David Lebovitz Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You're 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.
My guest today is the iconic David Leibovitz, a pastry chef, cookbook author, and recipe developer based in France. David is the author of many dessert books and two memoirs as well as a fantastic newsletter. Those who subscribe get a window into his life as an American in Paris. He shares restaurant recommendations, musings on the Paris food scene, recipes and personal stories. On today's episode, David and I discuss his time at Chez Panisse where he kicked off his culinary career, his big move to Paris, and what delights him about the city all these years later, then we'll walk through David's recipe for fudgy and delicious chocolate cheesecake brownies. I loved going deep with David about all his favorite baking tools and ingredients but, more than anything, it was such an honor to talk with someone whose work I have loved and respected for so many years. Visit cherrybombe.com for today's recipe. Stay tuned for our chat.
Thank you to Plugra Premium European Style Butter for supporting today's show. As some of you know, I've been a big fan of Plugra 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 continue to rely on Plugra for all my baking needs. My fridge is always stocked with Plugra sticks and solids. I especially love that Plugra contains 82% butterfat. The higher butterfat content means less moisture and more fat and, as bakers know, fat equals flavor. Plugra 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 doughnut holes and I always reach for Plugra unsalted butter. I've also been making a lot of yeasted breads lately and I love the buttery flavor Plugra adds to my dough. Plugra Premium European Style Butter is the perfect choice from professional kitchens to your home kitchen. Ask for Plugra at your favorite grocery store or visit plugra.com for a store locator and recipes.
Let's check in with today's guest. David, so happy to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to chat brownies with you and so much more.
David Lebovitz:
It's a grand pleasure to meet you because we have several mutual friends, who of course are bakers, come full circle and I'm finally meeting you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, indeed. So, I love asking guests about an early sweets memory and I read online that you were fairly fond of sprinkles, maybe were as a child, chocolate and rainbow and that, as a kid, you frequented Friendly's ice cream parlors, as I did because I am from Massachusetts-
David Lebovitz:
The best.
Jessie Sheehan:
The best.
David Lebovitz:
Oh, okay.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I wondered if there was a particular ice cream with sprinkles when you were little that you always ordered.
David Lebovitz:
Well, it wasn't at Friendly's but it was at Baskin-Robbins. Baskin-Robbins has changed a lot and Friendly's changed but they had this flavor called coconut almond fudge at Baskin-Robbins, this is like ... I don't know what Baskin-Robbins is like nowadays but, back then, they had all these amazing flavors with all this stuff in it and I love coconut, I love almonds, I love fudge. And back in those days too, they knew how to do sprinkles, they would overturn the cup or the cone into the bowl of sprinkles. They didn't sprinkle them on top like people do now it's like, "No, I want a crust of sprinkles."
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. It needs to be dunked not literally sprinkled. And I also have read is that both you're very well put together, and I loved this description, you're very well put together mom and your grandmother were both great cooks. What I wondered is were they also bakers?
David Lebovitz:
Not really. My mother was of that generation. I'm working on a book now and I'm writing about it and I'm trying to put it into context women of that generation didn't really want to eat a lot, they were very diet conscious and it was very normal in those days to not want to eat a lot and to look a certain way and so forth. So, my mother was certainly part of that generation but she ate, she drank beer out of the bottle. She had a Louis Vuitton handbag and she looked like Jacqueline Susann with her hair but she would drink those ponies, Miller ponies out of the bottle, light beer of course.
And she did bake things and my grandmother did too but, honestly, I don't have a lot of memories of things, of growing up with desserts except Pepperidge Farm cakes, those square chocolate cakes and the icing was really good.
Jessie Sheehan:
So good, so, so good. There were so many good Pepperidge Farm things, I loved them all and-
David Lebovitz:
And the apple turnovers.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, and Entenmann's.
David Lebovitz:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Did you ever have the frozen Pepperidge Farm raspberry turnovers?
David Lebovitz:
I wasn't into raspberry fillings when I was a kid. It was the apple filling with the cinnamon and there was three raisins in there that were extra hot if you got one. I think we need to do a second podcast of foods from our childhood from New England.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wonder, because there was good food from your mom, from your grandmother, did that inspire you at all to make your way into the kitchen of Chez Panisse all those years later?
David Lebovitz:
Oh, it was a long route to there but what was interesting was my parents were free spirits. When we were finally old enough to be left alone, me and my sister, I took out one of my mother's cookbooks and I made a chocolate ... I was probably 15 or 16 and I made a chocolate souffle and this is in the days where chocolate, in cookbooks, it just said chocolate, didn't say bittersweet or unsweetened, it was just, whatever, with the stuff from the supermarket. So, we didn't have a souffle dish and I made a chocolate souffle because I was like, "Oh, well, we have eggs, we have sugar, we have chocolate and butter." So, I made this recipe in a Pyrex measuring cup and it was delicious because ... I was like, "Oh, this is actually fun."
Then I moved up to Good Season's salad dressing where you had to measure all ... They had a cruet with all the markers, I was like, "Okay, now I'm learning to measure." So, that was my training to work at Chez Panisse. Don't tell Alice.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, that is so excellent. And so, when you did get to Chez Panisse, despite being a cafe line cook there, you loved watching the pastry people at work. You loved the fruit and watching their manual work, making dough and all of that. And after a year, there was an opening in the pastry department and you thought, "Oh, this is going to be really easy."
David Lebovitz:
Of course.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, of course. Was it watching the pastry department that made you think I might want to make sweets? Was that your first time and also, since you probably didn't find it easy, how did you find it when you moved over to that pastry department?
David Lebovitz:
Well, my pastry career began when I was in college. I worked in restaurants, I was a dishwasher, one of my jobs was washing beer mugs, I had another job scooping ice cream. But one of the jobs, I worked in a vegetarian restaurant and it was the original farm to table. This is in the 80s and we actually bought produce from the local people, that was just what we did because it was an agricultural community. So, we made desserts, we all pitched in and we made desserts with real ingredients. We didn't have machines in the kitchen, we only had a blender so I learned how to bake that way.
But when I went to Chez Panisse, I was working upstairs in the cafe and I did use to see the pastry people all working and they were nice. There was a couple of ... I would always go talk to them, I was like, "Oh, everyone's so nice," they were so relaxed and cool and they're cutting up fruit and everything looks so beautiful while we were upstairs in the cafe feeding 600 people. So, it looked appealing to me and then, when an opening came up, I was like, "Well, I'm the perfect person for this job." So, they hired somebody else who I worked with to do it and I couldn't be mad at her because I liked her a lot but she decided she didn't want the job after all. So, I got second place and, look at me now. Second place is not bad.
Jessie Sheehan:
Also, I'm impressed that you weren't mad at her because, even if I liked the person, there would be a teeny part of me that was mad.
David Lebovitz:
One of my good qualities is that I'm not jealous. I'm not competitive and I'm not jealous. I used to be a martial artist and I would go to tournaments and compete and I was like, "I actually don't care if I win it, it doesn't" ...
Jessie Sheehan:
We need to do a podcast about desserts from New England, can we also do a podcast about how not to be jealous? Because I need you to teach me.
David Lebovitz:
Well, I think it's something you're born with. Well, I just ... What's to be ... There's always going to be somebody better than you and you're going to be better than somebody. When I lived in San Francisco, I remember, I want to learn to ice skate, I want to be a figure skater because I watch these people on TV and I was like, "Oh, it looks really easy, they're just gliding around on the ice." And I fell a couple times, I had a pretty rough ... And I knew how to skate but I didn't know how to figure skate and that was a really good lesson. I was like, "You know what? There are some things I'm good at and there are some things I'm not good at. I'm not going to be Brian Boitano or Kristi Yamaguchi, maybe someday I'll be Dorie Greenspan or Julia Chatham."
Jessie Sheehan:
So, when you did move over to the pastry department, did it feel like a super steep curve? I know you had Lindsey Shere who was the founding Chez Panisse pastry chef guiding you and your greatest influence, I love that.
David Lebovitz:
I was a trial by fire. Because Lindsey had worked there a long time and she was one of the founding owners of the restaurant so she wasn't there all the time. We would do things with her but we were a team. So, I was often alone at night and I was just ... All of a sudden, I was by myself and it was like, "Oh, I have to make dessert for 110 people downstairs and then do all the desserts for 600 people upstairs." Chez Panisse also, we change the menu twice a day, completely. So, it was just you're shaking your head no, it's, yes, we did that. It was a great experience and I loved it but it was a lot.
Jessie Sheehan:
Did Lindsey help mold your dessert style?
David Lebovitz:
Absolutely. I learned so much from her about fruit, about simplicity, about France, about Italy. She was always bringing in recipes for me to try or for us to try.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, in 1999, you left the restaurant business, you left Chez Panisse to write cookbooks to launch a website, blog which would coincide with the release of your first book, Room for Dessert, which is such a great title. And the rest is history here with the blog becoming one of the most widely read food blogs in the world which you followed up with a newsletter that is one of the top three food newsletters on Substack. You also moved to France in 2003 and you've said that Paris changed your dessert style, slowed you down, made it a little more simple, singular flavors, maybe getting your butter and flour from individual stores as opposed to the way we shop here in the grocery store.
But can you tell us a little bit about how maybe, from where you were with Lindsey to where you maybe were or are once you got to Paris, how that style shifted?
David Lebovitz:
Well, people used to ask me, "Why'd you move to France?" and I would ... I used to lead tours and we're standing in the middle of this amazing cheese shop, I'm like, "Have you looked around? Look at this store." But I realized I lived in northern California and moving to France was like a horizontal move, it was the same feeling. Red wine, garlic, goat cheese, fruit, citrus. Moving to France, it was fresh food and so forth and the seasons were the same. But moving to France, it was very interesting because French people are really ... They don't bake at home, there's no word for home baker.
When I've tried to find that out, I've been here 22 years and I'm French now as well and nobody has been able to tell me if there's a word for home baker. But people don't bake at home and that's not to say they don't make a cake, they don't make a crumble or they don't make a mousse but they usually leave desserts for the experts at the pastry shop down the corner. So, people might go to the market and buy strawberries, right now it's strawberry season, buy strawberries and they might take them home but they're probably not going to make a fraisier, a strawberry cake with cream mold it, unmold it and blah, blah blah and they would probably just eat them with sugar and creme fraiche.
And I started eating that way too and I used to post on Instagram like, "I bought these fresh strawberries," I'm like, "Please," people were like, "Please tell us what you're going to do with them." I was like, "They're going to be disappointed." I might make white chocolate ice cream or ginger ice cream to go with the strawberries but I don't make complicated desserts anymore because it's restauranty so I'll make a simple cake or some cookies. And I made three batches of cookies this afternoon.
Jessie Sheehan:
The cheesecake brownies which we're going to talk about today are from your 2010 book Ready for Dessert and, in the inside paper flap of the dust cover, because, of course, my copy is old, yes, and there is a dust cover which I love, it describes your dessert style as creating desserts with bold, high impact flavor, not fussy or complicated presentations, not overly elaborate. It seems like there's a theme. That seven years later after you moved ... France was 2003, yes?
David Lebovitz:
On or around.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, seven years later, sounds like it's seven ... By the time you're writing that book, it's about the same.
David Lebovitz:
Right. But I always had that philosophy, that's what Chez Panisse was about. Alice Waters, the owner of Chez Panisse, her idea of the perfect dessert is a peach and I honor that and they had beautiful fruit at Chez Panisse. But that said, I think, when people make something, Americans like to bake for fun which is why I say there's no word for home baker in France but we like to bake for fun. In the supermarkets in America, you buy a 10-pound bag of flour. In France, the bag is 500 grams which is a pound or, if you buy walnuts at the supermarket, it's 10 walnuts in a little container. I'd eat a pound of walnuts.
Jessie Sheehan:
The 10 are the ones you eat on the way home from the market. It's like, "Now they're gone."
David Lebovitz:
I know. I'm like, "I need to buy." And then, when I moved here, I had to learn where to find things in bulk and I'd go to the supermarket and buy six dozen eggs and everyone was staring at me, I'm like, "Okay, yeah." When I lived in America and like, "Oh, David, what are you baking?" the cashiers all knew me and everything.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. I also love this little note that I wanted to tell you. In my particular copy of the book, the dust cover flap which, I'm not even sure, is that even what you call the ... Yeah, it's a dust cover, right? The thing that's on top. I don't know-
David Lebovitz:
Well, that's publishing lingo, I don't know.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I just know that, now, almost no books have them. But anyway, listeners, picture a piece of paper wrapped around David's book. My inside flap was bookmarked to the cheesecake brownie recipe because, a few years ago, I developed a cheesecake brownie for the Washington Post and I was going through my cookbooks to find all the recipes. So, I thought that was wonderful, like kismet, and we'd come full circle. And also, there's a head note in the book for a pavlova where I learned that you're not crazy about sharing desserts and I was so happy to hear that because I hate sharing.
David Lebovitz:
Actually, I don't mind sharing desserts because it's ... When I go out to eat, everybody at the table orders dessert, it's hard to eat a whole dessert so it's nice to share. I don't like sharing regular food but then I was like, "You're eating a dessert," it's like, "I don't want to share this because this is really good."
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 do, and we just might be coming to a city near you. We're headed to Portland, Oregon and Maine, Santa Barbara County and Greenport on the north fork of Long Island. We'll be celebrating some of your favorite women in the industry like Elizabeth Poett of Magnolia Network's “Ranch to Table” and Chef Camille Becerra and we'll be enjoying great food and drink. We're dinners, networking events, even Women Who Grill get togethers.
We also just announced our next Jubilee, Jubilee Wine Country, taking place this October in Calistoga, California. Tickets are on sale for all of these events so head to cherrybombe.com to learn more and check out our events calendar. The team and I would love to see you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now back to our guest. All right, so now I want to talk about brownies. First, a little generally and then we'll dive into the recipe.
David Lebovitz:
Okay.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I love what you have said about brownies which is they have the hallmark of a great recipe which is that the ingredients are already on hand which I couldn't agree with you more because that's one of the hallmarks of almost every recipe I make. Can you tell us about any other hallmarks of the brownie?
David Lebovitz:
Well, it just so happens that, this week, I was rereading “More Home Cooking” by Laurie Colwin and some of your listeners might not be familiar with her, she passed away many years ago. But she wrote two really amazing books on food, one of whom was “Home Cooking” and “More Home Cooking.” And I got to this part about brownies and she was like, "There are a few citizens of this land who do not like a brownie. Even people on diets will nibble a small one if offered." And she said, she goes on saying, "There are many ways the ideal dessert." And they are, for one thing, you have everything in your pantry, the other thing is, really, you can make everything in one sauce pan generally and they're really good.
They're chocolate, they might have nuts in it, they might have cheesecake in it, they might have marshmallows in it. They're like a blank canvas that you can do stuff with but they're also really good achy, they're very good chewy. Since we're on this subject, these people who say I don't like nuts in my brownies, I'm like, "That's great, then don't have nuts in brownies, pick them out if you want." I like nuts, I don't like nuts, I don't care, it doesn't matter. I like all brownies.
Jessie Sheehan:
I couldn't agree with you more. By itself, it is as fantastic as it is when it's filled with things. A plain chocolate brownie with nothing in it, so delicious.
David Lebovitz:
And they also transport easily.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. There are so many hallmarks. Before we jump into the recipe, I just wanted to talk about a couple of brownie tips because people love a tip. And one thing that I learned from you when I was getting ready for this interview is that you think that brownies taste better after they've been frozen. You can either eat them frozen but, if you freeze them and then defrost them, you've said they're fudgier, denser, it actually takes them to the next level. I love that.
David Lebovitz:
Well, Julia Child once said don't freeze patte. And I think, a lot of people, as you know, you write about baking, people always go, "Can I freeze this? Can I freeze this?" It's, well, you can freeze a Mercedes, does that mean you should? I always say, well, nothing improves in the freezer, things don't get better in the freezer except ice cream and brownies. Brownies, when you eat them, they're fresh and they're light and you want them ... Day old brownies are really good, it's like day old pizza, the flavors get concentrated somehow. I think they have ... I don't know why day old ... Day old cold pizza is the best, it's better than pizza.
Jessie Sheehan:
The other thing that you do that I loved was lining your pans with tinfoil. And I wondered, first of all, is there a technique reason for that or just you like tinfoil? Could we use parchment? And then there was also this trick I saw of turning the pan over, molding the tin-
David Lebovitz:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Will you tell us about that trick and if you believe in, is that a good thing to do?
David Lebovitz:
Yes, I do that because it's easy to get the brownies out especially ... A lot of brownies are sticky. Personally, for most of us, we're going to eat brownies, you're just going to slice it in the pan, it's like a snack cake. You don't really want to unmold it and you're not going to get the perfect first slice, which is fine, you got to roll with it. So, the first piece is not going to look beautiful but, if you want to lift out brownies, it's nice to make these perfect cuts, 12 pieces or nine pieces and so forth. So, I do like to use foil. Unfortunately, the tin foil in France is like tissue paper, it's like newspaper and it breaks as soon as you've tear it off the roll so you can't use that so I have a collection of tin foil.
Somewhere along the way, I mentioned tin foil in a book or somewhere and people show up and they bring me three rolls of tin foil. It's like a Lipton onion soup mix, people use ... I don't know where I mentioned it but people would bring me a case of it, they're like, "I brought you something," it's 36 boxes of Lipton onion soup mix, thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
And tell us, just because I wasn't very clear, the idea is that you can drape the tin foil over the bottom of the pan and get it to be the shape of the pan then flip the pan over and tuck it in and it makes it easier.
David Lebovitz:
Yeah. Because if you try to tuck it in, it can tear and so forth. I'm also a big proponent, you have ... All my baking pans, I have 90-degree angles, the square ones so I just like the way they look with the 90-degree angles. They're probably a little more difficult to get out because, when you have sloping sides, then you have something ... You've got a little bit of help, a little bit of leeway but I'm square.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too.
David Lebovitz:
That's your next book, you can call it Hip to be Square: Desserts to Bake in a Square Pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly, with 90 -degree edges. All right, now we're going to get to our chocolate cheesecake brownies. So, we're going to heat the oven to 350 degrees, we're going to line the inside of an eight-inch square pan. Is there a brand that you love for your baking pans, either French or otherwise?
David Lebovitz:
Well, those Magic Line ones. Well, we use them at Chez Panisse, they're very lightweight, they have perfect square pans and they're great.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love them.
David Lebovitz:
So, I love those.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
David Lebovitz:
And you don't have to worry about them getting scratched or anything, they don't have a finish on them which is nice.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to line the pan with two lengths of tin foil, we're going to do the shiny side down. Why is that?
David Lebovitz:
Well, because the shiny side, it can reflect heat, it depends on what you're baking with. So, if the pan gets too hot, it deflects the heat rather.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to put the foil in shiny side down, we're positioning the sheets perpendicular to each other allowing excess to extend beyond the edges or we can use, if we have it, one extra-large sheet of extra wide foil. We're going to lightly grease the foil with either butter or a nonstick cooking spray. Are you a spray guy?
David Lebovitz:
I was at Whole Foods when I was in the States and they have spray that doesn't have propellant in it. But in Europe, you can only buy spray if you're a professional, I don't know why, yeah. I'm not against spray, we didn't use it at Chez Panisse, I was always a butter person. But for certain things, if you're making candy, when you're going to spread out praline on a baking sheet spray works really well because it provides an even layer. I keep reading about this baker's goop which is shortening, what is it?
Jessie Sheehan:
Shortening and flour and maybe even a little bit of oil.
David Lebovitz:
Yeah, there's something else. Everyone said it's really good, have you used it?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I did a guest on the podcast, Jocelyn Delk Adams, and she's obsessed with goop, Grandbaby Cakes, she taught me all about it. So, I tried it in a Bundt pan because that seemed like a great place to try it since that can be tough and I thought it was great. I'm the kind of person, I just know myself, I will not be making goop in order to make a cake. It's just not me but I love the idea of it.
David Lebovitz:
Well, I did learn that, baking spray, if you use it in Bundt pans, it actually can damage the finish because there's lecithin in it so it's better to use ... I know that goop releases really well.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, in a medium sauce pan, and I wondered is there a brand of sauce pan that you love, we're about to melt our butter and our chocolate. Is there a brand you love?
David Lebovitz:
Yeah, All Clad, I actually love their cookware. And curiously, it's owned by a French company now and you can't buy it in France. But I still have my cookware, I've had it for 20, 30 years, I brought it over from America. I recently had to switch to induction and it works on induction except for my Dutch oven, I don't know why. I use most of their cookware. I do have some Le Creuset, I have a couple of Hestan pieces of cookware which I like as well. It's very lightweight, it's titanium nano bond.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, in a medium sauce pan, All-Clad maybe, we're going to melt some unsalted or salted butter here then we're going to add some chopped either bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate. And I wondered if, A, you would have a preference with this brownie recipe on which kind of chocolate and also I wondered why we can't melt them at the same time. Usually, when I have a brownie recipe that starts with melted chocolate plus melted butter, I will just melt them at the same time. Was there a reason that you wanted to melt the butter first?
David Lebovitz:
I usually put the butter in first because that melts at a lower temperature than a chocolate. So, I get that melty chocolate can burn if it's on the bottom. So, just to ensure that people don't have a problem because chocolate is expensive.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's so smart, I never even thought of that. Do you have a preference in this particular recipe for a bittersweet or a semi-sweet?
David Lebovitz:
I always tell people now, there was this whole thing about high of going off at a tangent, but people are like, "Oh, I only like high percentage chocolate," I'm like, "No, no, no. High percentage chocolate can be too bitter." And I love bitter food, I'm not anti-bitter food but it can be drying because it has too much acid in it so it's better to use ... I usually use a chocolate between 60 and 70%. What do you use?
Jessie Sheehan:
The same. Maybe unpopular opinion, my favorite chocolate is milk chocolate. I'm on the other side of chocolate, I am not somebody who's looking for the darkest there is. I'm looking for something semi-sweet.
David Lebovitz:
I got into milk chocolate recently and I was talking to Melissa Weller and she uses a lot of milk chocolate. She goes, "Well, it just reminds me of my childhood," I was like, "Oh, cute."
Jessie Sheehan:
I know, I love her. She was a guest on the podcast too, I love her so much. Also, I wonder what is our tool right now while we're stirring, I believe, on a lowish heat. Are we using a whisk? Are we using a spatula?
David Lebovitz:
I'm a huge fan of silicone spatulas and they're really good. They don't burn, they don't melt, they don't chip like the old kind of spatulas we used to have. You put them in the dishwasher so you're not wasting water washing them by hand. So, I use silicone spatulas for almost everything.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is there a brand you like?
David Lebovitz:
The Le Creuset ones, they're spoon spatulas. But I used to teach at Serla top stores, they used to do demos there when I was in California and they had this sale rack where all the ... They had last season's color of Le Creuset and I would grab all the spatulas and they had these spoon spatulas and I went to the Le Creuset factory in France and I said, "I love these spatulas." They go, "Oh, it's too bad we're discontinuing them," I'm like, "Wait, hold on. Okay, we need to stop this madness." So, I went into the store there, they had a store and I bought them all, I bought 12. I think they gave me half price on all of them, they're like, "You're our best customer." So, I love those. They're not flat, they have a little rounded but they're not ... They don't make them anymore but I have a few extra.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think sometimes people call them spoonulas.
David Lebovitz:
Spoonulas, I've tried to look them up because what do you say ... When you're writing a book, it's like, "What is it called?".
Jessie Sheehan:
So, now we're going to remove the melted chocolate and butter from the heat and we're going to stir with our same spatula, I presume, the granulated sugar. And I wondered, do you believe there's a place for brown sugar in a brownie?
David Lebovitz:
I think so but brown sugar is a flavor. And I love caramel and I love chocolate but I don't really know if it ... Brownies are already heavy so adding ... You're basically adding molasses to the brownie and I don't really want that flavor, I want chocolate.
Jessie Sheehan:
And now we're going to add eggs and I had two questions. Are they room temperature eggs? And also, are we still going to add our eggs with a spatula or are you changing over to a whisk now that it's egg time?
David Lebovitz:
I use a spatula because it does the job. Brownie mixture is pretty thick, you don't really need a spatula. I actually have very strong arms, I can stir with determination and moxie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Awesome. And are the eggs room temp?
David Lebovitz:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And that's just because we want them to incorporate really well and, if they're cold, they're going to have a little issue. It's harder to break up those whites.
David Lebovitz:
Yeah, if you're cold, you might have to use a whisk. So, I'm just saying, putting that out there.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to mix, again, with our spatula, we're going to mix in some flour and some cocoa powder and some salt. So, I had three questions. Flour brand, cocoa powder brand and is our salt kosher?
David Lebovitz:
Okay. I'm a terrible person to ask about ingredients because ... There's two things I do. I try to just use what people are going to use so I'll go to the grocery store and buy Safeway flour when I lived in America. Now I actually buy flour from a small mill because I shop at a store that carries foods from small producers and so forth here in France. So, I just use their flour but I'll buy supermarket flour here as well. I try to use organic flour and the flour here is very different. So, the organic flour is actually milled different because, usually, French flour can be really powdery but I like, to make a long story short, the organic flour.
Cocoa powder, I love Valrhona cocoa powder. It's really dark and I don't usually call for brands when I am writing recipes but it does make a difference. I do hear that Talbot has an extra dark chocolate as well. And I use Guittard, they have a dark, it's called a red cocoa powder or something, and theirs is very good too.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that Valrhona Dutch processed cocoa powder, it's the most beautiful color. And the salt, kosher or not?
David Lebovitz:
Okay, kosher salt. I know Nick Sharma just wrote this thing about ... Nick who writes about ... He's a food scientist or biologist, he wrote this whole screed about anti-kosher salt. I actually don't love kosher salt, I find it really salty but I do know that it's hard for people to find good salt who live in a city and go to the supermarket and kosher salt, I think, is usually the best alternative. I buy gray salt which is mineral salt and I grind it myself. I can't tell people, "Yeah, okay, to make the brownies step one, grind the salt. Grind a half a teaspoon of salt until the little granules" ... So, I use that but kosher salt is fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. And then a little bit of vanilla is also being added to this mixture and some chocolate chips. Is there a brand of vanilla that you love?
David Lebovitz:
Yes. Story time, okay. So, I have a friend and she had a vanilla company in Santa Cruz, California named Patricia Rain and we used to buy her vanilla from Chez Panisse and we became very good friends. We used to buy it by the gallon and she had real Mexican vanilla, it was delicious. This is in the old days, in the '80s and '90s and so, when I moved to Paris, I brought four quarts of her vanilla with me because I love it so much. She's retired now and so forth but, interestingly enough, when the internet started, she bought the website or the name vanilla.com and I said, "Here's to the old days when everyone was like, 'vanilla.com.'" She goes, "It was good advice from a bad boyfriend."
So, I used to use her vanilla, I'm still using it, I still have it 20 years later and everyone's like, "Vanilla doesn't last." I'm like, "Of course it does. It's got alcohol and it lasts." So, I like Nielsen-Massey vanilla a lot. I like, and I'm going to pronounce the name, the Heilala.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
David Lebovitz:
From New Zealand.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. We've already melted chocolate for these brownies, these pieces of chocolate we're putting in now is just for those pieces of chocolate in our brownies. Is that actual chips or are you chopping up a bar?
David Lebovitz:
I usually use chips because I don't want them to melt. So, we don't get chocolate chips in France. Now, I can buy them at the professional supply store in a 20-pound bag and they're not quite the same as American chips, sorry to say. I do like the Guittard chocolate chips you buy, I think those are quite good so that's what I try to use. They used to send me a care package every once in a while because I knew the people at Guittard from back in my ... We used to use their chocolate at Chez Panisse and I knew the family and I still do.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, now we're going to scrape the batter into our prepared pan, we're going to spread it evenly and we're going to make our cheesecake topping. So, in a medium bowl, I have to ask, is it a glass bowl? Is it a metal bowl? Because the brownie itself was made entirely in our All-Clad sauce pan, correct? The brownie batter itself?
David Lebovitz:
Yes. I only have metal bowls.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that.
David Lebovitz:
I have a hundred metal bowls. I don't like glass bowls because they're heavy and I like metal because they nest and they go in the dishwasher.
Jessie Sheehan:
And listeners, David just moved his camera so I could see his shelf of metal bowls which I love seeing. This is definitely a metal bowl. And is there a brand or is this a restaurant supply situation?
David Lebovitz:
No, they're restaurant supply situations, I don't really have ... They've become ... In France, stuff is expensive, it's like, "Oh, a metal bowl." I went to the restaurant supply chain and they were €36.
Jessie Sheehan:
And now we're going to beat together ... And are we still using our silicone spatula here?
David Lebovitz:
Yes. No mixers.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to beat together our room temperature cream cheese. Did I read that you said this, that maybe in France they even call it Philadelphia?
David Lebovitz:
Yeah. Well, that was the brand they always had and people would just ... It was like Band-Aid, Band-Aids in America, people just used the brand name. When I moved here, people were like, "Oh, I love Philadelphia." I'm like, "Oh, you've been to Philadelphia? Most Europeans don't go to Philadelphia," I was like, "But it's a great city." They're like, "No, we eat it, what are you talking about? What is Philadelphia?"
Jessie Sheehan:
With our silicone spatula, we're going to be together room temperature Philadelphia, cream cheese, and egg yolk which I assume should be room temp too just, again, so that it easily incorporates into the cream cheese, some granulated sugar and some vanilla until smooth. Then we're going to dollop our cream cheese mixture about eight times evenly across our brownie batter and then, with a butter knife or an offset spatula, we're going to swirl the cream cheese mixture, I love this note, very slightly into the batter. Because although you'll get, I know this feeling, you get so into being suddenly you're an artist and trying to make a million swirls and then it's muddy.
David Lebovitz:
I think marble cake, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, and then it gets a little...
David Lebovitz:
I'm going to have you do the audio versions of my cookbooks.
Jessie Sheehan:
You want big pockets of cream cheese. Now we're going to bake our brownies until they just feel set in the center. So, you are not a wooden skewer guy or a toothpick guy for this?
David Lebovitz:
Usually, toothpicks are fine, people want to get granular because ... You and I bake a lot, I can tell if something's done in the oven sitting across the room on the couch watching TV. I'm like, "Roman," I'll tell my partner, it's like, "Check this stuff in the oven." He's like, "How do you know?" It's like, "It's done." And I actually had to talk with Joe Yonan about this from the Washington Post and he got me to change. He said he gives visual or tactile clues before he gives the time and I always think that was the hardest thing. When I started writing cookbooks, I was like, "How long do cookies bake?" I don't know. At the restaurant, you just put them in and you know when they're done and so forth. So, I do that as well and I think that's helpful because ovens can really vary. I have thermometers in both of mine but, one of my ovens, I have to play a radio or open the door so it keeps the right temperature, so be it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I have exactly the same thing with my oven. I, like Joe, maybe because Joe has helped me become a better recipe writer when I write for him, but I believe, I think even Melissa Clark says three clues. Something that's visual, maybe something that you smell and then sometimes it's the skewer or it's your fingertip on the top of a cake to make sure it bounces back, something like that.
David Lebovitz:
Well, I think it was Rose Levy Beranbaum said a toothpick with moist crumbs still attached. Because often, when you pull it out, and, if it's clean, then it's overdone especially with chocolate desserts.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to bake our brownies until they're just set in the center, about 35 minutes, we're going to let them cool completely in the pan before lifting out the foil, removing our brownies. And then you have some great cutting tips for brownies. We're going to use a long, serrated knife, we're going to dip it in hot water, dry it off. You have us ... And I read this, it may not be in this recipe, but you had us actually cutting off the edges and then cutting when frozen but some people love the edges. Is that still a thing you do?
David Lebovitz:
Because I want to eat them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, there you go.
David Lebovitz:
Well, I learned about frozen brownies because we bake a lot and we always have stuff. You have kids, I was like, "Why didn't I have kids? They eat everything." And I would put things in the freezer so I don't eat them but then I started hacking off slices of brownies like slivers, I was like, "This is really ... This is better."
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And then we can store these brownies in an airtight container if you want but, really, it's about freezing brownies.
David Lebovitz:
I like frozen brownies.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, David, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
David Lebovitz:
Oh, well, thank you so much. I've admired you from afar and we have friends in common so now I have a new baking friend.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugra 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. Visit cherrybombe.com for today's recipe. 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.