theory about salted butter is not good. Look, like chefs like a lot of chefs like unsalty, like Wiley, my brother-in-law Wiley, is an unsalted butter guy. And I'm like, why, man? Because he's cooking a lot, and so he wants to cook. He doesn't want to add salt with it.
But I agree with that. When I was a kid, they used to tell you not to that if you should buy unsalted butter because everyone was afraid salt is a preservative. So they're afraid that someone's trying to sell you old butter and that the old butter, if it's salted, it can last longer. So it's a freshness issue. But I'm spending so much money on my butter, it's fresh.
You know what I mean? It's like it's fresh. Put salt in it, so it tastes good if I'm gonna put it on bread. That's all I'm saying. Yeah.
I like, yeah. But to answer your question, it it's really about the quality of all three, or any of or any of the two. Okay. I don't mind. I I I really don't like I went to a restaurant once to complain again on 40 on 46th Street, like one of these old Italian restaurants, uh Latanzi, I think it was called.
And apart from the fact that nothing on the wine list, like I ordered a wine and the wine they served me was incorrect, and I could taste it wasn't the grape. They didn't show you the bottle. Um no, they had a list. And then I said, Can you show me the the wine that I ordered? Can you show?
And then the waiter comes back and apologizes. And then at a certain point Well, you got a free bottle of wine then. Well, no, at a certain point during the middle of the meal, um, I I was kind of like conversing back and forth with my wife whether I should point. I was just getting very annoyed that they were serving oil as olive oil that was not olive oil. Well, was it?
It was like a mixture of like I don't even know, to be honest with you, but it was not olive oil. And so at one point I asked the waiter the over and this when the Please tell me you didn't ask to see the bottle of oil. No, no, no. I was yeah, I did actually. But but when the waiter came over, when the waiter came over, I'm like, um like come closer.
I'm like, it's not olive oil. I you know, and then and then the manager comes over and he kind of apologizes, and I'm like, but you you really should you shouldn't serve olive oil to people. I mean, it's like it's kind of like treating the consumer or the person who's dining out uh like they're idiots. And I and I kind of feel like, you know, there's a lot of that kind of business of restauranting, let's say, that still goes on. Where people are so con I mean, they you know, there's so you know, the reason why the restaurant wasn't crowded is because locals like me won't go there because they're like bullshitting the bullshitting the people and they shouldn't they should own up.
And if you're gonna put olive oil out, serve olive. You're gonna put bread up, mental note, do not go out to dinner with Jim Lane. I know it's easy to go out with. No, I have to go to really good restaurants where where where everyone cares. Oh come on.
With your monocle? No, never. I'm not I'm not a snob. Yeah, okay. I was I listen, I was spoiled by spending time in in in Italy, you know, I mean, not living a fancy life, but like, you know, I had a great time and uh in my in my youth, uh, and I was exposed to like all sorts of incredible foods and way which is that for everyone.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and also we have that here too. I mean, it's like, you know.
You know, spit tasting his mixed oil at the uh the what? Filth! Like it's a cutola oil. Imagine though if it was like straight up salad oil. The thing is, restaurants make mistakes, dude.
Yeah, but this is like that's kind of like unforgivable. Speaking of mistakes, check this out. Here's some here's some old school Sullivans, right? So, like if you go to a restaurant that had the Sullivans, and then like a couple weeks later you go, sometimes they wouldn't have it, and you're like, What's up? Why don't you have the sullians anymore?
And they would say, because you were famous for this. Famous for this. He they'd be like, he would bing bring the bread and it was darker than it normally is, and he told us to he told us to to take it or leave it and shut up. And we're like, okay. That might have been my bread distributor.
Not I would never do that. Um I like it dark and I like it. I'm not saying anything negative. But I'm but I'm saying, but I would I personally never did that, but I I would I would like not sell product to people if it wasn't made correctly. But I think my bread distributor, um I had a I you know, Joe Allen set me up so that I had no control over getting the getting the bread to the customer, and he set up one of his guys.
Who's a little bit of a little bit of a it was like an inside like he wanted control over the whatever the the distribution of the product. That was one of uh that was Il Forno bake became Il Forno Bakery. Yeah. Hey, you're gonna take this bread or you're gonna take nothing. This bread or nothing.
Well, that's why I started I started distributing my own bread after 9-11 because I had started receiving so many complaints that my bread distributor at the time, who I'm friends with now, I mean, he's former bread distributor, slash competitor, i.e., he tried to put me out of business, but he was just a pawn of Joe. He was just a pawn of Joe. That's all. Joe, Joe wanted. I'm friends with him now, but he's useless.
He's just a pawn. He's he's a he's a base. It was after 911. That also could have been the Molly. No, it wasn't the monster.
He was a pawn. No, he was he was just trying to like put me out of business for Joe's designs. Joe had Joe had designs on things. Some current shade from me now. What's with the plastic bag?
Go back to glassine. What the hell? What plastic bag? You were using I I got some bread from you recently with the dotted plastic bag. Like the m the Where at Butterfield?
No, at uh DuPalo's. Really? Oh, that's them. That's not me. I said, where's the Sullivan's bag?
Though you're just not giving them any bag. No, we we should give them, we should give them the the with the green or whatever writing. No, yeah, it would be great if we could have glass scene, but uh we have to import that paper from Europe, which I'm kind of working on this year. The um the the way they bag is they I think they repackage a lot of the products themselves, and I have to work with them to to solve that. They're super into hygiene, so they don't want to pick up yeah the loaf.
Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, we're we're working on that though. I I I saw that recently when I went and visited uh Lewis and Sal. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I hear I hear you though. Um I was like, what the hell? They should they should use, you know, this perforated I gave Peter Hill because I saw him at that time because we were that night. We see when you were going to check out uh you were tone air.
Peter was yeah, Peter was like scoping the panatine. Uh huh. Scoping the racks. Scoping the racks. Yeah.
Uh all right, okay. So back to uh things that have happened this week. We are almost done with the show, and uh, we haven't even talked about uh the week yet. So here's what I'm gonna say about this Vegemite, yes. Vegemite, yes.
Vegemite. Vegemite. Yes. Yes. And now we need to have a taste off.
I'll bring some vegemite. We need Joe is a Joe's a uh a marmite guy. Mm-hmm. Right? I like marmite, but I've never had either.
I've never had marmite. I've had both. Have you had veg have you had vegemite, Joe? I've had both. Um I don't care for either of them.
My wife is the Brit. She loves the marmite. And she's against heavily against the vegemite. Of course she is. Any British person hates vegemite and any Australian person hates marmite.
Vegemite was invented because of a marmite shortage in Australia right after World War I. They couldn't get the shipments of marmite from so what in case you didn't know what this stuff is, and someone's gonna ask about nutritional yeast. I don't think you can do it, is you get brewer's yeast. Oh, I was I was gonna go there, but okay. Spent spent brewer's yeast, and they they buy it in bulk.
I think that they wash it to get some of the hops off. Although I I spoke to Garrett or texted with uh Garrett Oliver over at Brooklyn Brewery. I asked him if he's ever done like a brooklamite out of like his spent yeast, and he says he hasn't. And I told him I think the technique is that you wash the yeast to get some of the hop stuff off. And he's like, well, it's difficult because some of the hops uh bitterness is like very tightly bound onto the yeast cell walls.
But what you do is I think you wash it once, and then you uh you kind of incubate it and with salt and it breaks down and it leaches like all of its like you know, internal yeasty goodness into the liquid. You then spin out the uh you spin out the the cells, the solids, and then you have just this kind of like you know broth yeast broth without the cell walls that's mostly debittered then you vacuum um you vacuum concentrate the hell out of it down to a paste and then if you're I think that's it if you're marmeat and then if you're vegemite you add I believe celery and onion flavor to it. Here's a good food history question for you Dave to probably have the answer. When and who invented vegemite or marmite uh marmite was in I believe the 1880s and it was uh based on a like a a a just von liebig thing and uh vegemite was invented uh in like the early 20s and marketed first in 1923 Australia. But probably invented Melbourne I think to to deal with this large scale industrial scale production of beer yeast.
Yeah it's probably one of these things going hand in hand like it's it's like it's like it's like the petroleum industry gets gets put into our the byproducts and waste products of of uh mining and and taking oil out of the earth gets put back into our asphalt. Right. Well you also made of like the waste of the oil industry. It's or our or our the b plastic bottles that we drink water out of. It's kind of overdetermined because it was also at a time in England that uh where people were obsessed with uh meat concentrates.
So you had like beef tea and you had uh you know was it was a thing and you have uh nutrition. Nutrition, like so this idea that like the like a kind of lack of understanding that you need a a bunch of solids to remain alive and trying to concentrate the the kind of good parts of um these protein protein bases into these you know hyper concentrated. So that's where like a lot of that like all those like super concentrated broths and whatnot. Right. It's also a product of the industrial revolution that was gone full swing up at the time.
Right, yeah, right. That's what I'm saying, like a lot of it was just mass production of food to keep to keep the slaves from revolting. I mean uh Irish or yeah, yeah. Well, no, but no, well, anyone anyone who who doesn't own real property and just gets paid like an hourly wage. Well, starting in the 1850s, uh so like you know, after the French Revolution and starting really heavily in the 18 probably 40s and 50s, you started having um uh kind of popular cookbooks for the poor, like uh Alexis Sawyers uh wrote a wrote a book in the mid-18, like the upper eighteen af after, you know, after our Civil War.
Um but there's all these books where it's talk about like uh concentrated food for the for the poor and food for the masses. So marmite comes out of this kind of attempt to provide this concentrated form of nutrition. And vegemite was the same. In fact, vegemite ended up in uh soldiers' rations uh in World War II, Australian Anzac soldiers uh rations. So it was definitely seen as a as a health, as a health thing in the jig.
But what it's good at, right? I think the reason that most of us hate it is is that you're not supposed to like it. So you you look at it and uh it's vegemite is real thick, like peanut butter thick, in fact, thicker than peanut butter. And uh you know, people look at it and they're like, oh, use this like peanut butter. And I don't mean flavor-wise, I mean quantity-wise.
No, no. It is supposed to be the thinnest. Do you know how like for those of you that like grew up in New York, uh, when I when you when I was a kid, like you got a reasonable amount of cream cheese on a bagel. Now it's like it's like a block of cream cheese, you know, like you you have to get like three bagels to use up the cream cheese they put on one bagel. So like a real honest to God schmear, this is even thinner than that.
Like I'm talking the whisp a wisp like wiped across uh the bread and typically with butter, but it's great with avocado. Speaking about old bakeries, do you remember co the original Kosars? Of course. When it was good. Of course.
It's amazing. Mean mean mean man, mean woman. Yeah. They were so mean. I love their I loved of their bialis were fantastic.
And I like their bagels too. So bealis were like the bomb back in the eighties. And I thought their bagels were good. They were good all the way up until two thousand and seven. Yeah.
Something like that. I think someone bought the brand twice. They bought it twice. Yeah. So the first time it got bought when they sold out, that's when uh they it was crazy because that neighbor this my I live on that block.
So like that and I've lived there for twenty something years. So like when I first moved there, that entire block was shut down on Fridays and Saturdays. Like super orthodox, right? Even though the a most of the younger generation uh had already moved across the bridge to Williamsburg, like the old timers were still there. So you had Gertell's which made fantastic babka uh and you know all these places were not open on Fridays and Saturdays.
And then all of a sudden Kosars got sold and all of a sudden they were open on Fridays and Saturdays and there was a sign in the window which I have a picture of somewhere where they were like to our Orthodox customers. We sell this business every week on Friday morning to a goi, and then we buy it back on Sunday. So that they could like a goi was operating the business during like during the Sabbath. And, you know, like the real honest to God kosher folk were running it because I mean it was a serious kosher neighborhood. Like uh when the people down the down my hallway had a kid, like I had when I I went to Gertell's, I had to get a special seal on the box to prove that I hadn't kind of that it wasn't that it was still okay.
You know what I mean? Like it was a not a fake neighborhood. So then it went from that, and then uh we used to have all these vending machines in the neighborhood. 24-6. It was like Sabbath vending machines or awesome.
Anyway, uh so that my first baking job ever when I was in high school was making bagels. Yeah? Yeah. Where used to work at a place on Hillside Avenue called which burnt down, by the way, called Bagel Express. Burnt down a couple of years ago.
I was so sad to see it go. What era? Um, this would have been 1981. Yeah. So did you have everything bagels?
Um, yeah, we had we had all the bagels you could possibly think of except for rainbow bagels back then. It was just it was pretty much a straightforward bagel bakery. When was the everything bagel? I forget. It was somewhere around the 80s, right?
Yeah, no, we had we had everything bagels. Yeah. Rainbow bagels are kind of silly. Yeah. Yeah.
Does that that new book that just came out on sourdough? I didn't read it. No. Is it about rainbow sourdough bagels? But it's so silly.
Is that a thing? Rainbow sourdough bagels? It's funny. I started reading the forward. What's worse, rainbow bagels or blueberry bagels?
Um, I think they look, does rainbow does the rainbow bagel taste like anything? No, tastes no. No, no, I think I think they're egg bagels. Uh so to get the yellow, I think they're egg bagels. I'm not sure.
I'm not, I've never I like egg bagels, but I don't love egg bagels. I'm not I'm not an egg bagel guy. I'm not against them. I'm not saying they shouldn't be. I mean, yeah.
That's the problem with like all baked goods. But if you think it and you dry it for like three days, we never asked you this. So, like your crazy crouton recipe. Let's let's get back to the crazy crouton recipe. Sorry, we're gonna circle.
What happen what happens if you just rip it up and then soak it and then dry it again and without going through the whole mishigas? Uh yeah, I mean I guess you could do that. I mean, really it's the most important thing is it's about staling it. It has to be completely stale. So the only issue is that if you were to to take pieces, shreds of bread, like ripped from the inside of the crumb, stale it on a sheet tray, and then rehydrate it, and then try to press out the water and redry them.
That might work. You think the pressing is necessary? I th well, I mean, if if like a sponge, it's gonna take forever to dry. I mean, I got time. And most likely with with the content of starch in the flora of your hands from having pressed it, most likely it will mold.
So if you remove the water quickly quickly enough, it's like pancoat breadcrumbs are made in this way. Panko breadcrumbs have a special machine. They bake it between two resistive plates so that the fibers go straight up in the air. I mean, like panko is like a very tweaked out McGill. You know what?
I I've tested it out. Panco bread crumbs somehow the the um They're also crustless. Well, well, that's another thing, too. Crustless. Um but in in my I say opinion, it's a dangerous word.
I what I've been able to do is replicate the texture of panko breadcrumbs using the same method. Oh, I see. All right. Well, the stuff is so how do you how do you orient the strands? Is it when the compression you instance?
It's about it's about the crumb, the starches crystallize. When bread stales, completely stales, like if you don't let the bread stale, then what happens when you rehydrate it? It remains gummy and it won't and it won't hold its shape, let's say. So when bread, if you look at if you take a very stale piece of bread and you break it in half and you have a microscope that's strong, even if your eye, you could see that it is crystallizing. That the crumb crystallizes, it dries so much that it crystallizes.
So when you rehydrate it, you change the actual structure of the starch, especially when you remove the water once again from it. It's almost like you can take bread that's incredibly stale. Um, and we did this for whatever Dan Barber once upon a time at uh when he was doing his whole wasted thing. Um to make that I made him some bread with you can you can take old bread and put it back into a mixer, let's say, if you if you rehydrate it. Yeah, yeah.
Hold on a second. The compression when you squeeze it, is that orienting? Because their panko is not just that it's dried out and that it's crust, it's also that the that the cells are oriented because of the way it's baked. So do you get some of that orientation when you it's not baked, it's dried. Panko bread crumbs are are white.
So let's say you're making it because they're baked in a resistive oven without with where they never touch normal heat, but like they the prime thing is that they it's oriented. So is the compression. What I'm trying to get out of you is when you squeeze it again, are you getting some of that acicular shape of the cells that the Yeah, like you could theoretically centrifuge water out of the crumb of of stale bread too? I I'm not sure. I'm not sure of the the the process because I've never been to a panko.
You gotta go, it's amazing you would hate it and love it yeah it's crazy yeah it's nuts however if you want to make your own panko style breadcrumbs that are even better than panko breads that's that's strong words you should you should the the recipe exists in the 15th year anniversary of my bread which comes out today oh is that why we're here no one even told me sorry save save save the book tell me no I didn't get the book no it was sent to your house I didn't get it do you have it here no of course not son of a guy well this is normally normally I read the whole book and then we talk about it but I've not received the book and then and the and the also in the cookbook it's the 15th anniversary of of the of my bread with some updates and additions Peter patiently helped rewrite a lot of it is it still have your face with the bread over it no oh yeah that picture's still there the cover they cut change the cover we have a bunch of recipes that use miso paste mis yeah because I love miso paste do you what kind of me cell red oh speaking of miso holy crap we gotta give a shout out uh to uh let's see I guess so our good friend um uh Rich She has a a new substack called uh flavor freaks where uh where he uh you know talks uh you know you go join that like you just join a Patreon I don't really know how Substack works tricky but uh Rich is like uh one of the you know he is old school koji Koji McCoji in the get fresh cojies so uh you know we want to support him uh as as much as we can and I can't believe you have a new book out you I didn't even like what's that's the kind of guy that I am. I don't believe that's a good idea. Is it still have the slug? Does it still have the slug? The same slug.
No work no yeah yeah no work, no need. Uh Maria Guarnicelli. Maria Guarnicelli. Maria Guarn Shelly. I love Maria.
Oh my God. I was thinking about her today. Uh when she as like literally when she said to me, I was I mentioned someone, and she says, Oh, I hope they're dead. Please, someone call me and tell me he's dead. And I was like, oh my God, Silveria.
I was thinking I think about her quite often. I do too. Yeah. She actually gave me so much advice I didn't didn't listen to. Like call the name name my book the Leahy Method, as opposed to associate my name with the instead of it being no need.
Because of course, once Bittman named it No Need, all of a sudden it becomes a feeding frenzy, and everyone's saying, I invented that recipe. Oh, I came up. And it's like it's like it doesn't really matter. It existed before all of us. Um at the end of the day, it's like how everyone bakes now.
I mean it's like everyone does videos on this method, and it's just how people bake. It's kind of cool. Yeah. All right. That's the that's the that's the legacy is like you you plant seeds and you don't get to see what happens afterwards, which is kind of cool.
Why don't you get to see? Were you gonna die before they sprout? Uh no, because well, I mean, we'll see how many new artists and bakeries open up in New York City in the next three to five years. Biff, Biff wants to know. Uh can you speak about using fresh high extraction flour?
So remove the brand fragments, but keep a significant ash content in no need doughs. What hydration uh do you go for? And uh how many folds is a sour method, uh sourdough method okay? Or do you recommend uh commercially yeast it? And I'm gonna add because there's different ways to make high extraction flour.
So I'm curious whether this is like single pass, home mill, one sift, or or exactly what you're doing. All are gonna produce different flowers. All right, go to it. Yeah, um, it really depends on the flour uh and the quality of the flour to store it, the quality of the grain to store it. Um if the I mean, I always say that with bread making, it's all about the falling number.
So if the falling number is high, you can um have dough ferment a lot, um, and then you can make it into something that will actually proof and become enjoyable to eat if the fall if the uh Right. So fall falling numbers, yeah. Is is this is the qual is a way of measuring the quality of the protein in the flour. It doesn't matter what the percentage of the protein is, it em it matters that the quality of the protein. So enzymes in flour will break down starches.
When the enzymes break down starches, the dough goes slack because it can no longer hold the water that it was once holding, especially damaged starch. So the higher the damaged starch amount in your flour, the more important the enzymes are to the dough structure, and uh the more enzymes that are present or the more active they are, the more slack your dough is gonna go over time. So if you have what's called a low falling low, I was afraid which, yeah, low falling number, it means you have very active enzymes, which can happen a lot if you're milling your own flour and you don't have control if there's been any sprouting. But it could also, like, you know, flowers from Tuscany. Have a very low falling number.
They would be like flowers grown, flour grown in Pennsylvania. It's like it's not, it's more for cake. And literally the way they measure this, I think, is to make a slurry, let it sit for a known amount of time, and then drop a stick through it and see how fast the stick takes to fall. I think that's how it works. No, actually, it it has to do with uh it's actually in a tube and and and the dough actually uh it's um don't they drop something through it a vi I always thought that falling number had was uh like in a a violograph.
Uh-huh. Like they're measuring, they're measuring, they're measuring the the the length of time the volume that the the dough will actually hold like uh a it's level. Oh I thought they were measuring how long it takes something to drop through it. Maybe I don't know whatever. It's a measure of how slack the thing goes.
But it's it's you could make your own you don't need like the commercial if you're milling your own flour biff, you can just make a like a make something and then compare it with something of a known high falling number, right? But the issue is this the falling number is going to also be related to what the uh how much water a particular flour wants to take off. And also if you know that your dough is weaker, your flour is weaker, you you would not ferment it as much before shaping it and change your expectation about what the end product the finished end product is supposed to be like texturally. So if you want it to perform like a bag of commercial flour you buy in the supermarket, you're gonna be very disappointed. Yeah.
I mean I I have found I I I love I love wheat brand I love leaving the brand inside wheat because it it does actually enhance the fermentation because of all the enzymes. I've found that h like home milled flour of unspecified falling number remember you need a lot higher hydration for because the brand soaks up a lot more water than the other stuff for a given protein for a given and so I find that a lot of times those doughs will go slack on super long fermentations if you're grinding your own. Yeah. You know, um, that's my been my experience. Yeah.
And no one wants your dough to go slack. No one wants your dough to go to slack. Yeah. Nothing, nothing worse than a slack dough. Yeah.
It's a real disappointment. Well, on the other hand, like uh, and they don't, they don't like uh they never get I mean like when you do this high hydration, you do high hydration with those, uh with with these, like um, they never get kind of as taut as like some of the commercial uh flowers. Like, you know, when you're full when you're folding your your stuff and putting it, it's kind of hold itself. Sometimes these doughs, when they get like older kids like that. I want to answer Biff's question.
But so anyway, the the folding will will strengthen the dough. It will also, if you're using sourdough, uh I have I've found in it folding does seem to um benefit more uh benefit more um the fermentation of yeasts over bacteria. Um but that also could be anecdotal because it has a lot to do with the temperature of the dough. Um but you know, the the um, you know, depending on the whole temperature of the dough, yeasts re replicate a lot slower than do bacteria. Um and also it has a lot to do with the both the quantity and the state of the sourdough, the starter that you add.
So if the dough has a large percentage of starter and it's not acidic, um, it will behave and and act on the remaining the the flour and water that you're adding it to differently than if you had like a a small little chunk that was like like acid, like uh do you think do you think high ash and uh high bran uh doughs are more susceptible to uh losing their structure when the acid goes too high, when the pH drops too much, as opposed to like uh, you know, when you're using like uh, you know, it's a standard bread flour. High ash and high what? Like a high extraction. So if there's more bran in there, right? Do you think that they're more susceptible to kind of gluten breakdown when the pH goes too low?
Um no, I think it has, I mean, I think that bran particle size has a lot to do with it and shape. So if if you you've noticed that some flowers, a whole wheat flowers will have like very large, like stone mills will give you these bran flakes that are large and flat. Whereas some uh roller mill companies or millers will have like the the brand broken up into this I've never had one of those I liked. Yeah, but I don't I've never had a whole uh roller milled whole wheat flour I intended. Well, yeah, I I I I kind of agree with you there.
Yeah, but it's terrible stuff. But it's nightmare. But they but they can do that. They just it just I've never I've I've tried as many as I can find, and I've never had a roller milled whole wheat flour that I thought was worth spit. Who's your favorite flour producer regionally?
I don't buy flour anymore. Do you eat bread? Uh yeah, but I mill it all. Okay. I do only whole mill.
Where do you get your grains from? Uh all over, actually. So like uh I've right now I've been getting uh my favorite I like the I like the um Bel de Rouge, which uh I forget which farmer gets it, but I get that mainly from Bredtopia. I like uh your coro row, I like turkey red, I like uh I think red fife's overrated. I like but you're buying regionally.
No, I can't anymore. I used to be able to buy them and then uh the the green market stopped doing grain sales. And so when did that happen? Like two years ago. Wow, it's too bad.
Yeah. I used to be able to buy 50-pound sacks from them from local local farmers. Back then I used to get Redeemer and Warthog locally. Yeah. But you can't anymore.
Wait, hold on. Uh Z Banks. I accidentally ordered a huge bag of nutritional yeast, 10 times the size I intended. I'd love it on eggs and popcorn, but can only eat so much. I also tried it in pizza dough, hoping to get more depth in umami, but it didn't really make any difference.
Maybe I should just add more. What are some other good uses for nutritional yeast? You got any good nutritional yeast uses? I like as a substitute for um yes, I like using nutritional yeast on um like uh pasta made with uh mushrooms. All right.
Yeah, it's really great. Yeah, I like it in coleslaw. Yeah. I like it. I like it on kale.
Kale salad. Yeah, by the way. Kale salad. You just triggered me. I don't have any I'm I'm out of time.
And you just said kale salad. World's worst salad. No, it's not. It's trash. I'm gonna make you a kale salad with a lot of things.
Oh my god. With the Tuscan bread? No, forget that. That's fine. No, no, no.
All right. Listen, Alexander, I'm gonna talk about I'm gonna talk about your vanilla bean problem next time uh when we're back on cooking issues, but I have my issues with vanilla extracts. Uh I love it, but making vanilla extract. Because I think vanilla extract, like commercial vanilla extract, is like not like the way we would make it at home. You know what I'm saying?
Anyway, uh buy the new edition of the book. Uh so how many is this one of those things where I have to buy even if I have the old one? Because it's got a bunch of new stuff in it. I'm gonna let Peter answer that one. There are five new recipes and a forward by Martha Stewart.
Oh right. It's up to you. That matters to you. All right, all right. See you soon.
Cooking issues.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.