Dominique Ansel 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 the author of four baking books. Each Saturday I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Dominique Ansel. Yes, the award-winning pastry chef and creator of the cronut, the wildly popular pastry that's a cross between a donut and a croissant. Dominique is the founder of Dominique Ansel Bakeries in New York City. Originally from France, he came to the U.S. in 2006 to work as the executive pastry chef at Danielle Boulud's restaurant and five years later he opened his namesake bakery in Soho. Dominique, one of the most inventive pastry chefs out there is also the author of three cookbooks, his latest, “Life's Sweetest Moments: Simple Stunning Recipes, and Their Heartwarming Stories,” was just released earlier this month. He joins me today to talk all about his new book, the stories that accompany the recipes in the book, including many about the customers he has met over the years and he even shares some tips for perfect pancakes. You won't want to miss our conversation, so stay tuned. If you'd like to follow along, you can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
Today's episode is presented by King Arthur Baking Company. Whether you're a serious baker or just a newbie, King Arthur is here to help you be the best baker you can be. King Arthur's flours are some of the most beloved in the industry. As you probably already know from listening to my guests wax poetic about them here on She's My Cherry Pie, but what you might not know is that King Arthur also has a ton of resources to help you refine your baking chops and expand your repertoire. One of my favorites is their new cookbook, the “Big Book of Bread.” If you want to level up your bread baking skills, or even if you're just starting out, this gorgeous book should be your trusty guide. It's full of expert tips, techniques, and recipes from King Arthur's best bakers. It's the perfect time of year to get your bread baking game on, and this book has so many different options. From flatbreads and sourdough loaves to bagels and buns, the “Big Book of Bread” is a hundred percent going to be your go-to and mine. Order your copy today on kingarthurbaking.com. You can find the link in the show notes.
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Let's chat with today's guest. Dominique, so excited to have you on She's my Cherry Pie, and to talk about your incredible new book of stories and recipes, “Life's Sweetest Moments” with you and so much more.
Dominique Ansel:
Thank you. Thank you for having me today.
Jessie Sheehan:
To begin, I feel I must ask you about the croissant-donut hybrid, the cronut. Now, for better or for worse, you are forever associated with the world's first ever viral pastry. And I imagine the gratitude you feel for the love it has received is tenfold, but there must also be complicated feelings in the mix.
Dominique Ansel:
Oh yes, for sure. I mean, the cronut, I think is and was one of my most beautiful and recognized creations. It has opened so many doors, thousands of doors for us to do a lot of great things. It has connected us with the neighborhood with a lot of charities. We've raised a lot of money in the beginning for our fight against hunger in New York City. We've built so much and we've shown so much of creativity right after that. In the beginning it was tough. It was really, really hard. At the time, I only had four or five employees at the bakery. My wife was with me as well, and we had no managers. We had no one clean dishes, sweep the floor. We were doing everything ourselves and we were very, very small team. And I remember this friend of ours came, it was not planned.
We had made a small batch of cronut just to test and we had testing for quite a while now, and he snapped a photo of it, put on his blog at the time. And he called me the same afternoon and he was like, "Dominique, you'll never know what happened. My article went viral," I only sleep like three, four hours. I was like, "Great, I'm happy for you. Viral, what does that even mean, your article going viral?" And he explained to me that he had an increase of traffic of 300% on his website and over 140,000 links to that article. And he was like, "This is crazy, I've never seen anything like this, get ready tomorrow, you're going to be busy." I was like, "Sure, I'm made 30 cronut, you know day one. I'm going to make 45 for tomorrow." And little did I know by day three we had over 150 people waiting outside of the door before we opened the doors and they all wanted the cronut.
Jessie Sheehan:
You actually mentioned in “Life's Sweetest Moments” that the decade after the launch of the cronut was the toughest of your life. Can you unpack that?
Dominique Ansel:
For me, just the beginning of the cronut, it was just a dark moment. We didn't know what was happening. I was overwhelmed every day. Customers were coming and complaining, being rude to the staff. The staff was overwhelmed every day, people want to quit. People were waiting outside as early as like two o'clock in the morning. They're getting into fights. The neighbor was calling the police and then solicitors were coming from all around the town to try to sell things. People emailing us, telling us how to grow business, and it was just overwhelming. We still had a team of four to five people, just crashed every single day. I was trying to make more. I would sleep like three, maybe four hours a night when I was lucky. I was just skin and bone and I was stressed every single day by what would happen. And of course everyone wants to talk about the cronut.
They would want to see the cronut, to test the cronut, and it was just a black cloud where I didn't know where to go and what to do. So very early on we decided to stay calm, to focus on quality. The quality of the cronut we're serving every day, to change the flavor every single month and to increase the production little bit at all as much as we could. Just keep in mind that we had a kitchen, it's probably 10 feet by 15 and all the equipment inside with one table, one small dough sheeter, that's all we had. It was a dark moment where every day was a struggle, every day was stressful and nothing good will come out of it.
I felt like not being good enough and not making people happy enough. What I do, it's hard because we do food to connect with people. We do food to please them, bring them to this moment in time where it's a happy celebration and I feel like every day was just a struggle and eventually setting the rules from the beginning saying that we won't make any exception for anyone. Everyone has to wait inline, we won't change the flavor. Setting those rules made us that little by little we could slowly increase the quantity, focus on the quality and give good customer service at some time.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I wanted to talk about your storytelling, which I did not know you were such an incredible storyteller, before I started doing research and reading your books so intensely. But this is your third book with” the first “The Secret Recipes” showcasing your most elaborate desserts, the second “Everyone Can Bake focusing on your base recipes and your baking building blocks. And now “Life's Sweetest Moments,” which is a book of stories and recipes and it feels to me like the most personal. But although the theme of each book or the hook as they say in publishing is very different, both “The Secret Recipes” and “Life's Sweetest Moments” are really story-driven. Can you unpack for us why storytelling is such an integral part of the recipe creation and development and sharing process for you?
Dominique Ansel:
Of course, I think storytelling is everything. It's not just about food, it's not about peaches and brown sugar. It doesn't say anything. It doesn't tell anything. Can it be good? Sure, of course. But when you bring up a story that connects to that moment in time where you had an inspiration, where you touched someone, where you please someone, where you engrave memories, those moments in time are precious and are everything we do. And a lot of the stories that are my stories that I lived actually connect with the food, connecting with people and bring all of this together. So storytelling is the most important. It's the same with any chef in a restaurant with a menu. I think storytelling is a beautiful way of explaining what you do and why you do it, and it's a great way for people to remember it.
Jessie Sheehan:
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So I want to talk about “Life's Sweetest Moments.” This new book is just full of wonderful, really personal stories, and you refer to these stories as one of the ingredients in the recipe almost as if emotions are baked into the recipe. Can you unpack that for readers who haven't seen the book yet?
Dominique Ansel:
When you beg for people, like you see and you feel their emotions, people beg to say thank you. People beg to say, "I'm sorry." People beg to celebrate great things like anniversary, birthdays and weddings. And sometimes from my side I observe and I see the emotion. I see the feelings and everything that I leave behind. Sometimes the other way around, sometimes people reach out to us, they ask us to do small things like writing a birthday plaque and little message on the birthday. And writing for example, "Happy hundred years old, great grandpa." In this moment that touches me a lot. People don't always see that. They don't always know that.
But how great it is to be a part of a celebration for someone's family, how great it is to have a centerpiece at the end of the birthday. And to have people reunited and celebrating around the things that you have built with your hands, the things you have put together, which is baking a cake. It's wonderful to be part of it. It is very touching for me. It's very touching. It touches me deep inside, people asking me, "What makes you get up early in the morning and do what you do?" This is it. This is like bring people together. This is creating those moments that are precious for people.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you think you're unusual that way? I know there's this idea that bakers, we all want to nurture people and we want to make things for people, et cetera, et cetera. I just don't know if anyone lives it quite as organically as you do.
Dominique Ansel:
I think a lot of chefs, I know a lot of chefs, they love the craft. They love what they do, I do as well. I love it so much. And with pastry you can be very nerdy, very scientific, very precise, which I am too. But that connection with people, that emotional part I think is almost hospitality. It's like welcoming people to your house, it's welcoming your friends to your house and making them leave a special moment. And that's very precious to me because there's not too many chefs that talk about it. There's not too many chefs that go that far. They great at what they do. They do great food. People really love their food. But one step further is connecting with people and seeing a lot of these emotions through what you beg every day.
Jessie Sheehan:
So tell us about the non-traditional structure of the book and sort of how you landed on that? In the intro, you sort of describe it as the themes and time periods of our lives.
Dominique Ansel:
So I think especially from the beginning of my career until now, I have stages where I've seen myself change as a person, like we all do to a certain extent, and you meet people that influence your life and your decision. You meet people that leave something with you, and staging this into this book into stories was important for me because I want to show changes. I want to show evolution. I want to show that we all grow. We don't know everything all the time. I'm a new parent, I have a four-year-old, and a year and a half old. I have two kids and I'm learning every day and I'm changing every day based on how I interact with them. It's the same with my guests, the same like with what we leave every day, I think, and it's important to look this way. Pastry is science, pastry is like perfection, pastry is so meticulous, but there's so much more to it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So the book is really framed around your interactions with your customers. Before we jump into the specific recipes from the book and their stories, I just wanted to flag two stories that really spoke to me. So I thought we'd start with a story about the cover photo of your third book baby. It is so gorgeous and simple and homey, this cover. And I learned when I read the book that it's actually a picture of Baba au Rhum that's assembled or set up in a mason jar. And the story and this application or preparation is inspired by Martha Stewart from a story when you went to her house and she was making salads in mason jars. Can you tell us a little bit about that Martha story and why you have this recipe in the book, which is kind of inspired in some way by Martha?
Dominique Ansel:
See, when I first came to America it was 2006. I didn't know who Martha Stewart was. I heard of her, yes, but I didn't know who she was. I didn't know how big, impactful she was. I met her dozens and dozens of times, like we are friends now. I love her and I think she's really truly fascinating. Because you can have a simple conversation and every single time she'll teach you something about food. And I was surprised because I came here almost 20 years of experience as a chef, I thought I knew quite a bit. She showed me things naturally without even asking her. She showed me tricks. I remember the first time, it's not necessarily in the book, but first time I cut a pomegranate in half and we don't have much pomegranate in France. I was trying to get the seeds out with my hands, with my fingers, and she came over, she said, "Dominique, let me show you something."
She grabbed the pomegranate, flip it upside on. So it was cut in half. She took the back of a spoon and she tapped it and all the seeds came down. And I was like... It's moment where I stopped and was like, "Oh my God, how do I not know this trick?"
How do I know this? I'm a professional chef, been working kitchen for so many years. I do not know this trick. I was speechless. I was like, "Well... all respect for you." And one of the time where I went to her house, she was actually making salads in a jar and she was explaining that it's portable. It's a great way of mixing together and enjoy the salad. And that inspired me to make a Baba inside a glass jar.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I love the story about perfection. It's at the start of the family chapter and it is the story that's connected to the palmier recipe and you write about the idea of baking being meditative and relaxing. And you say that that idea gives you pause and I feel exactly the same way. I'm always taken aback when people ask me like, "Oh, are you baking at home for fun?" I'm like, "Fun? Fun?" I mean not exactly. Well, can you unpack that a bit for you? What that makes you feel like when people are like, "Oh, it's so meditative."
Dominique Ansel:
When you're a professional chef and you work in the kitchen at a very high level, there's stress, there is rushing, there's timeline to respect, there's quality to deliver. There's so many things, so aspects of working in a professional context that makes you up your standards in everyway possible. So yeah, sure when you bake at home, you're by yourself in your small kitchen. You bake this one cake for your family, for your friends, and there's nothing around you and nobody around you, it's relaxing, it's pleasant, it's very chill. You have all the time in the world. When you do like a thousand cake with any kitchen and you have to rush every timeline. You have a strict deadline, you have high quality to respect, you have to keep your kitchen clean, you have to communicate with your co-workers. There's a million things going on around. It's not the same enjoyable experience, I will say.
Jessie Sheehan:
In the same story for the palmiers, your ceramicist friend who plays a role in the story says to you that there is beauty in imperfection, in ceramics, and she provides a word for that. And you say that a word like that does not exist in baking.
Dominique Ansel:
It's tricky. I made this beautiful bowl with her, Christina. Of course, it's my first time putting my hands on pottery. So you have a wheel, you have the clay and you have to put enough water on your hands. So it slides but not too much so it's not too slippery, and you have to model that beautiful clay into a shape. So for a pastry chef, I work with my hands. I'm pretty good with my hands. I did a good job, not a great job. That was my first time doing pottery and I made this ball that was like a little off shape. She fired it and eventually got the ball. It was a little like not perfect, and she thought it was kind of unique and special. It's nice. But with baking, I think we always look for perfection. For example, the simplest thing as the croissant, every single day we want exact perfect croissant, beautiful layers, exact same layers of butter and dough, the perfect temperature, the shaping, the proofing, the baking.
You want everything to be perfect. We're looking for perfection every day. It's never perfect. It's never perfect. We always try to make it perfect and I think there's this beauty into like, yeah, it's tiny, tiny little off. Only I see it, most people will not see it. It's standing like a little off by little layer, so the croissants slightly slanted to the left or the tip is coming out a little bit. Whatever it is, we see those imperfections and there's beauty to it because we're always chasing for perfection. But do we really have to, I'm asking myself the question, how far do you push every single day to try to be perfect?
Jessie Sheehan:
I also read actually making a croissant is one of the three tests that you give prospective bakers who want to work for you because you see being able to make that perfectly as an indication that that person belongs in your bakery.
Dominique Ansel:
That's true. Every time we do, we call a chef testing, to hire a manager that wants to be a chef with us. We ask them to do croissant and nothing fancy, just a simple croissant because I believe this is one of the fundamental skills of a chef, knowing how to make a beautiful croissant.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now I want to talk about some of the recipes. The recipes I chose are because there's a tip or an unusual technique that I loved about the recipe and sometimes because I just love the story so much. So the first one is from your chapter called Early Days, and it's for the milk chocolate humble pie. And the story I think is under the heading, Apologies. First of all, just tell us a little bit about what a cake plaque is. because I figured it out when I was reading it, but I didn't know that expression before. And then what you see on those cake plaques that has spoken to you over the years.
Dominique Ansel:
Yes, of course. What we call a cake plaque is essentially a thin sheet of chocolate cut as a rectangle, and we leave a message for people.
Jessie Sheehan:
And that's because you don't want to pipe right on the cake.
Dominique Ansel:
We don't want to pipe on the cake. Sometimes there's textures and then there's meringue. Sometimes there's glazes. We don't want to write straight on the cake, so we do a thin rectangle of chocolate. We write the message and we drop this on the cake. So it's a little bit more elegant, it's a bit more uniform and it's easy to drop it on. So we do this for every large cake that customers order, not for all of them, but sometimes when they want add a little something personal, we do this. And I've seen messages that people leave for why they order a cake and it's amazing. It's very touching actually.
I was thinking about earlier about the hundred years old great-grandfather and being part of this reunion of the family and the celebration for someone who turns a hundred, it's just magical. Also, sometimes we write an apology, "I'm sorry for what happened," and this is story of this person, that bought cake to his coworker because they were apologizing for something that happened. And they want to say sorry with a cake because she loves sweets so much. And being part of these stories, understanding why people leave this messages and why they actually ordered this cake to deliver this apology or this thank you or this celebration. It's very touching because you feel like you're a big part of it.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's called a milk chocolate humble pie, and I adore milk chocolate. I love the title, but is there something also more humble about milk chocolate than dark chocolate? Is that a choice or is it more the flavor of milk?
Dominique Ansel:
Dark chocolate can be intimidating for people. If you're not a professional, if you don't know how to enjoy, appreciate the flavors of chocolate. It's almost like drinking way too high-end wine and not understanding it. But milk chocolate is actually silky, it's sweet. It's not too sweet. It's a little dark. It can be a little nutty. It's very forgivable. It's very enjoyable as well. Milk chocolate is one of my favorites actually, rather eat some milk than dark chocolate sometimes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that me and Dominique have the same favorite chocolate. Okay, so the next recipe I wanted to talk about is in the Friendship Years chapter. Chapter two, and it's the ultimate cookie. It's the brown butter, dark chocolate, walnut and sea salt, and the story is called Competition. First of all, I love that some of the recipes in your book generally are one-bowl-ish recipes. You are not requiring a stand mixer. And I also love the story behind this recipe because it has to do with you learning that really you have to eat cookies when they're freshly baked. If you're going to bring cookie to someone's house, bring the cookie dough and bake them off, which I completely am a hundred percent with you on this. Tell us about the story of judging the competition and how you realize this about cookies.
Dominique Ansel:
I think it's another beautiful example of me going in a different country and not being so aware of the cultural differences. Going in France, you don't eat that many cookies. French people don't know how to make cookies and they make it dry, it's not good. At least the one I had when I was... I want to leave back in France. Coming here, cookies are a service business, cookie has to be like... There's different style of course. There's the chewy one, there's the soft one, there's the crispy one. People have different preferences, but I learned very quickly that there's a cookie that pleases everyone.
And while judging competition, I was eating a few cookies and I realized some of them would like to serve warm and of course they're the best. Of course, it tastes so much better when you think about it, growing up as a kid here in America, you do like one cookies with your family, with your mom, with your grandma. You eat them fresh out of oven because you don't want to wait and you drink with a big glass of milk. This moment in time are very precious and you can bottle them and bring these memories back to people. Of course, everyone love the one cookie. It doesn't matter about what's inside or how it's baked. It's warm, it's fresh. It tastes so much better than the cookie that was baked for hours earlier.
Jessie Sheehan:
It reminds me of when I go to a bagel store, I'll always ask before I pick a flavor, like what's warm. I feel the same way about cookies. I'm just not interested in the cookie in the case. No bakery is going to necessarily put out a warm cookie. Maybe you guys do, but it's hard to put out a warm cookie.
Dominique Ansel:
We do put out warm cookies because we sell so many with it. So we bake like 5, 10 at a time-
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm going to time my... When I visit you, I'm going to time it so that they just come out of the oven.
Dominique Ansel:
Actually, people do wait for cookies because we sell them quickly and we only bake small batches. We bake like 10, 12 at a time actually, that's what we do. So we sell them out and people will ask for more. We put them in your oven, they'll wait for fresh cookies.
Jessie Sheehan:
It reminds me of hot doughnuts now. Krispy Kreme, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts always had this sign in the window.
Dominique Ansel:
But this for sure, this notion of freshness and the shelf life of the baked goods that people don't talk about. In France, it's all about this. I grew up going to the bakery like three to four times a day, three to four times a day to get fresh bread, to get fresh croissant. And not because they bake it fresh because they want to do it this way. They bake it fresh because they have no choice. They have a tiny oven, they have a small kitchen and they have to bake all day long. So every time you go back to the bakery, you get something fresh. And that notion of freshness and the shelf life of the product is very, very important to me. There are things that we do like this, like a fresh baked madeleines. We only bake them to order, and that experience of eating something fresh out of the oven, it's very special.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel like you also talk about that maybe with the Kouign-amann recipe, which I think is in the first book obviously, where you realized that it had to be served right after it was made, like you had no choice. It was an obstacle, but you were going to meet it or meet that challenge.
Dominique Ansel:
Yes, it often is a challenge. A lot of bakeries will bake everything at night and they'll open by the time you eat your croissant, even if it's 9, 10 o'clock, it's being baked like six, seven hours earlier. It is different. I think there's this experience of eating something fresh. I always compare this to eating a sushi. If a chef is right in front of you, you have the warm rice, nice and cold piece of fish on top, it's going to put in front of you. You're not going to wait for hours to eat it. Of course, you eat it like in a couple hours, it's gonna bad. You're going to have a whole different experience. Same with food, same with everything we bake. A croissant when it's fresh out of the oven after like 15, 20 minutes later it rests, it's still warm. It's the best thing ever.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wanted to ask you one thing about this cookie that I thought was interesting. The recipe calls for some brown butter, but it also calls for some regular butter that you're just creaming in a bowl with the sugar and then you're adding. Talk to me about using two different kinds of butter browned and not, and also butter in two different states. One being liquid and one being kind of soft and creamy.
Dominique Ansel:
So two types of butter because when you put the brown butter, you have this nutty flavor, like this dark and almost nutty flavor that add good layer of flavor to the cookie. But you cannot only do melted butter in cookie, that will completely change the texture. That's why I decided to do a little bit of warm butter and the rest with like fresh butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I also loved... I tend to think that you need to melt butter when making a cookie if you're going to do it by hand, but you're actually using just very soft butter like you would in a stand mixer. But you're just kind of creaming that together with a wooden spoon or a spatula.
Dominique Ansel:
Yeah, it's tough because when you melt the butter, you essentially separate the water from the fat. That's my nerdy part here talking, you separate water from the fat and you cannot re-emulsify this. So even if you mix it with all ingredients, it looks okay. Your cookie texture won't be different after you bake it. It might be a little drier.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, if you've melted the butter.
Dominique Ansel:
If you melted the butter. But if you keep the butter creamy or soft, you keep the butter homogenized and then you keep the texture of the cookie good.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next I wanted to talk about the chocolate peanut butter candy bar, which is in a story entitled Farewell. And I love this recipe partly just because the photo is so gorgeous, but I also love it because the story about it includes eating candy bars that you buy in airports on airplanes. And I always eat Toblerones if I'm flying internationally. So I have that kind of chocolate bar airplane association. Can you tell us that story? I loved this one.
Dominique Ansel:
Yeah, of course. It's a little boy Paul, he was traveling a lot, many years in two or three years in the country and keep moving with his family because his dad was traveling for work. It's hard because when you see their life, it's beautiful because you learn so much about different culture, different places of the world. You speak many different languages. You meet new friends all around the world. But it's also sad because you start getting used to routine, to enjoy some type of food, like coming to our bakery, and someday you have to say goodbye. So someday you have to let it go because you have to travel to another country. For me traveling, a snack bar, chocolate bar to get on the plane in case you're hungry, that's the idea. That's what inspired me to create as a peanut butter, caramel chocolate bar.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next, I wanted to talk about the Love chapter, and it's no surprise that I want to talk about a few recipes from this chapter as the relationship between love and sweets is so strong. So I wanted to talk about tiramisu because I learned it is your favorite dish.
Dominique Ansel:
Don't tell anyone.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know, and I'm telling everyone you love the soft mascarpone and the bitterness of the espresso, and I'm assuming the cocoa powder too. And then I also learned that you have very strong feelings about citrus desserts and meringue. So please tell us why you love tiramisu and what your issues are with citrus desserts and meringue.
Dominique Ansel:
I love tiramisu because I have a lot of Italian friends. I always make fun of Italians and French and our relationship because we're so competitive. We're so close culturally to each other. I always say to my friend, "I'm French, my blood is French, but my heart is probably Italian." I love so much about Italy, the country, the food, the people. It's a beautiful country. Tiramisu is comforting, simple dessert that can be not too sweet, a good creamy, nice mascarpone flavor, and this coffee soaked ladyfinger. It's simple. It's simple, but it talks to me because I don't want anything too complicated when you eat sweet. I love eating sweet. It's probably one of my favorite desserts if not my favorite dessert, so there's a lot of people making it. Sometimes they're well done, sometimes they're too sweet or not soaked enough, over soaked. It's a little tricky because most of the time savory chefs make them not pastry chefs.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, that's interesting. Why?
Dominique Ansel:
Why? Because it's simple dessert and people think it's simple to make. It is simple to make. You should make it well.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us what's wrong with... I mean, I kind of agree with you on citrus desserts, but tell me why you're like, "Eh."
Dominique Ansel:
Citrus desserts are tough because... I've had some good citrus, but never too many. They have to be ripe. It's a time where people want everything when it's on the season, like now, very fast. So citrus are grown and picked many fruits very oftentimes when they're not ripe and when they're not ripe, they have too much acidity or it's too sour or it's not always pleasant to eat. It's rare when I have a good citrus and like, "Oh, it's actually really a good juicy... The acidity is perfect, the sweetness is good." Citrus dessert is something that it's hard to pair with anything else because the acidity of the citrus makes it watery. It's juicy, it's sour, so it's hard to pair with anything else. It's not impossible, but it's challenging.
Jessie Sheehan:
And meringue, I think I even read you find it a little chalky.
Dominique Ansel:
Oh my God, just talking about it. I have goosebumps.
Jessie Sheehan:
Dominique, I love learning this.
Dominique Ansel:
I can't.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh, even though you have to make it.
Dominique Ansel:
I do not like meringue. We have many things on the menu that contains meringue, but I tell people I do not bake for myself, I bake for people. People love pavlova, I have to make a meringue. People love our Mini Me Cake, the miniature meringues-
Jessie Sheehan:
Those look so cute.
Dominique Ansel:
And I have to make them. I don't enjoy making them. I don't enjoy eating them. I feel weird about it. I don't like texture, I don't like the... it's like chalk for me.
Jessie Sheehan:
No, I can see it in your face.
Dominique Ansel:
Really, look at my arms. I'm like-
Jessie Sheehan:
The hair standing up on Dominique's arms.
Dominique Ansel:
But I still do it. I still do it because people appreciate it. I still do it because I know it's good. It's good together. I'll eat a spoon, I'll taste it, of course. I will not enjoy it if I have to eat a whole dessert with meringue.
Jessie Sheehan:
Also, I wanted to ask one question about the lady finger recipe, which is you have, I think, equal in weight, the amount of cornstarch to flour. It might be equal in volume, but it's equal in one of those ways. It's not like a teeny tiny bit of cornstarch. Tell us about the addition of that.
Dominique Ansel:
So cornstarch is always one of my little tricks. I realize that anything that is made with egg whites and that you whip very often if you don't work fast enough, if you overmix, will all collapse. If you don't whip the eggs correctly, it will collapse. And the cornstarch mixed with the starch and the addition of the meringue kind of stabilizes the meringue and make it so it doesn't collapse as much.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wanted you to tell us about the burnt sugar ice cream, which is in the Heartbreak chapter, and it's a story about Anthony Bourdain. It's a heartbreaking story, but it's also a beautiful story. So I thought I would love you to share it.
Dominique Ansel:
It's a sad story, but I keep a fond memory of Tony. Anthony Bourdain came to our kitchen, he was filming a piece about craft, a documentary about how much craft goes into what people do, not only about food, but about things in general. And I was one of the piece talking about baking and how much passion, how much hard work, how much craft goes into it. And I want to show him, one of the pastries I've created, it's called the Heartbreak.
And of course there's ice cream and there's these beautiful petals of meringue and we're talking about heartbreak. And he was telling me that his first heartbreak was devastating. It is for most people. I show him a little bit, like how we have a love match, and we asked people to light and fire this rice paper that goes around the meringue. So it start with a beautiful composed daisy flower in a plate and it turns into ashes. It start with something beautiful and ends up with something like not very pretty sad, but in that little dessert, you have a small dish with ice cream where you can actually enjoy the ice cream. Ice cream is something that people often eat during a heartbreak.
Jessie Sheehan:
So true.
Dominique Ansel:
So it's a good connection between our two. And Tony was telling a story about his first heartbreak and how actually after tasting the ice cream, he felt better.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I know I usually feel better, but sometimes then I eat the whole pint, then I don't feel better.
Dominique Ansel:
Yeah, that's not a bad thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
No, it's not, it's not. I wanted to talk about the raspberry rose souffle, which is in the Persistence chapter. There's again a cornstarch tip that I want to talk about for this recipe, but it's also a very sweet promposal story with a young customer of yours. Can you tell the story?
Dominique Ansel:
Sure. This young kid that kept on reaching out to the bakery that he wanted to make a souffle to ask his friend for prom, he would chat many times. And then the team eventually forwarded me an email and tell me about guest. One day as I was leaving the bakery, this guest was outside and he ran to me asking me for tips. I was like, "What's going on? Why are you so nervous?" And he told me that he had made the souffle like many, many, many times over, and it was always collapsing. It was never perfect. So I just give him a little tip that I put a little bit of cornstarch in my souffle that stabilized the starch and the egg whites, and that make it that the souffle is a little more resilient. It's not like, it's not going to collapse. It makes it a little sturdier, little like firmer without compromising the texture, the light texture of the egg white souffle. And he did it. After a while, he reached out to me and he said it was a success and he ask her for prom. And then she said yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Dominique Ansel:
That was a very sweet story.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wanted to talk about a recipe in chapter four, Family Life. It's the pound cake recipe and the story is called Jazz. But I am in love with this recipe because first of all, it's a melted butter pound cake. But talk to me about the choice of using melted butter only because I feel like people associate pound cake with five minutes of beating butter and sugar and then eggs. And maybe it's because yours has a tablespoon of baking powder, so you're getting your leavening from a different way. But talk to me about where the melted butter pound cake came from.
Dominique Ansel:
But with pancakes, like anything, any recipes, you'll find hundreds, thousands of recipes and people that do different things with it. You have to look at it always more the scientific way of the way the things I know. And if I don't know about it, which I don't know everything, I research about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Or you'll ask Martha because she knows everything.
Dominique Ansel:
I'll ask Martha, she knows everything. So with a batter like a pancake, if you emulsify it, if you incorporate air inside, you're going to bake it. It's going to be light and fluffy for sure, but once you cut it, it's going to dry out very fast. So if you eat it right away, sure it's good. But pancake's something that you want to keep the moisture inside, it's something where you want to keep it four or five days, maybe wrap it up, eat it within a certain period of time. So if you incorporate air inside, you kind of dry out the texture of the pancake. That's why we do melted butter. We just mix it very gently. We don't emulsify anything, we don't incorporate any air, and we keep it kind of flat and we put a little bit of baking powder to help rising with the texture as well.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also wanted to talk about banoffee because I love this, the story about this, it's your mentor, I think safe to call him that. Danny Boulud. And he is not crazy about the two main ingredients in this banoffee pie. So tell us the story about Daniel and the pie.
Dominique Ansel:
So I came to America in 2006 and I worked for Daniel Boulud, which I consider my mentor. I've had my moments with him where we head to head and disagreeing on things, but always got a lot of respect for him. I've learned so much from him. Always had last minute requests and making a special desserts because someone likes something. And for any chefs, you go with your menu, you stick with it, and you want people to follow. You want people to trust you, you want people to try your food. But with Daniel, he always try to make people feel special. He always go out of his way to do a special dish, a special menu for someone or someone that comes back irregular. He always try to make something else. And with that, yeah, it's painful in beginning because I have a menu with 10 desserts.
Would you want me to make another one that is not on the menu? Or would you want me on a Saturday night to stop everything and go make a souffle for someone? But this is special. This is someone that's really understanding what guest's experience is about and what every dish can influence their experience and make them feel special, make them feel a different way. And that's the beauty of hospitality, more than being a chef that is so confident and so stubborn about all these dishes.
And that's some flexibility of mine, that's some closeness to customers and guests. And that's very special, I've learned this. In the beginning. I hated it because I thought it was so dysfunctional. I thought it was so tiring and so painful. But very quickly I learned that we're making people feel special. And when this guest walk into the kitchen from the dining room and you see this bright light, all the chefs running around and they thank you for that special dish you bake for them, you make for them, that makes you feel a certain way. And you're like, "Oh, now I see. Now I understand."
So I've learned a lot from him. And two things he doesn't like, it's white chocolate and bananas. Two things he actually hates. And when people ask me, "What would you cook for Daniel? What would you bake for Daniel?" I'll tell them I challenge myself to make him like bananas and white chocolate in one dish. Or maybe I'll hide it. I'll hide it with like flambeed banana with a little bit of passion fruit, a little bit of rum, hide the flavor of the banana so it's not too pronounced. Had a hint of floral note in the bananas and the white chocolate. Maybe I'll caramelize it, maybe I'll make it taste a little different. So he actually changed his mind about bananas and white chocolate.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love That. Finally, I wanted, in the Traditions chapter, chapter five, I wanted to talk about your buttermilk pancakes. It's a family tradition. That's the name of the story that goes along with this recipe. And you have so many good pancake tips that I just wanted you to share. So first of all, butter. You really want people to butter their pan. You don't want them to spray them. And I thought this was interesting just because I actually, when I make French toast, I put oil in the pan rather than butter because I feel like you get this incredible crispy fry on it. And I was wondering what you think about that. So I will sometimes... Don't tell anyone, but I'll sometimes spray and then make French toast. And I love the crispiness. Yes, I'm not getting the butter flavor, but I love the crispiness. But talk to me about your pancakes.
Dominique Ansel:
I think you should do butter. Butter is so much better. It's so much more flavor. If you get the butter hot enough before you drop, you actually French toast, you'll get that crisp. Your pan has to be hot enough. You don't want a brown butter of course, but you want the butter to be hot enough so when you drop it, you get like a crispy-
Jessie Sheehan:
It immediately sizzles.
Dominique Ansel:
It sizzles right away. So with pancakes, it's different, right? I put a little bit of butter, yes, because I don't love using oil. When I bake, sometimes I do, but when I must, so with butter, it's always flavor. The pancake is now a tradition in my family. I made some pancakes for my son when he turned one, and then when he turned two and then when he turned three.
So we're going to keep that tradition going. It's something that we've built throughout the years. It's tricky. We talk about having many recipes for many different pastry elements. Pancake is the same. There's hundreds of recipe out there. There's a fluffy pancake, there's a tall one. There's a very tiny one. It depends working on pancake you like. The one I like, the light and fluffy. So I put a little bit of butter, turn up the heat in the beginning, and I drop it very fast.
Jessie Sheehan:
That was my next question. I know you have a high heat or medium high, let's say, and then you're going to drop it once the batter hits the pan. How come?
Dominique Ansel:
So I want the pan to be hot because I want that color, that first color of the pancake when it touches the pan. I don't want it to be cold or warm. So you heat it up very fast and drop it. So the temperature is actually not too hot. And of course pancake, you want to bake them slowly, to have time to rise with the baking powder inside.
Jessie Sheehan:
You say that... Maybe every pancake is this, and I've just never thought about it that way. But you say that your recipe is a modified cake batter. It actually calls for pastry flour and the recipe calls for a lot of leavening. Can you tell us how the recipe is cake batter-ish, and tell us why you like pastry flour in it?
Dominique Ansel:
I think people will always underestimate the power of flour. The flour is important in every recipe you do. Not just use a high gluten flour for your croissant, your bread, but also in everything you bake. And pastry flour is a little bit more refined flour, usually type-fifty-five. So lighter flour, not too much gluten inside. So you want this light, delicate texture of the flour that will bind kind of like your batter, and that'll make it light and fluffy. You can use AP flour. AP flour is like basic flour. I don't think it's the best to make pancake. I think a pastry flour, it really changes the texture. And I've experimented this with many different recipes. And every time you use pastry flour, I get a complete different texture.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell me, how would you describe the difference? Because I think of cake flour as being a finer flour less protein. Where does pastry fall on the bread, AP, cake flour trajectory?
Dominique Ansel:
I think pastry flour is more for cake batter. I think the best example is that I made a chiffon cake with AP flour and a mixed chiffon cake with pastry flour. The one with AP flour was flat and dense, and the one with pastry flour was super light and super delicate texture. So it changes almost like the texture of the batter and it makes it light. So you get the starch, but you don't get too much of the elasticity, too much of the heaviness of the starch inside the flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Dominique. And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Dominique Ansel:
Oh, thank you so much.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to King Arthur Baking Company, Kerrygold, California Prunes, and Ghirardelli for supporting this episode. Don't forget to follow, She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen and tell your pals about us. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thank you to CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Jenna Sadhu. And our content and partnerships manager is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.