She’s My Cherry Pie - Kristina Cho Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You're listening to Radio Cherry Bombe's special baking miniseries, She's My Cherry Pie. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and the author of the cookbook, Snackable Bakes. Each Saturday, I'm hanging with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into one of their signature bakes.
Today I'm talking with milk bread expert Kristina Cho. Kristina's debut cookbook, Mooncakes and Milk Bread: Sweet and Savory Recipes Inspired by Chinese Bakeries, won two James Beard Awards this year for baking and dessert books. Kristina also has the website, Eat Cho Food, where she shares a wide range of recipes for everything from her beloved baked goods to entrees, dumplings, and more. And she has a great Instagram account @EatChoFood with lots of cool videos. We'll talk with Kristina in just a minute.
A big thank you to California Prunes for sponsoring this slice of She's My Cherry Pie. Let's talk about California Prunes. You may not know this, but prunes are healthy, delicious, and have a rich, deep flavor that pairs beautifully with everything from espresso to chocolate and caramel to cinnamon. If playing with flavor is your jam, then you know what I'm talking about. For the bakers who are looking to cut down on sugar, it's prunes to the rescue. Or, rather, prune puree. What is prune puree, you might ask? Well, it's a combination of prunes and water that you blend together to create a velvety mixture that keeps in your fridge for up to four weeks. You can use the puree to replace from one third to half the sugar in a recipe. You can also do egg and oil swaps. Visit californiaprunes.org for the swap specifics and to snag some holiday recipes for gingerbread, sticky buns, scones, and more. Look for prunes at your favorite grocery or specialty store. You'll be swooning over prunes in no time.
Okay, who out there is still holiday shopping? I mean, I can't be the only one, can I? Well, if you're anything like me and you need a few ideas, check out the Cherry Bombe gift guides. There's one for the home cooks out there, presented by Chronicle Books and one for you cheese lovers, presented by Cypress Grove. Head over to cherrybombe.com for more.
Now let's check in with Kristina. Kristina, I'm so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to chat milk bread with you.
Kristina Cho:
Hi, Jessie. I am so excited to be here.
Jessie Sheehan:
I thought we would begin, if you could tell us a little bit about your journey from growing up in Cleveland, spending a lot of time in a family restaurant, studying architecture, et cetera.
Kristina Cho:
I always start with, I guess, my beginnings in Cleveland, Ohio. A lot of people are always surprised that I'm from Ohio, I think it's because I've been living in the Bay Area for nine years, and so a lot of people just assume that I'm from here. But I'm born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. My grandparents immigrated there from Hong Kong in the late 60s and they started working in restaurants.
My grandpa started off baking almond cookies, that was his first kitchen job when he first landed here. He was a teacher before, but obviously those kind of professions couldn't really transfer over, and cooking was a very common career path for a lot of immigrants, and so that's where my family's professional history of cooking started.
Eventually, over the years, he was able to open up his own Chinese restaurants and then it just became the family business. My mom worked there as a hostess, a carry-out runner, a bartender. She did everything while still going to school and working another full-time job.
I grew up in my grandparents' last version of a restaurant before they retired, and it was a really magical upbringing. My brother and I would do homework at the bar when no one was there, there's no drinks served, that was just the counter that we would do homework in and chat with people picking up carry-out orders, and rollerblade while the restaurant was being cleaned up at night. It was just a really fun place to grow up and where I developed, I would say, a passion for eating and being really curious about what was going on in the kitchen. I wasn't necessarily back there helping chop or anything like that. I wish I took a little bit more notes and paid attention. But I just really fell in love with food and it was just easy to do that, because I was surrounded by it.
I considered pursuing food out of high school, but at the same time I very much loved art and creating things and I discovered architecture. I'd always been in love with homes and how they're designed and configured, and I ultimately decided to major in architecture.
I worked in architecture for a few years, that's how I made my way out to San Francisco, I had an internship. And so I worked at a few firms out here. But while I was doing that, I was gradually learning that wasn't totally fulfilling for me. I think architecture just teaches you how to break down a project into different elements so that it feels a little less overwhelming.
It's hard for me to describe my baking style, because I love an easy, one bowl cookie. I love that. But then I sometimes get into a mood where I want to make cream puffs with all these different fillings and arrange them in a sculpture piece. I think that's when architecture comes in handy, because I'm like, okay, I need to break down the steps and make sure everything is efficiently working, there's no waste, time management, all that type of stuff.
I don't regret studying architecture at all. I think it made me into a better baker and writer and recipe developer. And so now I run Eat Cho Food in all its various forms full-time, and I wrote Mooncakes and Milk Bread.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's your blog, Eat Cho Food. And you had started that while you were still at your architecture firm, correct?
Kristina Cho:
Yes, it was back in 2017. I think I had reached a critical point in my career where I was like, I really need to do something else to channel my energy or channel my creative energy, because sitting in meetings with engineers trying to get as many apartments to fit into this one section of a building was not doing it for me.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh, amazing. Tell us about the food blog.
Kristina Cho:
Eat Cho Food is a play off of my last name. My last name is Cho, so that's where that name came from. And my blog became this space for me to share a recipe every week, and then also write a little bit about my life. I know some people aren't super interested in that, but before writing a food blog, I loved reading other people's blogs. I think food becomes so much more dynamic when you read a little bit about the writer and the chef's perspective, why this recipe came about, what inspired it. Also, there's tons of helpful hints and tips in it if you actually read an entire blog post.
My blog was the first thing in my life that I was consistently working on every single week. I almost became obsessed, a little bit. I would sit at work at my desk, and if I had a little bit of downtime between whatever I was doing, I was scribbling down different recipe concepts, what I wanted to write about. And eventually it came to a point where it was really hard to balance the two. I felt like I was working two full-time jobs. And back in 2019, it wasn't that long ago, was when I actually made the decision to leave and work on food full-time.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us a little bit about the book. I know a few staple recipes, like the mother of all milk breads and the almighty pineapple bun. Just give us a little background.
Kristina Cho:
Mooncakes and Milk Bread, I consider the first English language modern cookbook to comprehensively cover the subject of Chinese baking and Chinese bakeries, which is something that has been around, been part of Chinese American, and also Chinese, culture for a very long time.
When I first started developing the concept of the book, I was actually surprised that there wasn't really that much media around it. Media in the sense of books or articles, even recipes online, there wasn't really that much covered, and now there's a lot more. But the book covers a lot of Chinese bakery classics, like pineapple buns, which don't actually have any pineapple, in Chinese they're called bolo bao. But they're just this pinnacle of Chinese bakery perfection. A lot of times you go into the bakery and you grab one of these just to see how the bakery compares to others.
There's a lot of buns that are made by milk bread, sweet and savory, but then you also get these wonderful more pastry style things like egg tarts, which you can get at dim sum. They're super flaky, custardy, perfectly sweet with this mirror top on it. It's one of my favorite things. And different cookies. And there's also a Chinese breakfast chapter in there, which I think a lot of people might be surprised to see that in a Chinese bakery book, but there are so many savory components that you can find at a Chinese bakery. And also Chinese bakeries come in all different variations. A lot of times you can get steam dumplings with a baked bun and just have the most glorious breakfast after stopping by one of those.
In addition to all these different recipes that you can find or be inspired by from a Chinese bakery, it also includes a little bit of culture and context around these bakeries through interviews with actual professional Chinese bakery bakers or the people that own these bakeries. And so there's four features in there from bakeries in different Chinatowns across the United States. And I found it really important to include those too, because since this is one of the first books that cover this topic, I wanted to provide a really holistic understanding for these bakeries, especially for people who maybe didn't grow up going to these bakeries, and just getting a whole picture and understanding why these bakeries are so important for the communities that they serve.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you also just tell us briefly, since it is mentioned in the title, about mooncakes?
Kristina Cho:
The title is Mooncakes and Milk Bread. One, I thought it was a cute alliteration of baked goods for the title.
Jessie Sheehan:
I agree.
Kristina Cho:
But then I also love the dichotomy of mooncakes and milk bread. Mooncakes are a really traditional Chinese baked good that's often made for Mid-Autumn Festival, which happens... It depends on the lunar calendar. Often it's in September or early October. And the best way to describe it is that it's a handheld pastry where there's a crust, normally, and the outside has a beautiful impression or intricate design that's carved into it by using a mooncake mold. Sometimes they're hand shaped. And then within the crust there is often a sweet filling made out of different types of sweet pastes, like red bean paste, white lotus paste, black sesame paste. I love the ones that have a salted egg yolk in the center for this sweet and salty balance.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. Now we will take our deep dive into milk bread. You put in the book what bread translates phonetically into in Chinese. Will you say what that is?
Kristina Cho:
One of the ways that you can say bread, there's a lot of different ways, but that essentially translates to flour package or bread package, which it makes sense.
Jessie Sheehan:
I loved it. A little bread package or a little flour package is what we all need. The first recipe in the book is for milk bread. I love that you call it the reigning queen of Wonder Bread, brioche, and challah. I'm a Wonder Bread girl from way back. This is something that you hear a lot, but maybe people need to be just reminded, what does it mean? I know it's an enriched bread. What does enriched mean?
Kristina Cho:
An enriched bread, and there's a lot of different styles of enriched bread out there, and all that means is that there's stuff in there. Stuff meaning ingredients, like butter, eggs, milk, all that stuff that adds richness to a bread. And so that's why brioche and challah are also enriched breads, because they have various amounts of egg and dairy in there to make it nice and supple and just delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you tell us about the texture and flavor. You went into the flavor a little bit, but a little bit more about that cotton candy vibe.
Kristina Cho:
I feel like every single time I make milk bread it comes out very subtly different, because there's so many conditions that contribute to the texture of milk bread, like the humidity in your kitchen, the temperature, how long you actually let it proof, but the best, or the ideal texture of milk bread, you can compare it to a cotton candy like effect. The amount of kneading and gluten structure in there contributes to this really delicate structure inside. It should be wispy. If you pull-apart the sections of the milk bread, you get these gluten strands and when you see those, you know did it right.
But milk bread just should be very soft with a hint of a crust. That's how I like to describe it. There is a crust that you see, of course, that's darker golden brown, but you shouldn't have a crust if you're cutting into a sourdough loaf, your knife should just glide in just like butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you tell us about other milk breads? Because I know there's a Japanese milk bread.
Kristina Cho:
There are a lot of different styles of milk bread. I think a lot of people tend to know more about the Japanese style milk bread. It's the bread that you see with an egg sando, that I also really love, or fruit sandos and things like that. There is a different type of, not exactly like a starter. In Chinese milk bread you use this mixture of milk and flour to create this paste called a tangzhong, and I believe for Japanese style milk breads, you make a similar thing, but it's called udon and it has different, I think structure, but just like with Chinese milk bread, it's still enriched and really soft and buttery.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us a little bit about tangzhong. It's almost like making a roux?
Kristina Cho:
Yeah, just like making a roux. I like to use milk and flour to make my roux, some other recipes that I've seen out there, and I know other bakers would use heavy cream and flour for a really enriched tangzhong. Or you could just use water and flour too. But the goal of using a tangzhong is to create this really concentrated paste of hydration essentially. And it allows your bread to take on a little bit more hydration than if you were just to add milk to the dough, because the hydration contributes to, again, I keep saying soft texture, you just want your bread to be soft, it contributes to the softness and also the longevity of how long that softness stays within your bread without weighing it down and making it too sticky or hard to work with.
Milk bread is a little bit on the sticky side, but if you weigh all your ingredients, it just should be a very manageable level of more tackiness than, I would say, stickiness.
Jessie Sheehan:
You wrote about how it actually helps the bread retain moisture, which is going to not only make every single bite delicious and just that much more flavorful and textually yummy. You can tell I'm a food writer. I come up with really interesting words. Yummy.
Kristina Cho:
I always love to use the word yummy too. I think we should embrace it. It's just a good way to describe something.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm going to start saying that everything's yummy. But not only that, I think you said... A loaf of milk bread in my house would be gone the day I made it, but if it wasn't gone the day you made it, it will last for longer because of that tangzhong. Is that correct?
Kristina Cho:
Yeah, it'll stay softer longer. And if for some reason, if it's not as soft, maybe you cut into it a little too soon and a lot of steam released, milk bread also transforms as soon as you warm it up. Just a quick toasting, or for a bun sometimes they'll just microwave them for 10 seconds. Because there's like butter in the dough, and so when you warm it up it just springs back to that fresh texture.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh. So yum.
Kristina Cho:
So yum.
Jessie Sheehan:
So yum. That's going to be the other one we'll do. We'll use yummy sometimes and other times we'll just describe things as ‘so yum.’ Let's talk about the ingredients though. I wanted to just do a little bit of a deep dive on the tangzhong. It's basically a roux and I think you wrote a one to five ratio of a flour to milk.
Kristina Cho:
Yes. I used to be really good at remembering all my recipes to the gram, but yeah, I believe it's 100 grams of milk to 20 grams of flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
Sounds good. Sounds good. I loved your visual cue. Can you tell people what they're looking for when they're making their tangzhong?
Kristina Cho:
It should look like very creamy mashed potatoes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. Love that. And with that, you're not starting with warm milk, you're literally starting with the flour and the milk together.
Kristina Cho:
Yeah. So, you actually have two additions of milk. You do use warm milk later. But when I make, it depends on what mood I'm in, but the two first things that you do are to either make the tangzhong, which is cook down the flour and the milk together, and then you let that cool. And then the second component is to actually warm up some additional milk to add into your dough. It just allows your bread to just incorporate a little easier instead of adding all that moisture in your paste.
I like to warm up my milk a little bit so that my yeast can activate. You don't want too hot, because then it'll kill the yeast, but you want a warm, cozy environment for your yeast to really get to work.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, also tell us about the scalding and the whey. Is it the whey protein and gluten development?
Kristina Cho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I had no idea why we're scalding milk rather than boiling milk or why we're even scalding it at all. I thought this was fascinating.
Kristina Cho:
I was doing a lot of research just on just general bread making, and I came across that as a common technique a lot of times. It just might be my architecture background, but I always need to know why something is done, rather than just blindly following this. And so I wanted to know why it's important to scalds the milk, other than just to make a warm environment for your yeast. And I did try making milk bread with cold milk before and I did find sometimes it just didn't work.
The whey protein actually inhibits a lot of yeast activation. I don't know why, I think it just reacts differently with the little granules that you add to the milk. But just scalding your milk, which I don't remember the exact temperature, but it's a little hotter than what you want to want it to be when you add your yeast, and so that's why it's important to let it cool down. But scaling it deactivates the whey protein and just makes a more hospitable environment for your yeast to develop.
Jessie Sheehan:
It was something about maybe the whey protein stands in the way of the gluten development or something and if you remove... And then another ingredient, we have our milk, we have our tangzhong, and then we're also going to have eggs obviously, which I guess also are contributing to moisture.
Kristina Cho:
Yeah, it's contributing to moisture, and then also just helps give the bread a little bit of binding elasticity. I've made so many different, I think, trials of this bread, either intentionally or unintentionally. I was making a lot of milk bread during my book tour for different demos and I think one time I forgot to add the egg and I was like, what? Why is this so weird? It came out, one, a little dryer, because it didn't have the richness of the egg yolk, but just the texture of it. You just don't get that pull-apart, feathery bread texture, so you definitely need the egg in there too.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we have our butter, which, again, it's adding moisture and fat I assume. Can you tell us what the butter should look like? When do you know it's ready?
Kristina Cho:
Ideally, if I am in control of my life and planning ahead, I'll just leave my butter out on the counter so that it can come up to room temperature, unless it's really cold right now. But one thing that I like to do is that I'll cut my butter into tablespoons essentially. If you have an eight tablespoons stick of butter, you cut it into those little squares and if you have a microwave, I know a lot of people don't, but I still have one. What I'll do is I microwave it for 10 seconds, flip over the little tab of butter, and then microwave it again for 10 seconds. And if you need a little bit more, you might need five more seconds or so, but that's all it takes to get it to that right creamy consistency. It shouldn't be melty, it should be that consistency of the perfect butter to spread on toast. Again, like mashed potatoes. It should just be very creamy.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeast, I know you like to use active dry and that's because I think you like to be able to see that yeast is alive, but you'd be okay with someone using instant or do you really think active dry?
Kristina Cho:
I think either is perfectly fine. I just opted to direct active dry yeast so that people who maybe haven't worked with yeast often before can get a visual cue that it is working. Say you added instant yeast in the milk is too hot, then there's that moment that maybe the extra hot milk could damage your yeast. When you add active dry yeast and you see the little bubbles, you at least feel a little bit confident that it's actually alive and working. Because I've been burned a lot with yeast actually, of it just not activating or that the packet that I got was dead or funky.
A tip for anyone who does work with a lot of yeast, I prefer to buy the jar of yeast and keep it in my fridge so that I know it's fresh. If you have the little packet sometimes, and depending on where you live, I live in the Bay Area, it doesn't get that hot, but occasionally we get very intense heat waves and if you keep it in your cabinet it can get too hot in there and then your yeast is just done for. Keeping it in the fridge is the most consistent method.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then you're using bread flour. Can you tell us why bread flour as opposed to, let's say, all purpose or a mixture?
Kristina Cho:
Bread flour, obviously it's bread flour, so it's intended for bread a lot of times, and that's because it has a higher percentage of gluten in there or the proteins needed to develop a strong gluten formation, and that's important for milk bread, because you want your bread to be able to expand and reach that very light, airy texture without it collapsing on itself.
I have seen people make the recipe using all purpose flour and it's turned out fine, but I've also seen it not turn out fine. And bread flour, just using that, is an extra security and making sure that you have proper gluten formation in your bread and just have the best texture possible.
Jessie Sheehan:
Awesome. One last ingredient question. Your egg wash, which I assume is pretty important because you want that beautiful golden color on the outside of your milk bread, egg and cream rather than egg and, let's say, salt. Is there a choice there for you using cream as opposed to... Sometimes when I make an egg wash, or, okay, I won't lie, always when I make an egg wash, I'll use a teeny bit of salt just to break down the white and just bring it together. Tell me about cream. Not that I don't love egg and cream, I'm just wondering about your feelings about it.
Kristina Cho:
I'll often use egg and cream or egg and milk. I like the addition of the dairy component in there because milk and cream naturally has fat and sugar in it that caramelize in the oven that contribute to a really nice deep golden brown color, so that's why I like to use it. That's the reason why I like to use a dairy component, is just for color. The egg also adds color, but then the egg produces a nice glossy shine on your bread, or buns, if you're making it. The only time that I wouldn't use an egg wash is if I'm making the bread in a Pullman loaf. And a Pullman loaf is a loaf pan that has a lid on top so that you get that really nice and satisfying cross-section that's like a square. So if you do that, I don't use it, because you have the lid on it, there's nothing really exposed, but the crust will still be nice and tender and brown without the egg wash.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back.
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody, Radio Cherry Bombe host Kerry Diamond here. I want to tell you a little bit about Jessie's latest book, Snackable Bakes: 100 Easy-Peasy Recipes for Exceptionally Scrumptious Sweets and Treats. It's the perfect cookbook for anyone who loves baking from scratch, but is pressed for time, which I'm guessing is most of us.
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Jessie Sheehan:
I wanted to talk a little bit about the tools that you need making milk bread. You're going to need some sauce pans for making tangzhong and for making and for scalding the milk, and then a stand mixer and the dough hook. Rolling pin. When it's time for rolling, do you have a preference?
Kristina Cho:
For a rolling pin, I often grab my dumpling rolling pin, which I'll just give some dimensions so that you can conjure an image in your mind. But a dumping rolling pin is a smaller, single handheld rolling pin. It's about 11 inches long and then less than an inch in diameter. And, as the name implies, you often use it to make dumplings, because a dumping wrapper is four inches in diameter, so you don't need a giant pastry or a giant rolling pin for that. And I find the size of this very flexible. I use it to make even bigger things than, say, a dumpling wrapper. I love using it to roll out my portions of dough for making a loaf or rolling it out into little rounds for individual buns. It's my favorite rolling pin.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I love that. And then you already covered this, but the Pullman loaf, which you just described, has its cover, so I think you say maybe you're not even greasing, you're not papering it, it's a whole different prep versus the loaf pan, which is what a lot of people will make a-
Kristina Cho:
Typical Pullman loaves have this corrugated texture on it, at least the one that I have does. And that allows for, I think, just airflow, so that you have even bake around it, and it just has this really great non-stick quality to it. So when I make a Pullman loaf, it just pops out. I don't need to line it with anything or grease it. But if I was going to make a split-top style milk bread loaf or a three segment milk bread loaf, I would still line a pan with parchment paper, because it will have a tendency to stick.
Jessie Sheehan:
Will you make your milk bread in a Pullman for a particular thing that you want to do with it once it's done versus making it in the loaf pan? Or is it just whatever mood you're in?
Kristina Cho:
I think it's whatever mood I'm in. I think I've been really into the Pullman lately, but I think I might make a loaf of milk bread this weekend and I might make the split top loaf. I love that one too, because it has this almost cartoony profile where it's the square bottom and then the two sections that kind overhang over the edge of the pan. It just looks like your cartoon cutout of a slice of bread.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. We've talked about it a little bit already, but just wanted to quickly go through the assembly. You make your tangzhong, you scald your milk. When the milk is warmed, but not too hot, you're adding your yeast and a little pinch of sugar. Can you just walk us through those first few steps of making milk bread?
Kristina Cho:
Sure, yeah. Once you have all your individual components ready, it's just time to add them all together. And so I really do recommend using a stand mixer, if you have one, to knead it, because it does take a good amount of time to knead. But I have also made it plenty of times by hand when I didn't have access to a stand mixer for an event or something like that, and I can achieve the exact same texture, so don't worry if you don't have a stand mixer, just set a timer for 15 minutes and don't give up. It'll be a really good arm workout.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think you said maybe keep a extra quarter cup of flour on hand if you're trying to do it by hand.
Kristina Cho:
Yeah. The extra little bit of flour, you don't even need to use it that much, is important for when you're kneading it by hand because the benefit of using a stand mixer is that you can continue to mix it and it looks sticky and a little messy in your bowl, but the more you mix and the more you knead, eventually your dough gets less sticky. And so when it's in the bowl you don't need to add extra flour, but on the counter I understand how that can be a little frustrating to work with, and so just a little sprinkle of flour every few minutes or whenever you think you need it, is perfectly fine. Just try not to go over that, because then your bread will be a little bit dense.
But either way, whether you're mixing by hand or using a stand mixer, you have a bowl, whether or not it's the one attached to your stand mixer. But I start by adding the flour in there and then I'll add the sugar for a little bit of sweetness, salt, your egg, and then you add your tangzhong and your scalded milk, and you start mixing it until it's shaggy. And then while it's shaggy, I'll add the little pieces of butter to gradually incorporate with it as you need it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know exactly what you mean by shaggy, but it occurs to me, I don't even know how I would articulate shaggy, but can you try for peeps just so they can visualize it?
Kristina Cho:
Sure. Shaggy would mean that you see individual pieces of dough starting to form, but it overall still looks pretty floury.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect.
Kristina Cho:
Hopefully that makes sense visually.
Jessie Sheehan:
It does.
Kristina Cho:
Once it's starting to look shaggy, you add your individual components of butter, and then you increase the speed, because you want to start off slow, so that you don't have all your flour and everything spewing out of your stand mixer. So you increase the speed a little bit and just let it go. You just let it go until your dough reaches this really supple, smooth, and tacky texture. If you're doing this by hand, it'll take more like 15 minutes to get there. But that's a really great visual cue. Try to make it as smooth as possible.
Jessie Sheehan:
And is it like, you know how sometimes dough is wrapping around your dough hook? Do you picture it be wrapping around the hook or it'll more be in the bottom of the bowl?
Kristina Cho:
It should be wrapping around your dough hook by the end of it. Early on, your dough will be sticking to the sides, and if you want to you can scrape down the sides, but I often just let it go and it eventually just works it's way in there. I just trust that it'll get there. But when it's done, the dough should be on your dough hook. If there's anything that's stuck on the edges of your bowl, scrape it down and continue kneading again until everything's one cohesive piece.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. Then you're going to transfer the dough to your floured work surface and you say to wet your hands, because the dough could be a little sticky, and then you "pinch and pull" to form a ball. You have great photographs in the book, so I hope everyone is now purchasing the book right now as we're talking, or they already have it. But if you don't have the book and you're not looking at the photographs, Kristina can you tell us... I love it. I love pinch and pull just because I love alliteration. But tell us about the pinch and pull to form a ball.
Kristina Cho:
Sure. It's funny now that it's out, I look back on it now I'm like, it should have been called pull and pinch. But for some reason that had a weird sound to it. So pinch and pull just sounded better to me. But you have your piece of dough and you're pulling the edges. There's not actually an edge on your dough, but the perimeter of it, and you pull the edges underneath, forming this taut surface and forming a ball, essentially. And then those edges you pinch together either just with your fingers or I slide my palms together underneath to seal it and keep it's shape.
This is a technique that if you make sourdough, pretty much any type of bread, sourdough, pizza dough, you do that, and it's something that for some people might feel like an extra step, but for me it's absolutely necessary, because it allows for your dough to have this structure so that your gluten can expand. If you don't have it, your gluten's expanding in all different directions and unevenly. But creating this, home for it makes a better texture for your bread. And then also the final surface of your bread will look a lot prettier. You won't have an uneven, bumpy surface for your buns.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think you also wrote it leads to perky balls. And I was just thinking, that is a life goal. Perky balls.
Kristina Cho:
Yeah, perky balls. Perky buns. That's the goal.
Jessie Sheehan:
We want it all. We want it all. Then we're going to coat a bowl with oil and add the ball of dough to it, and then covering with plastic wrap and putting in a warm spot. I'm just curious, because just like you said you used to love to read blogs and learn about people's every day or what they were doing in their house, I want to know where in your house is your warm spot? Where do you keep it in its warm spot?
Kristina Cho:
I have two spots, depending on what time of year it is. It's funny, living in the Bay Area, a lot of people don't have air conditioning in their homes, especially my house is 100 years old, so there's no air conditioning, but the general temperature in my house is always a cool 65. And so if it's that, which is most times in the year, what I do is I turn on my oven, nothing in it, I turn on my oven just for the few minutes, just to get a little bit of heat in there, and then I put the bowl that's covered in the oven and I put a sticky note on there saying that there is dough in the oven, do not turn this on. That's my perfect temperature for proofing dough.
Right now the house is pretty cold right now and we have one heater in our dining room, and what I'll do is I'll turn the heater on, because it's heating up the rest of our house, and I put it on one of our dining chairs with a lot of kitchen towels on top of it to insulate it and I just have it set right in front of my heater.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I have a convection oven at home, so there's a fan and the warm air blows out of my oven, so I'll often preheat the oven, because I'm baking something else and not just wasting the energy and electricity, and then I'll put the bowl on a stepladder so that it has that warm... I mean, it's crazy what you'll do to find the warm spot when you need to.
Kristina Cho:
That's actually really funny. I feel like there should be a series of people taking pictures of their ideal proofing configuration.
Jessie Sheehan:
100%.
Kristina Cho:
Because I know the lengths that bakers will go to get the perfect setup.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I love that. Then once it's been in its warm spot, either in front of the heater or in the warm oven for about two hours, then you take it -
Kristina Cho:
Or three hours if it's really cold.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's good to remember.
Kristina Cho:
I think a lot of recipes always tell you one to two hours, but you really should go more if it's cold out.
Jessie Sheehan:
Very good point. And then you're going to punch it. Can you talk to us about punching? I'm always confused about punching, and I was recently told why one punches and I'm so excited. Now I want to hear why you punch.
Kristina Cho:
I punch the dough because it's really satisfying. I think it's a form of therapy for me to just get out a little bit of whatever frustration I have going on in the day. But for practical reasons, you are degassing your dough, because it will proof again after you shape and form it, and so you just want to get rid of that excess. Bread has contraction and expansion throughout various forms of its process.
After the first proof, you punch it down and then you hear this just really great, I don't know, noise of gas escaping. I love it. That's pretty much the only reason.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect. I'm going to change it now. You're going to pull and pinch, again form a ball, and then let's talk about the classic three-segment loaf, the split top, and the pull-apart buns, and the buns for burgers. And essentially this is the stage where your dough has proofed once. You're now going to shape it for its final proof. Is that right?
Kristina Cho:
Yeah. And the shaping, whatever shaping you're doing, is achieving the same thing from when you're pinching and pulling essentially. So the three-part loaf is really classic in Japanese milk bread, Chinese milk bread, where after it's baked you'll see there's a swirl on the side, so you can see how it's actually formed. But for that you divide it into three. I always like to use my scale so that I have accurate divisions between each segment, although if you just want to eyeball it and have a little bit of variation, that's totally fine too.
But you divide into three portions of dough, I pinch and pull it into a little ball again, because I like to do that for every step, and then you roll it out into, it's really more like an oval, but elongated shape, and you fold the edges down and then you roll it up into the little coil. And so by doing that, you are creating more surface tension, again structure for your bread to grow and keep its shape.
You do that for each portion, and then you arrange that into your lined loaf pan, three in a row, if that makes sense. So, the width of your roll of dough should be a little less than the width of your loaf pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
Could you do that in your Pullman or no?
Kristina Cho:
Yeah. You actually do also do that with the Pullman, the only difference is that you have a lid on it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, perfect. Perfect. Perfect.
Kristina Cho:
And then you want to let it proof until the dough... My visual indicator is that you want to proof it until the dough is just above the rim of your loaf pan, so you get really nice height and structure with it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is it a nine by five or an eight and a half by four or do you not have to-
Kristina Cho:
I believe that mine is a eight and a half by four, but a nine by five would also work fine too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, good to know. And then tell us about the split top.
Kristina Cho:
So the split top, you actually divide your dough into eight equal portions, and you're forming them into little balls. Just like with the hamburger buns or any other bun, you're pinching and pulling again, and making these cute little dough balls. And then you arrange it in your loaf pan in rows of two. They'll have a little bit of space around them, but then as you let it prove, they're going to grow tall and then make contact with each other.
You could do that in a Pullman, but the intent of the split top loaf is to get that structure of the dough overflowing from the top and get that cartoony profile of bread. And so, again, you want to let it proof until the dough is just above the rim, and then when you bake it it gets really nice and puffy.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. And you're baking both of those for about 30 minutes, is that right?
Kristina Cho:
Yeah, 30 to 35. Everyone's oven is a little different.
Jessie Sheehan:
Of course. Can you tell us about pull-apart buns?
Kristina Cho:
Yeah, so, it's the same thing. pull-apart buns, you can divide it. It depends on the batch. Oftentimes when I'm making pool apart buns, I like to make two batches, because they're just so great to have with dinner, especially with Thanksgiving or the holidays, I like to make a big batch of them. But if you're making one batch of milk bread, I'll divide it into eight. Also, they'll be pretty big. Or you can do 12, or even 16 for mini buns, and you arrange them in a baking dish, and they turn out just like Hawaiian buns, which are amazing.
Jessie Sheehan:
An eight by eight or a nine by nine square dish kind of situation?
Kristina Cho:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. And then buns for burgers is pretty self-explanatory, but maybe just tell peeps quickly.
Kristina Cho:
Yeah, so, just like the pool part buns, you're dividing them into eight or 12, or smaller, depending on how big of a burger you want to make. But instead of nestling them in a baking dish next to each other with the intention of growing with each other, you want to put them on a flat baking sheet with some space between it, three inches at least. And then after you do a little egg wash, you can put some sesame seeds on there for a classic looking burger bun, or everything bagel seasoning, or even just salt or plain, whatever you want to do, and just bake them up. They're really perky if you do them right, and they make the best hamburger buns, or just a general sandwich or something like that. Milk bread's great for anything.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm thinking bacon, egg, and cheese. Yum.
Kristina Cho:
Yes. So good.
Jessie Sheehan:
So good to be with that everything bagel seasoning. That would be so yummy. All right, hotdog flower buns. This recipe ignited the idea for Kristina's book and she made them on the Today Show, which I loved watching, because even though I read what you do, I loved seeing you actually do it. Can you tell us how you make them, because it's so cool.
Kristina Cho:
That memory was really funny to me, because if you watch that segment, it's just really funny that I taught Al Roker how to make hot dog flower buns. It's one of the highlights of my life.
Jessie Sheehan:
But also, honey, I don't know if you noticed, but whatever, I, of course, watched it with an eagle eye, but you explained to everyone, you had the little hot dog bun, you had one that was proofed and then you had them building one and then you had them do the egg wash. But I noticed that Al egg washed the one he had just made, not the proofed one. And I was like, Al.
Kristina Cho:
Al was doing his own thing during that segment. It was great.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. Al went rogue.
Kristina Cho:
You ideally want 12 hot dogs, because the amount of dough it makes is for 12 buns. If you don't have that many hotdogs, you can always do half and half, use half of it to make hotdog flour buns and you use other half to make hamburger buns or some other filling that you have. It's very versatile in that respect too.
With the balls of dough, I roll it out into, again, an oval shape big enough that it can fully wrap around the hotdog. And so you roll it out into an oval, you place your hotdog in the center, and then you wrap the dough around, pinch the edges, so that it fully seals, but you want to be careful because hotdogs have a little bit of oil on them.
Jessie Sheehan:
This might be a dumb question, Kristina, but is the hotdog cooked? I realized I don't know.
Kristina Cho:
The hotdog is not cooked yet, it cooks in the oven as you bake it. It's a good question, though. I think I wrote it in the book that if you wanted to experiment with a different sausage or you have leftover breakfast sausage or something like that, you can do the same thing as well. But I typically start with uncooked hotdogs.
And so you pinch the edges closed so that it's fully sealed and then you want to use a sharp knife, always, and you divide your dough mummified hotdog into six individual portions. I start by cutting in the middle and then I cut those two halves into thirds. And then on a lined baking tray, I can normally fit six flour hotdogs on a tray, but you create these formations of the flour, which has one portion in the middle as the center and you have five portions arranged around that, creating this kind of star petal formation.
At first, they should be touching the centerpiece. But, again, your dough is going to proof and the dough will eventually grow and start to touch each other, so it's not important for them to be super, super close in the beginning, we just want to give it a little bit of room for everything to expand.
Once you have all those done and proofed, you egg wash them and bake them in the oven for about 20 minutes or so, until the buns are golden brown. You want to put some green onions on top, just to add a little bit of color. I like to add green onions and sesame seeds. And then once they are out of the oven, this is a bonus step, but I think it's really nice and you see this very commonly at Chinese bakeries, but there's a simple syrup glaze that you put on top, and I'll make that glaze while they're in the oven. It's just essentially equal parts sugar and water and you cook it down until everything's nicely dissolved and it's thickened a little bit, and you want to put it on when the buns are still hot, so that the glaze can easily drip into all the crevices of the hotdog flower bun.
But I think that the sweetness of the glaze is a really nice contrast to the savory smokiness of the hot dogs and the green onions, and also adds a really nice shine to the buns.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm obsessed with the sugar glaze. I mean, I have a million question marks and exclamation points in my notes because I was so excited by it. Any other uses for it? Should we be sugar glazing everything or do you think it's that smokey hot dog that really works so well with it? Would you put it on a pork bun, or would you put it on-
Kristina Cho:
Yes. My answer is yes. You can put it on everything.
Jessie Sheehan:
I need you to tell us about the almighty pineapple buns, as we observed, that have no pineapple in them. Because these sound amazing.
Kristina Cho:
I mentioned before about how pineapple buns are a lot of people's favorites, and people tend to judge a bakery by how good their pineapple buns are. They get their name from the pattern, actually, that's on the bun. So if you've never seen a pineapple bun before, it's a milk bread base and there's this yellow golden cookie crust that's draped over the top. Some styles of pineapple buns have designated scores on them, like a crosshatch pattern that mimic the pattern of a pineapple, and so that's where it gets its name. Other styles of pineapple buns don't have that scoring pattern and just allow the crust to naturally break apart and become this crackly pattern that also looks like a pineapple, but isn't as direct connection. So that's how it gets his name.
A lot of times people get confused by that. They're like, "Where is the pineapple?" And I've been meaning to make a actual pineapple bun. I wanted to make a pineapple jam to put inside. I think that would be really nice.
Jessie Sheehan:
That would be really cool. So essentially, you make your milk bread buns, and then you literally make a cookie dough, with flour, baking soda, butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, and, I love this, a little bit of yellow food coloring. And it's a cookie.
Kristina Cho:
Exactly. It's just a cookie. I will say that the recipe in the book has a higher ratio of topping than maybe what you would find at a bakery, because when I was a kid, so I'll just admit it, that pineapple buns weren't ever my favorite bun. I loved hotdog buns and I liked cocktail buns, which are actually filled with this sugary, buttery coconut filling. Those were my favorite. And I think that was because my problem with pineapple buns was that there was never enough topping, which was my favorite. I would often just pick off the topping and then my poor parents would just have to eat the pineapple bun that had most of the topping picked off.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love just this image of covering the most delicious milk bread, white bread, with a cookie tinted a little bit yellow. I was like, what could be better? And I think you adding a little bit of extra cookie to it sounds even yummier.
Kristina Cho:
Not a bad problem.
Jessie Sheehan:
You and I are on the same wavelength, because my next question is about your favorite, cocktail buns. Can you tell people a little bit about them? These are shaped a little differently, so you were saying maybe a little less pressure for people making something with milk bread who are a little worried about the pull and the pinch. There's a little more wiggle room here.
Kristina Cho:
I think that there are two different types of people out there. There are pineapple bun people and then there are cocktail bun people. And other stragglers, of course, but those tend to be the two most popular buns at a bakery.
Cocktail buns, they are often log shaped, elongated, rather than round like a perfectly round bun. And at bakeries you'll see them baked individually, so you could have this football shaped bun instead. But I love it when I can find a bakery that actually bakes them together in the pull-apart form. I had a really good one in San Francisco Chinatown and I was like, this is the only way that I want to make cocktail buns, because forming it this way, since the buns are side by side with each other, you're not so conscious about making sure you have a perfectly round shape. It gives you a little bit more flexibility by baking it into a baking dish, because everything just forms together into a nice platter of cocktail buns.
When they're baked together, you pull them apart just like a pull-apart bun, and the buns are so unbelievably soft, because they don't have the traditional formation of edge. Another detail of cocktail buns, the filling is a mixture of butter, sugar, and coconut, and a little bit of milk powder, which adds this creamy, obviously milky flavor to it. And then the topping, it's barely a topping, you don't have to add it, but it's a great signifier that they are cocktail buns when they have this piped stripe of almost like a cookie topping. A lot of times you'll see a cocktail bun with two stripes at the very end. I also have those too, so that they truly look like cocktail buns.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then just two more things that we have to talk about before I say goodbye to you, because I'm totally obsessed. Pork floss and seaweed pull-apart. I'm just dying right here, Kristina. Please, tell me everything.
Kristina Cho:
Have you ever had pork floss before?
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, it's funny. I feel like I must have, and I was looking at the picture, and I think I have, but tell us about it.
Kristina Cho:
Pork floss, it's a funny word, but I've loved it my whole life. All it is, it's dehydrated pieces of pork that have been seasoned, but it's savory and also sweet, so there's a little sugar in it. And so the dried pieces of pork are then pulled apart, and the natural fibers of the meat become these wispy strands of what is now called pork floss.
It's probably not the best way to describe it, but imagine instead of bacon bits that you would put on a salad, it's the softer, wispy version. You roll out the dough into a big rectangle and you spread mayo inside as that binder, and also adds really good flavor. All the time, I use kewpie mayo, because it's my favorite, but any mayo will be fine. There is an amount listed, but you can sprinkle as much pork floss as you want on there, and then chopped up green onions and some furikake, which is a Japanese seasoning blend that has bits of seaweed, sesame seed, sugar, salt, and there's a lot of different varieties, but I just use traditional furikake.
And then you roll up, cut it into sections just like a cinnamon roll, and then you bake it together into a pan. And they are just lovely. Highly recommend making those. And then you have a tub of pork floss still in your cabinet that sometimes I'll just grab a little bit and snack on it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Sounds so yummy. I also am obsessed. I love mayonnaise. Just one of my things. I'm obsessed with this idea of a savory bun with a mayo base. I bet you could do that with a lot of different flavored savory ingredients in buns.
Kristina Cho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Kristina Cho:
The mayo is really just an adhesive. A flavorful adhesive, at that. But yeah, you can add so many different things there.
Jessie Sheehan:
I was thinking, recently I made a similar-ish idea, but it was a biscuit dough, but it was cheddar and chives and bacon, and I needed mayo to hold everything down as I rolled it up. I just think that's so smart.
Kristina, I cannot thank you enough for this amazing deep dive into milk bread and your book and everything, and I just want you to know that you are my cherry pie.
Kristina Cho:
Thank you so much, Jessie. This was so much fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show, so let's get baking. You can find the recipe for Kristina's milk bread on cherrybombe.com. Go to our show notes to find the link. Also, I don't want you to miss a single episode of She's My Cherry Pie, so sign up for the Cherry Bombe newsletter at cherrybombe.com. Learn about new episodes and other news from Cherry Bombe HQ.
Thank you to California Prunes for supporting our show. She's My Cherry Pie and Radio Cherry Bombe are a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Thank you to the teams at Newsstand Studio at Rockefeller Center, and CityVox Studio, and to executive producers, Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, and assistant producer Jenna Sadhu. Thank you for listening to She's My Cherry Pie. And happy baking.