Ellen King 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 author of four baking books, including “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy Snackable Bakes.” On each episode, I hang out with the sweetest bakers around and take a deep dive into their signature bakes.
My guest today is Ellen King, the co-owner of Hewn Bakery, which has locations in Evanston, Libertyville, and Winnetka, Illinois. Ellen and her bakery are known for using heritage grains and traditional bread-making techniques, and she's gained national recognition for her work. She's also the author of the 2018 cookbook, “Heritage Baking.” Ellen joins me to talk about her baking journey, including her eye-opening introduction to good bread while abroad in Norway during college, the importance of Chad Robertson's “Tartine Bread” to her bread-making journey, and the underground bread club she started before opening her bakery. Then, we take a deep dive into her banana bread. Yes, banana bread, the ultimate comfort food. Ellen explains why it is so important to use blackened bananas and shares her tip for extra moist and flavorful banana bread, as well as pound cakes. Spoiler alert, freeze them for a day after baking and before serving. You don't want to miss our convo, so stay tuned. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
Peeps, have you heard about Cherry Bombe's Jubilee? It's our annual conference for women in food, drink, and hospitality, and it's happening Saturday, April 12th, in New York City. I always love being at Jubilee and connecting with other bakers, pastry chefs, and cookbook authors. If you'd like to join us, you can get tickets at cherrybombe.com. If you're an official Bombesquad member, check your inbox for special member pricing. I hope to see you there.
Let's chat with today's guest. Ellen, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk banana bread with you, and so much more.
Ellen King:
I'm so excited to be here.
Jessie Sheehan:
So first, I would love you to tell us about an early baking memory.
Ellen King:
Yeah, I was stressing about this question that you were going to ask me. Yeah, I was trying to do homework, go back into time. Honestly, in my house, it's kind of ironic, but it would be like Toll House cookies if my mom mixed those together and that was it. I mean, we'll go into talking about the banana bread, but baking was not a huge thing in my house. Cooking was, like my dad was the cook.
A big childhood memory that I had, which also instills sweats in me, is my granny would come to town and we would have to polish this old tea set, this antique tea set, and then we would have to go and buy lady fingers because we would do a tea party with her and me, because I was the girl, and then have lady fingers at the table. That was our sweet memory. And break out the China, that's our family's... I mean, this makes me sound like I'm totally posh, which I'm not. I have the tea set now, and it's in bags in a closet somewhere. Memories that I have is going and having a tea party with my granny and lady fingers, or my mom baking Toll House cookies.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh, I love both of those. But tell me this, why the sweats? Did you not like granny, or was it just stressful to like, "Oh, am I going to break the tea cup? This is so not fun."
Ellen King:
My granny was just a very formal woman. She was from Omaha, her granny was from Virginia. She lived in Long Island with my mom, and she went to school in D.C. I never saw her without stockings and a skirt. She looked like Nancy Reagan is how she looked literally, and so she would come and it was never warm and fuzzy. There was points where I'd have to put on a dress until it became literally, this is almost inappropriate for everybody that I have to wear a dress. It was so uncomfortable for her, for me, for everybody, but the polishing of the silver was the one thing that I actually kind of liked. I liked the manual work of polishing silver for the tea party.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my God. Love that about you so much. Would you say that an early baking memory were these fruit breads, the banana bread being one of them, were these fruit breads your mom was making and freezing for you guys and putting in your lunch boxes?
Ellen King:
Yeah. So my mom loved to make banana bread in particular, where first it was just banana bread with walnuts, and then she started adding chocolate chips, and especially in the winter months. And she would make batches and put them in the small little pans. They would be bite-size almost, and then she specially wrapped them in foil and then wrap them with plastic wrap. Sometimes she found fancy paper during the season where you could wrap breads into festive papers, and then she would wrap it with plastic wrap and then she would give those out to people, and then we would have them to eat. We weren't allowed a lot of sugar in our house.
We didn't have any soda. The only white bread we were allowed was Pepperidge Farm, those little thin slices. But otherwise, nothing was really processed except for the Toll House cookie she would buy the mix. My brother and I's, we'd be like, "Oh, it's banana bread," and we'd sit down and eat three of the little frozen loaves.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you call them fruit bread. Did she ever do like a cranberry bread or like a pumpkin?
Ellen King:
She would try to do those, but to be honest, none of us would eat them, and so they would be in the freezer for a lot. So finally, she distilled it down to like we're just going to stick with the banana bread because the other ones would be in there and we'd find them as we would be digging for other stuff. We'd find two-year-old fruit bread she made. She'd be like, "No."
Jessie Sheehan:
I know your mom did not love to cook or really bake, except for the fruit bread, but was it a foodie family? Did you guys care about food? I mean, you said your dad loved to cook.
Ellen King:
I was thinking about this because I'm like, "I'm going to be asked these questions about my family," and I'm like... I almost had a therapy session with my AI bot today.
It's funny, my mom, she cooked for us every night. We had a meal that she cooked fresh. My dad worked in food actually, but he was food service, like back in the day when his chefs would be on the line smoking a cigarette and you would probably get the ash and the soup as well. And so my dad was like the griller, meat, it was always meat-heavy, and my mom would cook family dinners for us every night.
But I think to my mom's testament, the thing that I really got from growing up in this house with my mom was how to work with my hands because she had a knitting shop, she was a knitter. And so, from the young age, my mom was always knitting. So, for us, textiles were important. Using your hands and the materials that you used, the ingredients that I used were always important.
If my mom were in this current age and on Instagram, she would have millions of followers because she's just such a prolific knitter and just such a funny character. She did a knitting class at the bakery for all the bakers, and she's like, "It was really exciting because they know how to use their hands really well, so they could knit and pick it up really quickly." And I thought it was such an interesting insight. I'd never thought about that. I just take it for granted that you can use your hands to do whatever you want, but that's not the case.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, I know that you didn't love the Chicago suburb that you grew up in, but now you appreciate now that you've moved back to the area, et cetera. But I wonder if there were any regional baked goods, like maybe at a store. What was Ellen into? Were there snack cakes at the gas station? Anything like that that you remember?
Ellen King:
Yes. I mean, don't get me wrong. The thing that... And on the East Coast, you have it. It was always revered. Okay. We have Little Debbie's here, but on the East Coast, what are the little choc... They're like Drake's. Is it Drake's?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, we have Drake's. We have Yodels, Suzy Qs, Devil Dogs.
Ellen King:
Yes. In our house, we would get whatever we could get in the Midwest, but my mom would always be like, "Drake's are the best. Those are the best around." And so when we'd go back east, we'd load up on those Drake's, whatever, little Swiss rolls, and I loved those. So yes, I was like a gas station grocery store connoisseur.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I love that.
Ellen King:
East Coast, Midwest.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. It was during college, actually, that you tasted bread in Europe and had sort of an epiphany like, "Oh my gosh, I've never tasted anything like this." Tell us about that.
Ellen King:
Yeah, I studied in Norway, my junior year of college, and prior to that I was the first one in our house that left the country, besides my great grandma who was over in France. But I was the first one in my immediate family that went over to Europe and was in Norway, and this was in the '90s. There was no phone, there was nothing. I didn't speak the language.
I was totally oblivious, and I was poor. I would go to the little grocery store by where my apartment was in Oslo, and pretty much these are the two funniest things that I got from Norway food, it was I would buy the densest bread, right? The bread that had the most nuts and seeds because it was going to fill me up, because we didn't have a dining hall. We had to feed ourselves. And so, I would buy that butter and some Jarlsberg cheese and peppers, and I would slice the bread thin, and I would make these little open-face sandwiches, and that's what I ate, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I didn't even know how to cook myself a dinner.
Jessie Sheehan:
Did you toast them to melt the cheese, or not even?
Ellen King:
No, it was just served like soft spreadable butter, and then you put cucumbers on there, red pepper slices, the Jarlsberg on top, and you just eat it like an open-face sandwich. I would wrap it with wax paper and go out walking on the trails. I didn't have a lot of friends, and so I spent a lot of time alone.
And then the other thing I would do is I was 20 and I could buy beer, and I was so excited. So I'd go to the grocery store, and I would buy the cheapest beer there. And it was at the end of the semester when we had a party with all the apartments and everybody was together, and this Norwegian guy came up to me, he's like, "I've been meaning to ask you." And when I saw the beer in the refrigerator, because we had a communal kitchen, he's like, "Why do you buy this beer?" And I'm like, "It's the cheapest." He's like, "I thought that you didn't drink because it's non-alcoholic beer." I've been buying non-alcoholic beer as like a 20-year-old thinking how awesome. And I've just been spending my hard-earned money so the beer would incrementally get more expensive with the amount of alcohol in it.
Jessie Sheehan:
That is hilarious.
Ellen King:
Right?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Ellen King:
So all year, I'm like, I'm this 20-year-old super sophisticated drinking Norwegian beer, but literally it would've been better to drink soda.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my God, I love that. Let's take a quick break, and we'll be right back.
Kerry Diamond:
Hi everybody, it's Kerry Diamond, founder of Cherry Bombe and host of Radio Cherry Bombe. Have you dreamed of visiting Las Vegas? Join me and team Cherry Bombe on Friday, March 7th, and Saturday, March 8th, for a special series of events in Vegas. We're hosting a fun party in the Arts District at the acclaimed Velveteen Rabbit bar. Think terrific cocktails and mocktails, tarot card readings, I will be first in line for that, and the city's best food trucks. Then Saturday at the Wynn, we have a special networking breakfast and panel conversations with some of the women shaking up the culinary scene. Then Saturday night, there's dinner at the brand new Gjelina at the Venetian. Tickets are on sale at cherrybombe.com right now. You can buy tickets to the individual events or a weekend pass. We'd love to see you there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Cherry Bombe's next issue is all about love, and I think you're going to love the cover. It features Ilona, Olivia, and Adrianna Marr, the sister trio that has won everyone's hearts for their positive message of confidence and self-love. The issue was full of joyful stories and recipes. To snag a copy, head to cherrybombe.com or click the link in our show notes, or visit your favorite bookstore or culinary shop to pick up an issue. Now, back to our guest.
So after college, you went to graduate school, thinking maybe you would become a teacher, but sort of abandoned that pursuit, worked a thankless job, but then after 9/11, kind of shifted gears and ended up in Seattle and sort of wanting to check out the food scene there. What happened? Were you cooking a lot during your thankless job, and so that was what sort of inspired the Seattle move? How did you even know you wanted to work in restaurants at that point?
Ellen King:
When I was in high school, I was the kid that I'd have parties at my house. We'd have parties, my parents were gone for whatever period. And my dad always had all these frozen cuts of meat. They had this thing called marketplace where you could buy bulk meat, and it was all packaged like steaks. I'm talking like T-bones and everything. I'd have parties and all my friends would come over, and I would be barbecuing these steaks for them as a 16, 17-year-old. And I was a horrible student, like 1.67, I graduated with that.
And my dad said to my mom, "She should go to CIA." And I was like, "I'm not going to go to a two-year... You think I'm like..." It was such an insult, right? Because it was like food service, go work in food, and then work for someone like my dad. And so I just would, "Heck no," but savory cooking always brought me the most. I loved it. I was engaged. I worked with my hands. It was hot, it was physical, but I didn't want to do what my dad thought.
So I went and studied history, got my master's in history. I met my partner back in Chicago when I moved here. After grad school, I couldn't get a job with a master, then a bachelor in history. And then she got a job with Microsoft that moved us out to Seattle. And so when I got there, I just talked my way into a technology job. I was just like, "I'll work here." So I was a trainer for software, which I really didn't love, and I got sent all over the place to do these trainings. And when September 11th happened, I was actually in Tampa. I was at a customer, and they stopped our training because they were a company that actually had high-intense skin that they would put on burn victims. So it was called Smith & Nephew. I don't know if it's still around.
And they came into our meeting, and they said, "We have to stop this training. We have to mobilize all of our resources because there's a severe attack in New York," and they're going to need all the burn supplies they can. And then I was stuck in Tampa for two weeks just as a 26, 27-year-old, and really alone in a Hampton inn. This is back in the day, this is early 2000. I would buy a pack of cigarettes, and I would sit in my room, and I would just smoke, crying. And then I had this great aunt who lived in Clearwater, and my mom's like, "You should get in touch with Aunt Terry." And I was like, "Okay."
So, I called this woman out of the blue. I got transported into such a... She knew my mom really well. I remember the first day I showed up there, I was just a mess. And she took me in, and she's like, "Well, it's so nice to have a visitor." She's like, "I wasn't expecting one, but let me get some appetizers together." She goes, and she gets some Ritz Crackers, and in her freezer, she takes out an ice cube tray with pesto that she had made at some point. And so she's like, "I know it's not fancy," but when it comes to room temp, it's delicious.
We sat around eating Ritz Crackers with frozen pesto, and she just kind of took me back and just talked to me about like, "This is okay, we'll get through this. This country is a lot stronger than that." We would turn the news on, and then we'd turn it off. I spent two weeks with this aunt I didn't know who filled me in on my family history that I didn't know in the midst of the scariest time.
During that time, I had this vivid dream where I also realized I had absolutely no skills. I had nothing that if another attack or something bad happened in the world, I would be of no use to anyone or anything. And I just felt like I needed to have something that was, not survival, but something, a skill. I'm not going to be a doctor, but food was kind of that thing.
And so when I got back to Seattle after a long trip to try and get a plane, it took a lot longer than I thought, I officially quit my job and said I was going to culinary school. Well, everybody had that idea in early 2001 to go back to culinary school and re-examine your life, and the waitlist was like a year. So I quit my job a little early, and I should have kept it for a little bit.
But anyhow, I eventually got into culinary school at Seattle. It was a community college, but it was truly like a two-year program. Most of the instructors had gone to the CIA and worked in industry all over the world, and that's what's great about Seattle, right? A place like Seattle brings people there because they want to live there. And I got a great training on the savory side. I did not study baking because I'm terrible in math, and so I just thought it was too exact. I didn't have any goals or plans to just work in food and learn as much as I could and find a way to be useful.
Jessie Sheehan:
You ended up moving back to the Chicago area when your son was born, and your mom gave you Chad Robertson's “Tartine Bread,” and that was kind of like game-changing for you, but I am so impressed that your mom bought you that book. How did she even know who Chad was or what Tartine... I mean, this was the fruit bread lady.
Ellen King:
Yeah. Well, my mom's a prolific reader. She really is. She loves bookstores. And this book, actually, I've never met Chad, but the thing that happened was my mom gave me this book. My dad literally dropped dead of a heart attack. Literally, my mom's on the phone with me, about to see my son's train table that they bought he was going to turn to, and I thought she was calling to Zoom or whatever. I can't remember, Skype, so my dad can see this train table, and my mom just says to me, "Ellen, I'm doing chest compressions on your father. Call your brothers."
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my God, Ellen.
Ellen King:
He literally died in the bathroom in their house, just dropped dead. I was depressed. I realize now as an adult with the vocabulary that most non-reflective people I've learned, I started making bread because I was so depressed at home with a young son living in an area that I never wanted to come back to. And Chad's book, I don't know that I would even be able to do this now. I just had tunnel vision where my depression I think just allowed me to learn how to make bread in a way that I had no... I didn't have a schedule. I didn't have commitments besides feeding my son and caring for him, and I just poured everything into making bread.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I love that you not only collected every bread book, but you literally turned your house into a proper bread environment. Warm in the winter for your bread, cooler in the summer for your bread. I love that. Would you say that Chad's book remains like a favorite?
Ellen King:
For making bread, and even just the way that I think about bread, it is completely his book. He just distilled it in a way. Yes, the recipes are long, but I feel like it's reading a long book that's got so much in it, right? You don't want that book to end.
Jessie Sheehan:
Probably the only sourdough recipe I've ever used for whatever reason, because I found it when I started making sourdough, is his. It's fantastic.
Ellen King:
It is. And I think sometimes, I mean, I know your books, it's in my little stack here, “Salty, Cheesy, Herby, Crispy” that we got. There's such a place for recipes that are quick and easy, and you don't have to have a billion things, but then there's that place, probably when you're depressed, where you just get lost in a cookbook and one recipe just takes you months to master. And I feel like that's his book. And if I were to say, "If you want to learn bread, yes, I have a cookbook," but I would prefer his.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about the underground bread club and where you used to make bread out of your Chicago apartment. Tell us all about that.
Ellen King:
Because I started making bread, and then I realized I needed to make it on a level that I could really learn more rapidly. My son and I, Asher was, I think he was about three, and he was at preschool. I would literally load him up in my Subaru wagon, and we'd drive to go buy flour, 50-pound bags. He'd be in the back seat. We'd load up this flour, and in Indiana, we went and picked it up.
And then, I just started making so much bread that I needed to sell it because it... And also, we weren't rolling in money at this point. It was just after 2008. Things were pretty tough. I didn't want to go back and work in restaurants, and I needed to bring in some money. At a preschool, it's prime grounds for selling your wares to them, and that's what I did.
And so, once a week, Asher, he'd get loaded up if the weather was somewhat tolerable, in his burly. A lot of times he'd get in the little bike, his little compartment, and then I'd ride my bike and load him with the bread. He'd run the bread into everyone's house on the way to school, so we would map it to make sense, and then he'd collect the money and come running back and at school he'd bring in all the bread and put it in the backpacks and grab the money out of it. It's funny, he's never had any interest anything with baking, nothing, but he's always been more interested in the front end, customer service, that kind of stuff.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. And the underground bread company became huge, became your bakery. One of the preschool moms, who is now your partner professionally and personally, she asked you about what do you think about opening a bakery. Correct?
Ellen King:
Yeah, literally, it was almost the funniest question because I was like, "Well, no." I didn't want my life to be consumed. I knew what it meant to be working back in food, but then it got to the point where I had about a hundred customers where it was like I might go out of business because I just can't keep doing. I mean, I was waking up at midnight to be baking for six hours to then deliver by the 8:00 AM drop at my son's school. And then it was so much work that the thought of opening a place...
But I had never worked in a bakery before. I just read Chad's cookbook and considered myself a baker, but I did have the culinary background at least to know. But yeah, we literally, in 2013, signed a lease and opened up the space, and it was like, I think 950 square feet was what it was. It was so tiny, and then we just kept making baby steps to be where we are now
Jessie Sheehan:
At the bakery, which we're going to talk about in a second, there's more than just bread. You do have pastries and traditional baked goods. Do you ever make those things, or did you used to make those things? Are you just always the bread person, or would you also be the person who made sort of the banana bread, let's say, that you sell it to bakery and things like that? Do you do both, or have you done both?
Ellen King:
Yeah, so when I had my underground bread, seasonally, I would do take-and-bake morning buns. So I would hand roll and laminate the croissants, which was just horrible. But I would sell it at Christmas, and people would take it, and I'd freeze it, and they'd cut it up and bake it at home. At the bakery, we were small enough that, yeah, I mean, the first probably six years I was doing everything. I had to do everything and be everything. And I will say, now, I have a burn on my arm, and someone's like, "Oh my God, did you get that at the bakery?" I'm like, "No, I got it at my fireplace," because it's like I am not doing the morning bake anymore. So, my burns are now just from other things.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, life.
Ellen King:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So tell us about the bakery. I know it's like a rustic Chicago area bakery, specializing in made-from-scratch breads, pastries, and sandwiches.
Ellen King:
Yeah. It really is kind of just a community bakery, where we really focus on being a part of Evanston. We have a location in Winnetka now and in Libertyville, which makes us sound like I can glamour it, but I can tell you we're not.
You come in, and honestly, sometimes people say it feels like you're in a loaf of bread in a way because it's a lot of just warm wood. We use a lot of salvaged wood from trees that had to get taken down from different ailments. Everything in there, we work a lot with local flour from local farmers. So sometimes you'll even see Harold the farmer delivering the grains for us.
So we really try and be true to everything that we sell at the bakery is something that I'd be proud to be like, "This is the ingredient." Sometimes you go into a place, and you're like, "Don't bring them into that. Don't let them see that." Right? Where it's like everything in our place, we don't use canola oil because I don't like the rapeseed. It's mostly all GMO. We'll use olive oil or grapeseed oil. It's not just about, "Let's make a bakery." It's like, "I want it to truly feel like where I'm proud of it at every level."
Everybody at the bakery, it's like a team of people that really are very passionate. I got to be honest, we've been lucky. They've been the ones that have helped make this bakery incredible, right? Because Julie and I obviously can't be there. We lead the ship, but we have a staff of people that are really committed, and they know quality over everything.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I know that your big advocate for heritage grains and traditional bread-making techniques, which emphasize flavor and nutritional value, environmental benefits. In your book, you talk so much about the importance of buying heritage grains from farmers that you know. Tell us a little bit about that.
Ellen King:
Yeah, I mean, living in especially the farming center of the U.S., right? Theoretically, this is where we should be able to consume and buy a lot of wheat that's locally grown, but that hasn't been the case. It's starting to come back now, and that's why for us as a bakery, when I opened this back in 2013, it was always important to be able to work with locally-sourced flour, so being stone-milled and locally-grown sustainably.
And the market, honestly in the last eight years, it's really grown. It's incredible to see. We have Janie's farm, which is two hours south of us. We have Meadowlark Farm, which is in Wisconsin. I mean, there's so many farms now that are growing sustainably-grown wheat. We say heritage because the varieties that they're using are able to be grown without synthetic inputs, so they're not adding nitrogen, fertilizer, pesticides, and insecticides. And that's so especially important now with climate change, where you either have flooding or you have drought. There's wheat varieties that are tolerant of excessive water, or there's varieties, especially in California, that can deal with drought. And so finding your local farm to source the wheat from is really important.
But the thing to remember is, it's harder to buy flour. They have to be able to mill it in a way that makes it applicable for a home baker. So just because someone's growing the wheat, they have to be able to have a stone mill set up where they're sifting it so that if you want more of the bran and germ sifted out of it, you're getting a whiter flour still stone-milled where you're still getting all the nutrients, but it's going to work well in your muffin recipe. And I think that's part of the barrier to people. You can't just use a conventional recipe and swap in locally grown wheat as easily. It's totally doable, but you have to make some adjustments with the hydration for every recipe.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think this is a good segue into the book because I feel like the intro to the book is this incredible... I mean, it's totally pulling from your history background and your baking knowledge because it's this incredible history lesson about farming and wheat. Tell us a little bit about the book.
Ellen King:
So this book, God, it feels like so long ago, I shouldn't say that, but anything before the pandemic, it's like BP, right? It's like just something foreign. But the book, I felt, was really my love of history and my love of learning about farming and then baking, and kind of bringing awareness to people, because this was in 2019 that this came out. So bringing awareness that you have farms that are growing wheat, they're not even bringing that wheat to market. It's just a cover crop. And so the more the consumer can actually start demanding that they get local flour, the more these farmers, first off, will be able to make a better living, but also it's better for our environment in every way to be eating this flour locally.
It also tastes better. So I talk in the book about different varieties that we've played with in all over the country. Sometimes farmers reach out to me about a variety. I mean, there's literally... I talked to one agronomist who said there's probably 100,000 varieties of wheat, maybe even more. And I'm only aware of probably like 200 varieties, right? There is wheat that can be grown all over the world, and it really is honestly an easier crop to grow than so many other crops that are grown in this world. So this is a book that the home baker can take and maybe start exploring in their local area and have some recipes as a foundation to be able to just kind of have fun and connect with their community.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. Now, the banana bread recipe. You serve this in the bakery, but I had a question. Is it, by any chance, like your mom's recipe, except with different flour?
Ellen King:
It is. It's pretty much that recipe. Yep, it's my mom's recipe. We use different flour. So, in this one, we were using Turkey Red. At the bakery, now we're using the Janie's Mill All Purpose Flour, which is a blend of, I think, it's a Warthog wheat and Edison wheat. Sometimes, it changes seasonally. So I would say pretty much any flour that you can get that's sifted.
The thing that gets confusing is when you say all-purpose, it's really a term that's meant to just be able to be used compatible for a lot of baking goods, but it really is a sifted wheat that you're getting. You could use it with a whole wheat, but I like my banana bread a little lighter and airy than 100% whole wheat. So that's why if you're getting a slightly sifted wheat, it'll still get the brand and germ, but it'll be a little bit lighter.
Jessie Sheehan:
This particular recipe calls for this hard red wheat heritage flour, such as Turkey Red. But you would say for somebody that wanted to make this recipe, but they wanted to use a heritage grain, just to be sure that whatever they use, they sift or be careful of what you purchase. Talk to the farmer you're purchasing from to make sure it's going to kind of behave in that more like finely milled all-purpose way.
Ellen King:
You could home sift it if there were some flakes of bran and germ, but you're still not going to be able to sift it at a level that at the mill they can. So just ask them, "Do you have a more sifted wheat that you would recommend?" The hard red relates to really kind of being a little bit of a higher protein in it as well. What they would call their all-purpose at the farm would be perfect for this.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, great. So, first things first, we're going to heat our oven to 350, and we're going to butter an eight-by-four-inch loaf pan. Do you have a favorite kind of loaf pan? Is it just restaurant supply that you guys use at the bakery, or do you have a company you like?
Ellen King:
We use the restaurant supply ones at the bakery, but what I like at home are the Nordic. I do like the Nordic pans. They're consistent.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that this is an eight-by-four-inch and not a nine-by-five because I love kind of the sharp corners and the shape of an eight-by-four. I don't know why I have a pet peeve about a nine-by-five. So I love it that it's in an eight-by-four-inch pan. So then, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, although you can use a handheld mixer in a large bowl. If you were doing handheld mixer in large bowl, what's your bowl? Would it be a ceramic bowl if you were at home? I assume, at work, it's probably big metal, restaurant supply bowls.
Ellen King:
Yeah. I now have this company that I actually went down a rabbit hole of somehow I read something that's stainless. There's different levels, and I was like, "I want American-made stainless steel bowls." And there's this company, I've been buying my bowls from them. They make pet bowls, but I've now taken the pet bowls to be my bowls, because they're just like the perfect size and they have a flat bottom, and so they're really fun to bake with. And they're made in Pennsylvania, I think, is where they're made.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. We're going to beat together some unsalted softened butter and some sugar. I assume the sugar is granulated?
Ellen King:
Yes, I do like fine cane sugar. It's the Domino. I like Domino.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice. So we're going to beat some unsalted butter and fine cane sugar on medium speed until the sugar crystals have dissolved, about three minutes. And are we looking after these three minutes for something light and fluffy? Are those sort of our visual cues?
Ellen King:
Remember, my mom made this recipe, not to disparage my mom, but just assess it, it looks okay, move on.
Jessie Sheehan:
Go for it. Don't overthink it. Then, we're going to add some eggs. Do they need to be room temp or just kind of grab them from the fridge?
Ellen King:
I mean, as a baker, I would say room temp works better, but again, this is the Naperville banana bread. Just take your eggs and throw it in there. This is the 1990s.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to add our eggs. If we're going to add some vanilla, is there a brand of vanilla that you like?
Ellen King:
I like Nielsen-Massey.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. We're going to add our vanilla, and we're going to beat until well combined. Then, in a different medium bowl, we're going to sift together whichever kind of heritage flour we have found from our local farmer that sort of gives us an all-purpose vibe. We're going to sift that together with some fine sea salt and baking soda. Now, if your farmer has given you a flour that he or she says, "Oh, this is the texture of all-purpose," do we need to sift? Would your mom have sifted when it was all-purpose?
Ellen King:
No. I mean, yes, the little hand sift... No, she wouldn't have sifted. Unless you see clumps, I wouldn't sift it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, perfect.
Ellen King:
No, don't worry about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect. So we're going to whisk together the fine sea salt. Do you ever use kosher?
Ellen King:
I don't use kosher.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, interesting.
Ellen King:
Why? I don't know. I use sea salt. I like the size of the granules.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. So we're going to whisk together our flour, some fine sea salt, some baking soda. Now, we're going to add these dry ingredients to our butter-sugar mixture and just mix on low speed, just until no visible traces of flour. Obviously, we don't want to overmix. And then with the mixer running on very low speed or on low speed, we're going to add very ripe bananas that are mashed and almost black. Do you mean the skins are black?
Ellen King:
Yeah, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you say that the black is great because the bananas get sweeter and softer as they ripen, and then the bread actually bakes up better?
Ellen King:
It does. It adds that moistness. You'll have a moist interior, and the flavor is there.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's so good. And I love you have a little pro tip. You can ripen your bananas on the counter, but you can also stick them in a brown paper bag to get them as black as you want them. So we're going to mix in our bananas until just combined, and then, off the mixer, we'll fold in some dark chocolate chips, maybe some walnuts. When you serve this at the bakery, does it always have chips and nuts, or do you serve it both ways?
Ellen King:
No, we don't add nuts or chips in it because our customers really... I thought that everyone would prefer it, but they prefer banana bread without the chocolate chips and the nuts.
Jessie Sheehan:
Interesting.
Ellen King:
Yeah, we don't use the nuts in it.
Jessie Sheehan:
If we were putting the walnuts into the banana bread, would you toast them first, or not even?
Ellen King:
I would, but this is the 1990s banana bread, so we don't toast them. We just throw it ahead.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to pour the batter into our prepared loaf pan. We're going to bake for about 50 minutes until golden brown. Do these heritage flours, will it change the hue, the color of the bread at all? Will they be slightly darker than maybe if we were using commercial all-purpose?
Ellen King:
It'll be slightly darker. Yep. It'll be a little bit darker hue.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're going to use a metal skewer or a toothpick, insert it into the center. We want it to come out clean. Two questions, sometimes I feel like with a metal skewer, it's so smooth. I like a toothpick or a skewer because I like it if it can catch a crumb, because I also worry about overbaking things, so I like to see a crumb on my toothpick. In the bakery, are you metal skewer, or are you guys toothpick?
Ellen King:
Yeah, we're metal skewer.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you don't want any crumbs? You like to see things come out clean?
Ellen King:
Yeah, we like to have it come out clean because customers will complain.
Jessie Sheehan:
If they think it's gummy in the center?
Ellen King:
Too raw.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Ellen King:
Yeah, gummy.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also think professional bakers, people that are working for you and you yourself, there are so many visual cues and so many feel cues to when bread or any baked good is ready that maybe we're even less reliant on what the skewer is going to look like anyway. Whereas, I feel like at home, I like to instruct people to get a crumb because I feel like people overbake everything, and I hate overbake.
Ellen King:
Well, that's true. Yeah, I think that's valid.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now, we're going to let the bread cool in the pan for five minutes, run a knife around the edges of the pan, carefully tip the loaf out of the pan, and cut into thick slices. And I love that you say to serve it warm or at room temp. At the bakery, are you serving it at room temp?
Ellen King:
Room temp, yeah. There's a thing we do with our pound cakes and our banana bread that actually helps make it stay even, just kind of moistures. Once we make them, we'll let them cool, and then we'll wrap them and freeze them for a day or two, and then pull them out. The lemon pound cake, in particular, we'll put some soaker in it, freeze it, and then it kind of just, in the freezing process, it breaks down kind of structure in a way, and it makes it nice, soft, and moist. And the same with our banana bread.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, that's a really great tip. I have actually heard that. Certainly, with an oil-based cake, there's certain things that you bake that are actually better the next day. And it's interesting when you combine the freezing process with that because I'm sure, I mean, right, there's something that's happening chemically in that process of freezing and then bringing back to room temp that plays with the structure and makes for something that's more moist. I love that. So you guys won't even serve them if you just bake them off, you are going to freeze them?
Ellen King:
We freeze them, and they get frozen for literally like a day or two, just the pound cakes. Yeah, and it really does. If we serve a pound cake that we bake fresh, by the end of the day, it just isn't as soft. But the banana bread that gets frozen for a day or two, it's got a nice, really soft interior that works like, as it's sliced sitting on the display, it's delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Ellen, and I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Ellen King:
Well, thank you. This was so much fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. 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 Good Studio in Brooklyn. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Jenna Sadhu. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.