Avery Ruzicka Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You are listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and cookbook author. And my fourth book is coming out this fall. Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Avery Ruzicka, the founder and head baker of Manresa Bread in the San Francisco Bay Area. Avery is known for her bread as well as her laminated pastries, and she's built Manresa Bread into a respected player on the baking scene. She's a baker who is deeply passionate about process and details. As you'll hear in our conversation, on today's episode, Avery walks us through a baked good that I've long wanted to discuss on the show. Kouign-aman, peeps, I will say this is not a recipe for beginners, but with Avery's advice, you might be tempted to tackle this at home. You're going to hear exactly how this deliciously layered pastry is made. And not only that, you're going to understand why each step is crucial to the process. Stay tuned for our chat.
Thank you to Plugrà Premium European Style Butter for supporting today's show. As some of you know, I've been a big fan of Plugrà for some time now and was introduced to it at my very first bakery job when I was just a newbie baker. Fast-forward to today, I'm a professional baker, cookbook author, and recipe developer, and I can continue to rely on Plugrà for all my baking needs. My fridge is always stocked with Plugrà sticks and solids. I especially love that Plugrà contains 82% butter fat. The higher butter fat content means less moisture and more fat, and as bakers know, fat equals flavor. Plugrà butter is also slow churned, making it more pliable and easy to work with. I do a lot of baking this time of year for work, and for myself, and my family, comfy bakes like my pistachio chocolate anytime buns and cinnamon sugar buttermilk donut holes, and I always reach for Plugrà unsalted butter. I've also been making a lot of yeasted breads lately, and I love the buttery flavor Plugrà add to my dough. Plugrà Premium European-Style Butter is the perfect choice from professional kitchens to your home kitchen. Ask for Plugrà at your favorite grocery store or visit plugra.com for a store locator and recipes.
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Let's check in with today's guest. Avery, so happy to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk kouign-amann and so much more.
Avery Ruzicka:
I'm so excited to be here.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're originally from North Carolina, and you grew up in a family with a lot of cooking and baking going on and even breadmaking. Can you tell us about an early food memory, be it baking, be it cooking that was burned into your brain or your stomach totally in a good way.
Avery Ruzicka:
Absolutely. My parents were not from North Carolina and I think that baking traditions for us were a lot about connecting with family even though we were kind of our own little island of family, so it was how we talked about grandparents, et cetera, who were maybe up in Chicago versus North Carolina. And my mom's side of the family is Danish. We grew up making able skiers, which are kind of like a little Danish pancake and we would always have them for Christmas and so it was very, very magical because all that anticipation of Christmas Day, and then we were a family that you didn't open presents until after breakfast. It was very thrown into that mix of just joy, excitement, anticipation, and because it was kind of a labor-intensive process, we didn't have them pretty much any other time of the year.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you say that the kinds of things maybe that you were either making around the holidays or just making in general that your mom and dad were making for you that they influenced the kind of either the baking that you do today or more specifically the kind of baker you are today?
Avery Ruzicka:
I would say, I mean, I think what they influenced first and foremost was why I started cooking and baking. My parents were very curious people when I was going to go to university and was trying to decide what I wanted to study. My dad kind of said, "Don't worry about where it's going to take you. Focus on what you're interested in." And I think with baking and cooking in general, my parents were always curious people, so we were trying new things or trying new kinds of cuisine.
And also, being in North Carolina, like early '90s, North Carolina was a very different place than it is now, and my parents had moved them from Chicago, so that was also a lot of the ways that we explored the world that wasn't necessarily accessible at that time. They definitely influenced me in terms of the kind of food I cook or bake at this point. I think it had more to do with interest in where ingredients came from. We always went to the farmer's markets. That was a big part of our weekly routine, knew the farmers, got our eggs from this vendor, got our apples from the apple farmer who comes down from the mountains in North Carolina, that kind of thing. So I think the biggest draw for me is really understanding where things come from and seeking it out.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, I know you didn't start out as a food peep. You studied poly sci when you're in college. And then, you went to France while in college and kind of fell in on a junior year abroad situation. Ended up staying longer than that, but you kind of fell in love with food and with the idea of writing about it while you were there. But I wondered when you're eating all of that incredible French pastry and bread, I know you were thinking, "Gosh, I can't wait to write about this." Were you also thinking, "Gosh, I can't wait to make this"?
Avery Ruzicka:
At the beginning, I really wasn't. I moved back from France. I had a summer before I was going to finish my last year of university, and so I thought, "Well, if you're going to write about food, it'd be great to get some experience in a kitchen." And then, that's when I really fell in love with... And looking back, I can also see the parallels of toiling away on your own, right? You might spend months working on something and then decide, "I don't like anything about this. I've got to throw it all out and start again."
When you're in a kitchen atmosphere, especially if you're in one where people are caring, you're not just kind of turn and burn. You're hearing from your chef about where this food came from, or you're going to the farmer's market. So there's all this creativity, but then, the actual element of creating and sharing is pretty quick, right? It's pretty instantaneous. So you get to cook off this dish, and then you get to give it to a diner, and you get to see their experience with it. And so that was what led me to feeling like, "Oh, my gosh, cooking, this is incredible. This is such a high," right? I think there were all of these subconscious connections to food when I lived in Europe, but then they didn't all come together until after I moved back to the United States.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you ended up going to California after school and working for Chef David Kinch at his three-Michelin-starred Manresa, and the rest is history. You are the founder and the head baker of a Manresa Bread. Would you say that at this point when you were sort of given this opportunity to begin Manresa Bread, and I assume, was David like your partner, co-owner?
Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah, so I think what is good to tell people about or share in my story is the way that it came about, because I met David... And I'm back in New York right now for the first time since 2019. We just went to visit Chelsea Market, and I was reminiscing that I think maybe even the last time I've been in Chelsea Market was the second time I met David. He had just won his James Beard Award, and the Beard Awards were still in New York. And he was hosting a dinner, and so I'd gone to help volunteer in the kitchen, and that's where I really kind of connected with David. And he had said there's opportunities for people who are hardworking, who are... You're the kind of person who we would love to have in the restaurant, but that open invitation really just meant more like a stage, which was an unpaid position, which I couldn't afford to move to California without a job.
So a friend of mine had heard fast-forward another six months, maybe more, that Manresa was hiring in the front of the house. So that is at what point I decided to move from New York on a whim. I was actually down in North Carolina on vacation, and I flew from North Carolina to California, and I took the food runner position. What I just want to share with people as they're wanting to pursue careers is that you really have to look for every little edge, every little opening. And so what ended up happening was I took the position as a food runner, but I had my mornings free, and I observed the bread, which was being made at that point by stages in the restaurant who didn't have any baking background and weren't particularly passionate about. It was kind of like a thing they had to get done, but I was like, "I think I can make this better than it is very easily. Without new equipment, without anything like that, I think I can improve it."
And so I went to one of the chefs and said, "Could I come in, and could I help a little bit?" And they said, "Okay, let's see what happens." And so I came in and it got a little bit better, and then I slowly took that over, and then things got better and better, and people started talking about the bread. And then, I was still working in the front of house in the evening, so I was working for free in the morning, making the bread, and then I was working in the evening as a food runner. And then, we had a guest who said, "Would you like to sell the bread at the farmers' market?" So, then, I started baking the bread and then working at the farmers' market. So they were like 48-hour days. In terms of given the opportunity, I think it's important to remember you have to create your own opportunities.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know the Manresa Bread project, which was the farmers'-
Avery Ruzicka:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
... market, became Manresa Bread, which is the bakery.
Avery Ruzicka:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you say that already in those beginning moments, you had a dessert or baking style at that point professionally, or was it more that once you were given this baby and got to raise it that you raised, being the pun, because bread, that you sort of came into your own in terms of, "Oh, this is an Avery Bakery. This is an Avery Baked good?”
Avery Ruzicka:
It kind of goes back to my desire, my curiosity about ingredients, which is what led me to want to work at Manresa in the first place, was I wanted to work in a very fine dining atmosphere, and I wanted to work in a place that had a connection specifically to a farm or had their own farm, and I wanted to work in a place that seemed to have produced successful chefs from that restaurant. So Manresa had all of those things. Again, if you're going to work for free or if you're going to put in the time, you want to work in a place that is leading in the direction you want to go. I was kind of honing in on my focus on ingredients, which was very important to what we do. So we mill our own flour.
I was focusing on kind of simplicity. I wasn't a pastry chef. I was a baker and a cook, and so I have great respect for true pastry chef who focuses primarily on plated desserts, entremets, things like that. But that had not been my wheelhouse whatsoever. It's something that I've learned a lot more about. But I would say that my style really tends more towards sourdough fermentation. So when we opened, I would call myself more of a boulangerie when we first opened versus a patisserie, and that was when I looked to inspiration abroad as well. I looked at the baking styles of bakers who, then, made pastry. So when we first opened we had brioche and kouign-amann and laminated dough, but those are all dough still. So everything was primarily dough based, or it tied back to a singular ingredient. So for example, our chocolate chip cookie is a whole grain chocolate chip cookie that's made with a 100% whole grain, I think so, I think it was starting to develop.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back.
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody. This is Kerry Diamond, founder of Cherry Bombe and host of Radio Cherry Bombe. You know about our podcast, but do you know we host lots of fun events across the country. We are hosting a special event in Las Vegas this Monday, June 24th from 6:00 to 8:00 P.M. Join me and some of the city's top female culinary talent to celebrate our new podcast miniseries, Destination Cherry Bombe, which is dedicated to all things, food, and travel. We'll have networking, a panel conversation and great food and drink. We'll be at the beautiful La Fontaine restaurant located inside Fontainebleau Las Vegas. Come meet other members of the Vegas Bombesquad and learn about the folks shaping the city's culinary landscape. Tickets are $30 and include the latest issue of Cherry Bombe Magazine plus all bites and sips. Head to cherrybombe.com to get your tickets today or check out the link in our show notes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, back to our guest. I just want to say that some people do say kouign-amann. Yes, definitely. And do you believe that one can use either?
Avery Ruzicka:
I do believe that. I think that that's absolutely fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
But when I was listening to you talk and researching, I was like, "Who's kouign? Who's kouign? Where's the kouign?" I heard that it's the most popular item at the bakery maybe besides the monkey bread. Is that still true?
Avery Ruzicka:
Yes, that's still true. That's still true.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, and just what is it?
Avery Ruzicka:
So a kouign-amann is a laminated dough, a type of viennoiserie that or originated from Brittany. So Brittany is extremely famous for its dairy products including its butter. Kouign-amann is really a butter cake. That's sort of what that boils down to, which means that in a laminated dough is made up of two things, your dough or your détrempe and your butter or your beurrage. And so a kouign-amann is like a small cake made out of these two components and the quality of the butter and the flavor of the butter is really accentuated, if you will, by the inclusion of sugar. Unlike a croissant dough that has all of those things in its initial dough, a kouign-amann typically has layers of sugar or additional layers of butter incorporated into the dough, so that when you bite into it, the first thing that hits your tongue is the flavor of butter and sugar.
Jessie Sheehan:
And tell us about the kind of, gooey is maybe not the right word, but custard-like, tell us about the center.
Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah, so because you are layering dough which has butter, layering it into it with layers of sugar in the baking process, you fold typically, or sometimes kouign-amann can be shaped a couple of different ways. We fold our kouign-amann. They can also be rolled and cut in slices, and both are pretty traditional. You'll see both in Brittany, but what that does is it captures a quantity of the butter that is melting as well as the moisture that's evaporating out. So with the plan croissant, the evaporation of the water in the butter will help with the height of the croissant, the shape of the croissant, but it also evaporates out. But with the shaping of your kouign-amann where you fold things over, some of that moisture doesn't evaporate out, and so it goes back in and it creates this custardy center.
I lean more towards savory than sweet. And so what I love about our kouign-amann is that we make a unique dough compared to our croissant dough. So it is a very simple dough. Our croissant has eggs. It has a bullish in it. It's yeasted, so it's a much more complex dough including it has sugar in it. And then, our kouign-amann dough is really just flour, milk, butter, salt and yeast. And then, the sugar only is incorporated in the lamination process, and I think it just really balances the whole thing. We also use all organic ingredients, and so we're using a granulated sugar, but it's an organic granulated sugar, which is a little bit larger of a granule size than a non-organic.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is it also a little browner?
Avery Ruzicka:
It is very much so. It has a little bit more of a caramelized flavor already, and so I just think that they balance each other really nicely.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. Let's talk about the recipe. So, first of all, we're going to chill all of our dry ingredients. So we have our chilled. It's a high protein flour, and we're going to add some yeast. Again, this is all going in the refrigerator. Instant, active, live.
Avery Ruzicka:
Instant yeast honestly works really well. It's kind of like foolproof.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then, we're going to add some salt. Is it kosher salt?
Avery Ruzicka:
It is kosher salt.
Jessie Sheehan:
And we're going to put all that together and put that in the... You say the walk-in, but we'll say our refrigerator. And then, we're going to spray a metal bowl. Why metal? Could it be a glass bowl?
Avery Ruzicka:
It could be. I mean, if you're going to make this by hand, it doesn't have to be metal. That could be any bowl at home.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, so we're going to spray, let's say, metal bowl, and I wondered if there's a particular kind of spray that-
Avery Ruzicka:
You could put spray on a little bit of oil, and this is also if you're pre-scaling things. So at the bakery, we pre-scale things, because we try to be efficient. The reason that we refrigerate the dry ingredients is because we want to control the fermentation process as much as possible. For the home baker, depending on the size of kouign-amann dough that you're planning to make, as long as you're working with ingredients that are not... If you're working on a very hot day, perhaps you would want to chill things down. But other than that, that's really where that step comes in for us. And so the reason that we spray the bowl for our non-dry ingredients is so that they can be prepped and ready and at room temperature. If you are just going to make this directly, you don't even need to rescale those things.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we have our metal bowl, maybe we sprayed it, maybe we haven't. We have some softened butter in there and some barley syrup. Tell us what's brand of barley syrup. Could we buy it and why are we putting it in?
Avery Ruzicka:
Absolutely. You could use barley syrup. You could use a rice syrup. Yeast wants some sugar. Yeast will... If you think about our sourdough bread, there is sugar in flour in very small quantities to some degree, but when we're making this dough, because our kouign-amann dough doesn't have sugar in it, adding the barley malt syrup or adding some sort of rice syrup, you could add a little bit of maple syrup. It's just a little bit more to help with the activity of the dough. I also think that it helps balance, so barley mulch has a malted flavor and so that has a role in creating this fully rounded flavor of the dough, but any kind of malted or syrup of that sort, that kind of just like depth amber kind of flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Almost could you use-
Avery Ruzicka:
You could use-
Jessie Sheehan:
... Lyle's Golden Syrup?
Avery Ruzicka:
Oh, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, something-
Avery Ruzicka:
You could use golden syrup. If you like the flavor of molasses, which I do, you could use a small amount of molasses, kind of like anything that's a slightly darker palette of sugar flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
And so we're going to put all of these ingredients, the dry ones and then these wet ones, along with some water into our stand mixer, and we're going to mix about 11 minutes beginning on a very low speed and then raising it a little bit, still keeping it low. Is that because you're using a Hobart, and it's big, or if I was at home, would I also want to keep it very low?
Avery Ruzicka:
You don't want to overdevelop your dough. You're looking for a window pane texture, but you're going to be doing a series of folds to laminate the dough. If you overdevelop your dough, you're going to end up with something that will tear a lot, and because we're already using, in our case, in the bakery, a higher gluten flour, we don't want to overdevelop that gluten. If you're at home and you're using a lower gluten like an AP flour, then you're just still going to look for a window pane.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you want to tell the listeners just in case they've forgotten?
Avery Ruzicka:
Sure. So when we make bread or a laminated dough, in this case with wheat flour, wheat contains gluten and in the process of even just introducing some sort of moisture to gluten or some sort of water content to flour, gluten will start to develop. And then, when you actually mix your dough, what you're basically doing is folding over and over again that gluten structure on itself, which is creating the strength for your dough, which will, depending on the style of dough that you're making, it will definitely lend structure. It will be a part of the mouth feel of your final product, the shape, and also, it will impact the fermentation. So if you don't develop enough gluten, then in the fermentation process, the yeast will basically break down too much of the gluten and that might be when you have a loaf that doesn't really rise nicely, et cetera.
So when we are looking for a window pane, what we're going to do is grab kind of like a roll size piece of dough. You want something that has some size to it, and then you're going to slowly tease those two sides apart, so that you end up with a very thin piece of dough stretched out. And if you can do that without the dough, kind of like shredding or ripping basically so that you can see through it as if it were a window pane, then you have dough like typically enough gluten for you to move on to the next part of the recipe.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's what we're looking for after-
Avery Ruzicka:
That is.
Jessie Sheehan:
... this 11 minutes-ish. And once we're done with this and we see our window pane, do we immediately sheet?
Avery Ruzicka:
No, you're going to relax the dough. What we do in the bakery setting is we take that dough. It's not that we sheet. Well, I guess, we would use the word that we sheet it in the sense that we stretch it to its pre-shape, if you will, before we refrigerate it, but you could do that by hand, and we even do it by hand sometimes with the kouign-amann just because it's not as big of a dough book, but that is really just to help you get to the shape you want it for the lamination process.
Jessie Sheehan:
So is it like a big rectangle?
Avery Ruzicka:
It is. So unlike perhaps a sourdough loaf, where you're going to finish the mixing process, and then you're going to take it out of the mixing bowl, and you're going to put it into another bowl to ferment, and it's going to be kind of in a round shape, in this case, we're kind of stretching it out. That does two things as well. It gets you kind of closer to where you want to be. It also slows the fermentation, because when you have dough rounded on top of itself, there's more dough mass altogether, which is going to keep the fermentation happening at a quicker rate, because the interior of that dough mass is going to be warmer, right? So when you spread out the dough and flatten it, you're creating more surface space so it's going to chill down quicker, which is what you want because this is a multi-step process.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we put it into the freezer at this point or the refrigerator at this point?
Avery Ruzicka:
We put ours into the freezer, but I would say for the home, you could do either at home, it really depends on your freezer size as well and the quantity of dough you're making. But what you're trying to do is slow down the process, because you don't want to go directly from making the dough to starting to lock in the butter. You want to relax the dough, and you also want to start to develop a little bit of flavor, so we use our dough. In a professional baking setting, you are going to take dough in and out of the freezer multiple times just because of the volume of product we're making. In a home situation, you could freeze it, because you want to make this a multi-day process and not be overwhelmed, or you could refrigerate it as long as your refrigerator is really cold.
Jessie Sheehan:
And just kind of refrigerate it for an hour or so.
Avery Ruzicka:
Or depending-
Jessie Sheehan:
Or overnight.
Avery Ruzicka:
It could be overnight. I would say that if you're going to mix the dough at 8:00 A.M., you don't plan to lock it in until the next day at 8:00. You probably want to freeze it, because most of our home fridges are going to get open and closed a million times in a day.
Jessie Sheehan:
And so the dough will rise too much?
Avery Ruzicka:
Too much.
Jessie Sheehan:
You want to keep it that-
Avery Ruzicka:
You want to maintain. You don't want to exhaust the yeast-
Jessie Sheehan:
I get it.
Avery Ruzicka:
... at this point.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, we're going to make our butter block.
Avery Ruzicka:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about how we would do this at home as opposed to how you guys do it in the bakery.
Avery Ruzicka:
Absolutely. I think when making it at home, it's a great thing to do after you've mixed your dough, because you're kind of still in baking mode, and you're phasing out the steps, you would've had to pull butter for the recipe of the kouign-amann to begin with. I find it easiest when making a butter block at home to take room temperature butter and parchment paper and basically cut the block up into flatter pieces. So, I guess, it depends on if you're going to buy a one-pound block or if you're going to buy a pound that broken into 4-6. If you're buying butter in 4-6 pieces, that's totally fine. You would just take each one of those and cut that in half or use those at a softer, quite soft, and put them between the parchment and fold the parchment to roughly the size that you're looking for.
Typically, when we're laminating products at home, we're looking for the butter to be anywhere between half to a third the size of the dough, so that's kind of a good guide to start with. And so the recipe size that you would do at home wouldn't be so large that you would need kilos and kilos of butter. You might maybe be using a pound to two pounds of butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
You kind of want soft but not too soft when you're doing this.
Avery Ruzicka:
You do not want it to be like a butter that you'd be able to whip. So if you're thinking of making a cake, this butter should be colder than cake butter. When I think about making a cake, you want butter to be basically just this side of mayonnaise state, if you will. If you've ever mixed a cake where you butter with still too cold, and you start to put the sugar in, and you're supposed to be creaming butter and sugar and the butter is sort of clumping, that's kind of the temperature you want this to be, because I like to use a rolling pin.
And so you take a piece of parchment paper. Ideally, you're going to use a roll of parchment that you buy like the Saran wrap brand or something that not everybody that's a home baker has access to pre-cut parchment. So I think it's easy to use parchment that just the full roll and then you can kind of fold it to the dimensions you need. And then, you're going to put the butter between those two pieces. If you have a small size baking sheet tray that has a rim to it, you can also use that. That's kind of a nice way to do it as well, because that kind of acts as a mold for the butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
You can almost line that with plastic, so that you can get it.
Avery Ruzicka:
Exactly. And then, you can almost do it a little bit by hand.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Avery Ruzicka:
The most important thing that you're looking for here is a consistent thickness. That's where I think that making a slightly larger recipe versus a slightly smaller recipe for laminated dough at home is better because when we get to the lamination phase, it's all about getting the dough and the butter, very similar textures. And when you have butter, I think that's sometimes something that people home baking and trying to do lamination by hand, run into trouble with is that it's too small of a recipe with two little butter, so the butter gets too warm too quickly, and then that's where you start to break your butter, or your butter shatters, and then when you bake the croissant or bake the whatever, all this butter leaks out of it, and also you go through a lot of work to do laminated dough at home, why not make a slightly larger recipe?
Jessie Sheehan:
So once we've made sort of our butter block and it's at the right size and our dough, let's say it's in the refrigerator, do we return the butter to the refrigerator-
Avery Ruzicka:
You do.
Jessie Sheehan:
... to try to get it to the same temperature as our dough?
Avery Ruzicka:
Yes, you absolutely take the butter and put it in the fridge, and you're going to want to give it some time there. And that's why I think it's a nice idea to make your butter block basically right after making your kouign-amann dough because both of these things are done. They're sitting in the fridge and now at your own kind of discretion you can start the process of lamination.
So, typically, the dough is the thing that's kind of at the ambient texture. You're going to more or less work with the dough directly from the fridge, and so it's the butter that you're going to take out first, or again, depending on the size you're working with, you want to basically have the butter be just starting to be pliable. What I think of or what I like to work with with my team is it should be... Malleable is a good word. It should not be rock hard. It should be where you could almost slightly bend it, and it wouldn't break in half, and so everybody's kitchen's going to be a little different, all of those things. So you typically will pull that out and wait a little while. It could be like 15 minutes or so, and then pull your dough out.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then the dough is a large rectangle. The butter is also a rectangle that will be rested evenly on the dough.
Avery Ruzicka:
Correct.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then, we will fold up our sides.
Avery Ruzicka:
Correct.
Jessie Sheehan:
In our short sides as well, or maybe we'll just pinch our short sides.
Avery Ruzicka:
Typically, I mean, ideally what you want to do is you want to make your butter block in reference to your dough. You can really kind of make that your own. If you make, let's say, a kilo of dough, you could stretch that to a shape that feels comfortable for you to work with, and then, you should shape your butter block. I would shape that in reference. And so once you've done that, I like to put my butter block in the center of the dough, and I actually like to use a pizza cutter to cut the two pieces to each side, and I really prefer for it to be the full length of the dough. So the short side, I don't pinch the sides, I just bring the two edge pieces, if you will, that are the longer pieces. I marry them on top of the butter block.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you fold from the long sides of the rectangle?
Avery Ruzicka:
I fold, but in fact, I don't even fold. I cut and I set on top.
Jessie Sheehan:
And so, then, it's just a thin tiny seam-
Avery Ruzicka:
In the center.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, that-
Avery Ruzicka:
I actually push those together.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. And then you're done.
Avery Ruzicka:
And then you're done. The reason I think that this is helpful is that you as the laminator now have a visual of each side of where your butter and your doughs meet. We want always further to be dough, butter, dough, and then we're just increasing how many layers of dough, butter, dough we have, or in the case of kouign-amann, dough, butter-
Jessie Sheehan:
Sugar.
Avery Ruzicka:
Or sugar. Exactly. And so by being able to see all the way around your dough and your butter, you are going to be able to see that your dough extends as far as your butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, actually, you can still see the butter layer?
Avery Ruzicka:
Correct, because I cut. I've literally cut-
Jessie Sheehan:
I get it.
Avery Ruzicka:
... instead of folding it over like a piece of cake-
Jessie Sheehan:
Like a letter fold or something.
Avery Ruzicka:
Exactly, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I get it. I get it. Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. Again, if we're at home, is this our first sprinkle of-
Avery Ruzicka:
No, the first sprinkle... So at this point, what we've done is we've locked in the dough. Now, we need to think of things in turns. So if you started with your book facing you long ways, like a letter paper-
Jessie Sheehan:
Vertically as opposed to horizontal.
Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah, vertically, you would then lengthen your dough with the rolling pin at that point. So you might go kind of one and a half to almost two lengths of your initial starting length. And then, at that point, I would pivot my dough, because it's easier to fold things in the-
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, it'll be vertical to you.
Avery Ruzicka:
Exactly. And you're going to sprinkle your sugar on at that point.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Avery Ruzicka:
Because you want to sprinkle your sugar on the full length of the dough, and you need to lengthen the dough in order to be able to fold the dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is the sugar...? I'm sure you're not eyeballing it, but is it just like, "Oh, I just need the sugar to cover this"? I don't need to be like, "I need seven tablespoons?”
Avery Ruzicka:
No. No, you can do that to kind of your discretion.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Avery Ruzicka:
We do measure it because we want consistency.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Avery Ruzicka:
But it's one of those things that a hundred percent of the sugar is not going to stick. You're going to have loss as you start to do the folding process for a thousand grams of dough, you're thinking probably like a 100 grams of sugar per layer.
Jessie Sheehan:
So our book has now been stretched out in front of us. It's facing us horizontally.
Avery Ruzicka:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
We sprinkle it with sugar.
Avery Ruzicka:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
We are now... We're going to fold-
Avery Ruzicka:
Fold it like a letter fold.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, we do a letter fold.
Avery Ruzicka:
We do a letter fold. Correct. Because that way we're creating more layers. We're just continuously creating more layers. We do a letter fold instead of a book fold, especially because at home if you're doing a book fold, that's a lot of layers, so there's a lot more tension.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you briefly please tell us the difference between a letter and a book fold?
Avery Ruzicka:
There's a lot of different ways people reference folds, and so some people use what seems like a simple term, which would be letter fold versus book fold. So a letter fold would be like when you're folding something in thirds to mail a letter, an 8 by 11 piece of paper that you fold halfway or two-thirds up, and then you fold the last third on top of it, so it's kind of like two-thirds, one-third. A book fold is equal parts into the center, and then you fold both sides over. So it's like you're thinking about the way that a book closes. So you're creating a hinge basically in the center, and so instead of just creating one, two, three layers, you're creating-
Jessie Sheehan:
One, two, three, four.
Avery Ruzicka:
One, two, three, four over again.
Jessie Sheehan:
But you guys are letter folders at this point?
Avery Ruzicka:
For this product at this point, we are, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
We do a letter fold. When we letter fold, it's now going to be horizontal to us.
Avery Ruzicka:
It is. I would recommend resting your dough at this point. So taking a quick break, because just like in the mixing process, in the mixing bowl, or if you're mixing something by hand, you are developing gluten. Every time we fold the dough over itself, not only are we incorporating sugar and creating layers of butter and dough, but we're also creating tension within the dough. What I like to think of is that initial size that I started out with my book with just the butter inside of it, I kind of am constantly trying to go back to that size. That's a good reference point. You want to give your dough a little bit of time with a small amount of dough. It won't take very much time, but you kind of want to give yourself 15 minutes, and you're going to put it back in the fridge 15 to 20 minutes. You're not trying to ferment the dough. You're just trying to let the gluten relax a little bit.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we have our first sprinkle. We've done a letter fold.
Avery Ruzicka:
Correct, so it's like-
Jessie Sheehan:
... into the fridge for maybe half an hour, 45 minutes.
Avery Ruzicka:
Not even.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Avery Ruzicka:
Not even. So it's kind of you think of it in two steps. So you created the layers by locking in the butter. Then, you created the next layers by rolling out sprinkling, sugar folding, and so that's one, two now, and then you're going to go three, four. You're going to do it-
Jessie Sheehan:
Two more times.
Avery Ruzicka:
... two more times. Typically, you're going to rest the dough again for a few minutes before you roll it out to cut your final shape.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, awesome. Oh, I love this so much. And each time, we're doing that sugar?
Avery Ruzicka:
Each time with sugar. Each time with sugar, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Avery Ruzicka:
And so each time you're just adding more and more sugar in there, and you're creating all of these very thin layers with sugar between the layers of butter and flour-
Jessie Sheehan:
Each sugar mostly just... There's no like brushing water or brushing egg wash-
Avery Ruzicka:
No, no, no, no.
Jessie Sheehan:
You don't need... The sugar mostly sticks.
Avery Ruzicka:
But that's why you need to also relax your dough, because if you get the dough too tight, you won't be able to roll the dough. So in the process of rolling the dough out, you need to be able to lengthen the dough so that the sugar has enough length to be incorporated into the dough. If you can't roll the dough, because it's too tight, then the sugar's just going to sit there on top.
Jessie Sheehan:
But just so I understand, we're never rolling on top of sugar, because-
Avery Ruzicka:
No, we are. You are, because you have to lengthen.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we lengthen before we letter fold.
Avery Ruzicka:
That is correct. The very first one, we locked in our butter. Then, we had to lengthen. Then, we put sugar on and we fold it. Now, before we could put more sugar on, we have to lengthen, so that-
Jessie Sheehan:
When it comes out of the fridge from its rest-
Avery Ruzicka:
It gets lengthened again.
Jessie Sheehan:
... we lengthen-
Avery Ruzicka:
And so your lengthening... Basically, that sugar is getting put in, that was already in that last roll, you're lengthening that, then you're sprinkling more sugar, and then you can roll your rolling pin back and forth over that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Or you just folded at that point?
Avery Ruzicka:
Yes. Yeah, your sugar should be kind of being lengthened into it. We do not put a 100% of the sugar just straight on. It's like you sprinkle a little bit, lengthen, and then sprinkle the rest, now fold, now chill, now rest, lengthen a little bit, sprinkle, lengthen the rest of the way, fold.
Jessie Sheehan:
Got you. So there is a moment-
Avery Ruzicka:
There is.
Jessie Sheehan:
Each sugar application is-
Avery Ruzicka:
Each sugar application is not-
Jessie Sheehan:
... broken into two.
Avery Ruzicka:
Correct.
Jessie Sheehan:
One is rolling literally sugar into dough.
Avery Ruzicka:
Correct.
Jessie Sheehan:
One is lengthening dough that's been-
Avery Ruzicka:
Correct. That's the way that my team makes our kouign-amann. That doesn't make or break it, but that is definitely how we do it. You're trying to emphasize how much sugar you can incorporate into the dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, we'll let our dough rest, relax before we're going to cut it. You're calling it a bicycle. I think we used to use it in the bakery I worked at to cut brownies. It's almost like an accordion.
Avery Ruzicka:
It is. It is.
Jessie Sheehan:
Like of a million pizza cutters or like a pastry-
Avery Ruzicka:
Yes, like a rolling cutter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, yeah, a rolling cutter. I love that. And that's what you are using to sort of cut-
Avery Ruzicka:
We do.
Jessie Sheehan:
... our shape into squares.
Avery Ruzicka:
So what's nice about a bicycle cutter is that it is like an accordion, and then it has a lock on it. So you can adjust that accordion. I recommend using a ruler, because even though it appears as though you're stretching it, and they're equidistant, if you're a perfectionist, you have to sort of double check it against a ruler to make sure that each of the little cutters are equidistant apart, and then there's a little locking mechanism. And so you tighten that locking mechanism, and then for you to final shape your dough, you're going to repeat the very last process without any more sugar. So you're going to lengthen the dough, and now, you're going to cut the dough.
There is one more addition of sugar, and that's in the shaping process. So we take all of our little squares, so we just use the same. Once we spread it out to about two and a half inches, we cut the dough one direction, then we cut the dough the other direction, and now we have two and a half inch by two and a half inch squares. Then we take those, we use a sheeter, but if we were working at home, then I like to stack those up. I take the sugar that maybe has not been incorporated throughout the process, and I scrape that off my table, or you can just use fresh sugar. And before I actually shape the kouign-amann, I dip that into a little bit more sugar on both sides, because you want one last layer of sugar that's going to be the sugar that helps with the caramelization in the baking process. So you really want to make sure that it's nicely coated.
Jessie Sheehan:
Your favorite kind of rolling pin, do you like handles, do you like tapered?
Avery Ruzicka:
I like handles for this dough, because I think that you have better leverage for a stiffer dough with handles. I think it has to do a lot with the person though, because things like your height, the height of your counter that you're working on, your arm strength, too, but all of those things, especially a person's height compared to their work surface is going to create a different ability, like a point of leverage, if you will.
And so I think that to some degree, I find that using a rolling pin with handles for a dough like this really allows you to get up and over the dough, because you're going to need to put some pressure on it, especially at the beginning, as you incorporate the sugar into the dough, the dough is going to relax, because sugar absorbs moisture, so it pulls some of the moisture out of the dough, so it's going to eventually start to soften the dough. So the dough you started with versus the dough you finish with, that fully locked in laminated, and now final cut of kouign-amann is going to be much more extensible than what you started with. So it gets easier as you do the work. But I think for this product, I like a rolling pin with handles.
Jessie Sheehan:
And do you think you can buy that bicycle thing?
Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm just thinking home bakers need that for perfect brownies.
Avery Ruzicka:
That's something that you could buy these days. I mean, number one, you can buy anything on Amazon.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Avery Ruzicka:
But I am sure you can buy that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Avery Ruzicka:
And they're not expensive.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, it's such a cool tool.
Avery Ruzicka:
It is a cool tool, and it's not a sharp tool, so it's very useful, but it's also fairly safe, because for a lot of laminated products, you want more of not a razor blade or like a sharp X-ACTO kind of thing, because you want a really nice cut, but this one is a lot more forgiving, so you can just use the bicycle to cut it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Each of our squares are going to dip both sides in sugar and then fold the squares into a flower. Is that basically just bringing each corner of the square into the center?
Avery Ruzicka:
So there's multiple different ways and I think this is where depending on the kind of learning style, I think this is really helpful to watch videos, things like that, because there are a lot of different ways to shape kouign-amann. You can do a very simple shape where you fold the corners in kind of one of those little-
Jessie Sheehan:
Like origami?
Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah, yeah, those little-
Jessie Sheehan:
Paper.
Avery Ruzicka:
Paper, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Avery Ruzicka:
That told you who were you going to marry when you were in elementary school. So you can fold all the corners in, but you can also do a little bit more. And this is what we mean when we say fold into a flower. We start midway between with four points. We start with the far left corner, we fold that in, and then you sort of fold halfway between each. So instead of folding just the four corners in, you're basically giving it double the quantity of fold. So you're folding that first corner in. Then, you're folding the center between these two corners in. Then, you're folding the next corner, so you're overlapping the layers, so that then when it opens, it sort of opens up a little bit more like a flower instead of it just being four points into the center.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, that's so pretty. And the bakery you're freezing. Do we need to freeze now? Do we need to proof now? No, you could. Could you bake off now?
Avery Ruzicka:
Well, you could not bake off now. You have to proof them. It is like yeasted dough, so if you can bake them off, things might've gotten a little out of hand, but you need to either freeze them or chill them if you wanted to wait to bake them, so you have that flexibility again, because I think laminating products at home can be... I personally want probably not try to go from start to finish with a laminated dough in one sitting. I would want to give myself some space, so maybe I'm laminating the night before, and I'm shaping everything, and then I'm just putting it in the fridge overnight, and then in the morning, I'm pulling them out.
And the nice thing about kouign-amann is it has a very short proofing time, so it's a great thing to bake at home, because things like ambient temperature or your proofing temperature, which could be a real difficulty when trying to make something like a croissant or pain au chocolat, because it takes typically multiple hours for those things to proof. Kouign-amann proofs in about 45 minutes to an hour, maybe an hour and a half max. It could be baked in a ring mold. It could be baked in a muffin pan. It's better to bake them in some sort of vessel, because otherwise the folds will sort of come undone. But other than that, it really can just sit out, ready to bake in a warm-ish environment in anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love that. So we're going to spray our rings and I wondered, I know this is just what you're doing in the bakery, but what's the size? What's the brand? Do you think-
Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I don't have them at home, but do you think rings are better than a muffin tin?
Avery Ruzicka:
So we use something that we would call like a mousse ring, and you can get those, a lot of the baked deco, mat for, which is more of a professional brand, but we use a mat for ring, but it's really just a stainless, metal ring that's open at the top and the bottom, and it's about two inches tall and about two inches wide. It's a taller ring versus a shallow ring.
What this does is it gives it structure. And what I think is nice about baking something like a kouign-amann in a ring mold like that is that you have access from the top and the bottom. So who do you think this is a product that's literally coated in sugar and butter. So what happens when you combine butter and sugar, you make basically caramel. And what happens when caramel cools, it becomes very hard.
Jessie Sheehan:
To get out of them?
Avery Ruzicka:
Exactly. And so one thing that is nice about having the ring mold is that let's say you make it, you take it out, and you don't immediately take them out of that mold, you can run a pairing knife all the way around it and pop it right out.
Jessie Sheehan:
Our goal is caramelization, which I love.
Avery Ruzicka:
It is.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you said, we're putting our rings on a Silpat lined... I only will use parchment, because I feel like it's too much insulation between the metal of my pan.
Avery Ruzicka:
I don't think you're wrong about that. I think that in professional ovens, the-
Jessie Sheehan:
It's different?
Avery Ruzicka:
... the power, the BTUs, are completely different than your home oven, but I wouldn't disagree with that. I think that parchment on a heavy, I would really recommend a heavy baking pan. So not one of these super thin, lightweight things that people like to sometimes cook cookies on, because they don't want the cookie to get very dark on the bottom, which is understandable.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Avery Ruzicka:
We use a spray because that's just easier, but you could use any kind of oil, you could even use a little bit more butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
What spray, just out of curiosity.
Avery Ruzicka:
We use like a canola style.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Avery Ruzicka:
It depends on what we're baking, because different things have different heat, temperature, a abilities. So for something like that, we're just kind of trying to create a barrier, so that's... Everything doesn't...
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Avery Ruzicka:
There's some ability, especially when you think about you're baking-
Jessie Sheehan:
Pop it out.
Avery Ruzicka:
Exactly. And you're baking hundreds of them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. And so the first ones might pop out easily, but the hundred one-
Avery Ruzicka:
Exactly. And that's one of those things where we sometimes bake something like that in batches, if you will, depending on... Especially if we're thinking about a major holiday and we're going to bake hundreds and hundreds of kouign-amann at once, we might stagger the bake, because typically we have two, maybe three at the very max, but traditionally or typically even with multiple locations, we have two bakers for the pastry team, so they can only work so quickly. So at home, that won't really be an issue. I think that muffin pans, if you're going to use a muffin pan, you want a very wide muffin pan. You do not... So some muffins-
Jessie Sheehan:
Almost like a jumbo?
Avery Ruzicka:
Yeah. Or you want to just make sure you make a very small pastry. What you don't want to do is put a... if you're thinking of a very traditional muffin cup size with the sides come in, it's smaller at the bottom than it is at the top.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tapered.
Avery Ruzicka:
It's tapered. There's something wrong with that, but it's just... You really want to make sure you don't put a lot of dough in there, because it will be very hard to get out.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to bake it. It's 370 when you're in the bakery. At home, is that 375 or is that 350?
Avery Ruzicka:
It is 375. And then, if you have convection, some people do, some people don't. If you do not have convection, I would go 375, or at the very least, start my oven at 375. Really has to do with how well you know your oven. I always recommend for people to get one of those little oven thermometers that lives in your oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
And it's about 17 minutes in the bakery-
Avery Ruzicka:
Maybe, 22 max. It has to do again with how big you've cut them, how much dough we're talking about. This is a product you want to fully bake, because you want all the textural differences. And so under baking, this product, some things are good, very lightly baked, but I think that this is a product where you really want to put it into a very hot oven. So if your oven runs a little cold, you might want to preheat almost up to 400, get it into the oven and then turn your oven slightly down, because you want that first blast of heat to start the baking process.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you also want that crunchy, dark brown.
Avery Ruzicka:
Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
Coupled with that custardy middle.
Avery Ruzicka:
Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
And if it's all kind of custardy, it might be delicious.
Avery Ruzicka:
Well, it's just... You need some real heat for that. If you want to bake them in a muffin mold, totally fine. But I would really recommend, then, having a cooling rack and another sheet pan and with oven gloves on. Take the dough out. You do want to wait like a minute.
Jessie Sheehan:
So it sets.
Avery Ruzicka:
Exactly, to two minutes, because you want that butter, a little bit of that butter and that sugar that was just molten hot to just slightly cool, so it stays within the product. And then, I would recommend almost like flipping the whole thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much-
Avery Ruzicka:
Thank you. This has been wonderful.
Jessie Sheehan:
... for chatting with me today, Avery, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Avery Ruzicka:
Thank you. Very happy to be here.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugrà Premium European Style Butter for supporting today's show. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and tell your pals about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Elizabeth Vogt. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu and our content operations manager is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.