Jessica Battilana 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.
Today's guest is Jessica Battilana, the staff editor at King Arthur Baking Company and the co-author of the New York Times bestselling cookbook, “The Big Book of Bread.” The book is a literal baking bible from the King Arthur team and was released last year. It's filled with 125 recipes for yeasted and naturally leavened breads for novices and advanced bakers alike. Jessica is also an award-winning food writer and recipe developer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Food & Wine, and more. She's written her own cookbook and co-authored several others, and she's the co-host of the new podcast, Things Bakers Know, which debuts this spring from the King Arthur Baking Company. Jessica got her start in professional kitchens before shifting to food media. She joins me to talk about her new book and walks me through the recipe for cinnamon raisined swirl bread from “The Big Book of Bread.” Jessica and I chat about the importance of eating dessert every day and why it's a good idea to have cookie dough in your freezer at all times, and how working at a baking company has changed her cooking. I learned so much from chatting with Jessica, so stay tuned for our chat.
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 Maher, the sister trio that has won everyone's hearts for their positive message of confidence and self-love. The issue is 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.
Let's chat with today's guest. Jessica, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk cinnamon raisin swirl bread with you and so much more.
Jessica Battilana:
I'm so happy to be here.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love to start interviews with early baking memories. It can be something you baked or a baked good that you ate that you remember. Can you tell us about one of yours?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. My mom was a fabulous cook, but not a great baker. She didn't love baking, but I always loved sweet things. I remember eating the brown sugar out of the package and things like that. I think because my mom didn't bake that much, I took it upon myself to learn how to bake pretty early on. The first thing that I remember baking was a brownie recipe from 17 Magazine, and now I feel like my memory must be faulty because I'm like, "Did 17 Magazine really publish a brownie..." I haven't fact-checked myself on this, but my recollection was that the brownie recipe was from 17 Magazine, and I made that brownie recipe, I don't know, probably dozens of times. So much that my family was like, "Okay. Actually, no more brownies."
Then I started bringing brownies to the librarians because I went to the library a lot and to friends. I think I quickly understood the power of a baked good to win people over, and so then I really got hooked. But I also remember messing those brownies up every which way, like always forgetting an ingredient or, you know, I think there is something to that if you make the same recipe over and over again and you make those mistakes, you get very good at that one thing. That's the first thing that I really remember baking. I did say earlier my mom was not a great baker, which is true, but we always had homemade birthday cakes throughout my childhood. There are three kids in my family, we all got to pick our birthday cake. My mom made those from scratch, which knowing that my mom didn't love baking that much is really a tremendous act of love.
Jessie Sheehan:
I read also that not only did she make birthday cakes, were there also maybe popcorn balls?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I read about popcorn balls, and I love a popcorn ball.
Jessica Battilana:
She made popcorn balls. Yeah. She would make them for Halloween. A lot of these recipes she didn't write down and I didn't make them with her. I think they were pretty standard, like a molassesy peanut popcorn formed in a ball and then put in Ziploc bags. I guess we would give them... I don't know if we would eat them, if we'd give them out. But yeah, I hadn't thought about that in a long time. But those were quite good, I should make them for my own kids. They'd probably be into it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. I think popcorn balls, they don't get enough love. Can you tell us about the imaginary talent shows that you would do in your kitchen when you were little in front of the... I guess it was dark outside, so in front of a window so you could see yourself in the glass reflection?
Jessica Battilana:
When we first moved into that house, my parents bought that house right before I was born, so in the fall of 1978. The kitchen at that time had... It was carpeted wall-to-wall, paisley. A carpeted kitchen is pretty much the most disgusting thing I can think of, and it was like that for probably the first 10 years of my childhood. The house was... It wasn't really put together right. It was a house from the 50s, mid-century, which is very unusual for Vermont, especially at that time.
But it had these giant windows in the kitchen, two giant windows. The only way to orient the stove was to push it up against the wall where it was with a window behind it. I used to cook things or bake things... In Vermont in the winter it gets dark early, and so by the time you're making dinner, it's pitch black outside. I could see myself reflected in the window, and I would just do a little fake cooking show because we watched all of those. We watched the Julia Child show, we watched the “The Galloping Gourmet.” My mom was into all of those, so I had seen food television and I was just making my own little show.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. That was actually going to be my next question because I'm realizing that a lot of my guests, some of their early training or... Early training in quotes, or early inspiration was cooking shows. Was that a part of where you were exposed to watching people cook and obviously your mom was into it?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. We also didn't have cable. There weren't food shows on cable then, but it was all PBS. It was like Mary Ann Esposito and “The Frugal Gourmet” and “The Galloping Gourmet,” the Graham Kerr, and of course Julia Child. Then years later when I was starting to get into food, my first job I got... I was living in Boston and I got hired by WGBH. They were doing some retrospective of Julia Child, and the job that I was hired for was to watch all of the “In Julia's Kitchen With Master Chefs” series and annotate it. At minute one, Julia sees whatever and minute 25 she's making her béarnaise sauce or... I watch those videos. You have to watch them over and over to get that timing right, so those videos I have a very deep knowledge of and very strong memories of.
Jessie Sheehan:
I want that to be my job.
Jessica Battilana:
It was great. It was great for a beginning cook-
Jessie Sheehan:
Right.
Jessica Battilana:
... because those are like if you want to be a baker, a cook, “In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs” is... It's a master class in cooking and baking.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh. I'm sure your mom had many, but did you have a favorite cookbook or maybe even a baking book that you loved when you were little?
Jessica Battilana:
It's funny. My mom had a big collection of cookbooks, but I don't remember her ever cooking from them. I'm sure she got inspiration from them, which honestly is really what I do now. I have a crazy, huge, ridiculous cookbook library, but rarely do I cook straight from a cookbook. I read them like novels and I get inspiration, and I think that was what my mom did as well. We had all the standards like the Fanny Farmer, “Joy of Cooking,” all of that. She did really like Florence Lin, it's a Chinese cookbook. My mom really liked Chinese food, really liked to cook and eat Chinese food. She cooked from that book a fair amount. That I think she followed the recipes because it was such a new cuisine for her that she needed a little bit of help, but... Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
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:
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. Now, back to our guest.
I wanted to jump ahead to your first cookbook, “Repertoire,” which as you and I have discussed, I loved when it came out. I still make the candy pork recipe from the book, which I highly recommend listeners make. In “Repertoire,” you write that you're a recipe writer, but not much for rules. I thought that was very, very true with savory cooking, I feel like. Maybe it's a cliche to say, but it's a lot more spontaneous. It allows a lot more wiggle room. But would you say that still is true working for a baking company, having written a New York Times bestselling cookbook about bread? Would you say you still feel like you're a recipe writer, but less rule-focused, or do you feel like now rules have had to come into the foray a little bit more?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. I think rules have entered the chat.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's a better way of putting it. I love that.
Jessica Battilana:
I think that's still true for my savory cooking for sure. I think you can get away with a lot more. There's a lot more wiggle room, which is why I think some people really gravitate towards cooking and never bake or really gravitate towards baking and never cook. My co-authors, Martin Philip and Melanie Wanders, who wrote “The Big Book of Bread” with me, they're real bakers. There is a rigor to being a good baker and that sounds... Rigor makes it sound negative. I don't mean it to sound negative, but I think you're going to get better results if you bake by weight, if you follow some guidelines. In some ways, I find it actually, especially the baking by weight, which is what I do exclusively now, to be quite freeing actually, because you're not wondering is it going to turn out the same way it did last time? It frees up some of the guesswork, especially for bread baking, where I think there's other things that you have to guess at. Let's not start with guessing whether or not you have the right amount of flour in the bowl.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. More rules. But within that, I do think bread baking in particular is both an art and a science. There is obviously the tactical aspect of it, but then there is the intuitive part of it. I think that's why I think it's an interesting and exciting challenge, even for bakers who have baked other things because no day is the same, no dough is the same.
Jessie Sheehan:
100%. Bread is so exciting. In some ways, the rewards of seeing a loaf come out of the oven are like no other. You're a staff editor at King Arthur Baking Company. How has working for a baking company would you say changed your cooking, if at all?
Jessica Battilana:
I don't know that it has changed my cooking so much. I'm certainly baking more than I ever did before. Particularly, of course, the natural consequence of working on a bread book for two years is that you bake a lot of bread. I was an occasional bread baker before, and now I am a devoted bread baker. It is part of the ritual and routine of my home cooking life, so that has changed.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you say that means you still identify as a cook, but maybe also as a baker as well?
Jessica Battilana:
I think so. Yeah. I think I have a foot in both worlds, which is nice. I like both things. I think they activate different parts of my brain. What is probably the most seismic shift for me is before I started at King Arthur, I joined the company two years ago, I had been freelancing for most of my career. Most of that time I had spent working on different cookbooks. My own cookbook, but then also co-authoring cookbooks with other chefs and bakers. I had a more flexible schedule too. I was not beholden to the 9:00 to 5:00. That was a change for me because I keep pretty standard hours at King Arthur, and so I understood in a new and a different way that pressure of, like, "It's five o'clock. Now it's time to start dinner, and what are we going to do?"
Whereas when I was recipe testing and working on books, there was always something to eat because I would've spent my workday making stuff. That was a little wake-up call for me of like, "Okay. Well, what am I willing to do at the end of the day and where can I fit things into a regular day?" My co-author, Martin, talks about fitting bread baking into the cracks of your day. I love that expression. I have taken that to apply to my savory cooking too. When I'm making my kids' lunches, I'm also grating cheese for dinner or I'm salting the meat or I'm mixing the bread dough because I don't have huge chunks of time just to mess around in the kitchen the way that I used to.
Jessie Sheehan:
Has bread baking become a weekly thing now? Do you always have homemade bread at home?
Jessica Battilana:
We do. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's so great.
Jessica Battilana:
It is great. It's funny because I like to bake through a lot of the different recipes in the book and beyond. My kids would like me just to make white sandwich bread every week. Thank you very much.
Jessie Sheehan:
So cute.
Jessica Battilana:
It's also delicious and I'll do it. But yeah, when I try and branch out, they're like, "That's fine, but could you just… Can we have white bread again?"
Jessie Sheehan:
I want to get into “The Big Book of Bread,” but just before I do so there were a couple of things that I read about you that I loved. First of all, that you're an ardent supporter of eating dessert every day. You also say that, at least when you were writing “Repertoire,” your family was a dessert every night kind of family. That's how I was raised. I just wondered, first of all, if the family is still now... I think when you wrote the book, your kids were pretty little. Now they're a little bit older. If that has changed at all? I think you also said you always have chocolate chip cookie dough in your freezer. I wonder if all of those sweets, which I hope is the case, are still around? Or if you're like, "No. No, I'm a bread lady."
Jessica Battilana:
No, we're still a dessert family. We're still an ardent dessert family. I don't know. Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow? It's like you might as well have the dessert. Yeah. We do have dessert every night. It's not always like a home-baked dessert. I don't get me wrong. It's not like I'm whipping up a cake every day. There is always cookie dough in the freezer, which I feel to me is... It's like a security blanket. No matter what happens... Well, I really reached the zenith of my life when I moved here to Maine from San Francisco in 2020, and one of the first purchases was a chest freezer. I just felt like I had arrived. We have more freezer space, and so we always have cookie dough or we have ice cream. Probably once a week I'll bake something for us, or if we have friends coming for dinner, I'll bake something. But we do like sweet things, which makes me well suited to my job. Sometimes my wife hears me on a conference call and she's like, "Another one of your conference calls about cupcakes."
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. She's like, "God, you have a hard job."
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. It's hard to get a lot of sympathy.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're really bringing on the bacon. All right. Now I want to talk about “The Big Book of Bread.” “The most wide-raging bread book to be published in a decade," is something I read about it. First of all, I have to say in the week that it came out, it was the number one New York Times bestselling book in its category. That was so incredible just having spoken to you and other King Arthur folks. I knew that was... It's everybody's goal. But wow, you guys killed it, kicked it out of the park, so happy for you.
Jessica Battilana:
Crazy.
Jessie Sheehan:
But I wondered about this idea of the most wide-ranging bread... It's a gorgeous book, the most wide-ranging bread book to be published in a decade. For those that haven't seen the book yet, what can a reader expect from this incredible tome?
Jessica Battilana:
It's broken into six recipe chapters. Flatbreads, pan loaves, hearth loaves, which is where a lot, but not all of the sourdough recipes are. A chapter on buns, bagels and rolls. A chapter of fancy breads, which are the enriched loaves. Then we have a chapter of things to make with bread. When you have leftover bits and bobs of bread, what can you transform it into? Then the book starts with a very robust step-by-step technique section because all of these breads essentially are using the same techniques over and over.
It was both a tactical choice because if we repeated those instructions for every recipe, it would be The Big, Big, Big Book of Bread. It's already a very big book. But also this idea of like, "Master these skills because they're going to show up over and over again." If you spend some time reading that section, then you're going to be set up for everything that follows. Then we also included a section in the center of the book, right at the heart, called a Sourdough Primer, which is a guide to all things sourdough, how to start your starter, how to feed your starter and maintain that and then bake with it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about the collaborative process of developing the structure of the book, developing the recipes themselves? I think you wrote the headnotes, but I wondered if you were the headnote writer and I also wondered were you the most experienced writer of the three and the other two were the more experienced bakers? Is that fair to say?
Jessica Battilana:
First of all, I should say that Melanie Wanders and Martin Philip, who are also employee owners at King Arthur and wrote this book with me, are just wonderful. They're top humans. I really hit the jackpot working on this project with them. I think as I have gotten older, I have seen how working in collaboration can just be so much richer than working in the lone wolf way. It was especially true with this book, we all brought our own skill set to the table. I have written the most cookbooks out of the three of us. Martin has also written his own cookbook, bread cookbook, which is essays and bread and is a brilliant and beautiful book. But I have put together, I don't know, I think this is my 13th or 14th book. I think in terms of concepting what a book should be, what it should look like, what will make it interesting, I do have a lot of experience in that area.
But Martin worked in our bakery at King Arthur for, I don't know, six or seven years every day, hundreds of loaves of bread. He brought this expertise for bread baking that was tremendous. Melanie is in our research and development team, and prior to that was a pastry chef and ran a chocolate shop with her husband. When we're talking about the rigor, God bless Melanie for just bringing that attention to detail and commitment to just testing and testing and testing and testing until something was perfect. Well beyond the point that I was like, "I think it's fine. I think it's okay." She would be like, "Just one more test." I think we were like this three-legged stool, and Martin and Mel developed all of the recipes.
Then I wrote all the rest of the copy in the book. I often feel like in all of my cookbook collaborations and in this one as well, just I am always waving the white flag of the home cook. Like, "Can they do that? How do we make sure they're successful?" I was the least experienced bread baker of the three of us going into it. I was waving that white flag a lot, just being... A lot of texts between us, like, "Is this right? Is this what I should do? What about this?" I think that exchange between the three of us made the book better, made the recipes better, because I'm like hopefully have asked every question of the two of them and of the other experts in the company that anyone at home would ever ask.
Jessie Sheehan:
Once Mel felt like the recipe was in the shape she wanted it to be, did she send it to you for a final test? Did you test-
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Have you made every recipe in the book?
Jessica Battilana:
I've made almost every recipe in the book. There are some recipes that Martin developed that Mel cross-tested. Most of the recipes that Mel developed, I cross-tested. Then of course our test kitchen team at King Arthur tested all of them because we love to test. That's another... That's the thing about King Arthur too is that people come to us expecting stuff to work. There's nothing more aggravating than getting a book where something doesn't work.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now I want to talk about the cinnamon raisin swirl bread in the book. What's amazing and special about this particular bread is that there are several versions of it, completely different flavor profiles, which I love seeing one bread recipe be able to become so many different things. It can become Mexican chocolate swirl bread, dukkha swirl bread, French onion swirl bread, and lemon swirl bread. Do you recall who came up with the idea for this swirl bread and its variations? I think it's so brilliant, and I feel like I haven't really seen it before.
Jessica Battilana:
I think collectively we were all like, "Yeah. Swirl bread. Swirl breads are a thing that people get excited about," but you only really most often only see a cinnamon raisin. I would like to look back through the various books that I have done over my career because I feel like this is a conceit that I have teased out in other books too, where it's like you have this foundational recipe and then you do some things with it that make it different. It appeals very much to me, but I also think it can be eye-opening for cooks and bakers at home and exciting too to be like, "All I have to do is learn to make this one thing, and then I can make all these other things." Like, "I learned to make pâte à choux, and now I can make eclairs and profiteroles and gougères."
Jessie Sheehan:
Gougères.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. I think that's exciting to give people that foundational recipe. I think together we were like, "Swirl breads are a thing that we want to dive into." Then it became an exercise of what flavors we will do. I feel like we could have kept going, but early on I think there was a prune swirl bread with an Earl Grey streusel. There was a peanut butter jelly one that we messed around with for a while. There was a coconut one that we messed around with for a while, and we just... For various reasons, they got abandoned along the way. Some of them we couldn't get to work really well, reliably. Some of them we just thought were maybe too fussy. Then of course we couldn't just do a book of swirl breads, so we had to pick our favorites amongst the group.
Jessie Sheehan:
This bread is studded with raisins, and then it showcases this gooey brown sugar swirl through its center. Ultimate breakfast bread. I know it's an enriched dough. Just for people that may not know what does it mean when someone describes a dough as enriched?
Jessica Battilana:
An enriched dough, you think of those soft, fluffy, delicious doughs that you've had in your life. They're likely fluffy and soft and delicious like that because they have some enrichment which is just extra fat added. In this case, the fat comes in the form of butter, which gets added to the dough and also eggs. You'll see that, that same challah might be enriched with butter or oil and eggs, brioche obviously lots of butter, and it gives that fluffy pull apart texture that you see with the best dinner rolls or the best breakfast breads. I'm glad we actually are talking about this recipe because in every recipe in the book give options for making it with sourdough and making it with yeast, but with these swirl breads we did, so there's an option to make it with sourdough culture or an option to make it with yeast.
Jessie Sheehan:
The bread needs a stand mixer, and you guys state that and point that out. Is that because many of the breads you can make without one, and so you wanted to be clear that when you make an enriched dough, it's a stiffer dough and really anybody could make it by hand, but you really want a stand mixer with an enriched dough?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. If you go to the gym enough, anything can be done by hand I suppose. Like brioche and milk breads and all these were made long before the advent of commercial mixers, so it is possible, it just would be so annoying. But there are lots of recipes in the book that call for no mixer at all, that are hand mixed and just folded. Unless we felt like you really need a mixer, we tried to give options for both doing it by hand or a mixer. But with the enriched doughs, it would just be so annoying to do it by-
Jessie Sheehan:
Do I also learned or it was expressed in a way that I had never read before, but this idea of an enriched dough produces a really strong dough. You need the strength so it holds its shape, you get a good rise, and the mixer gives you that. It's not just that it would be hard on your arm, it's also that that's actually the best product.
Jessica Battilana:
Exactly. I think it's a number of things. This recipe has bread flour. Bread flour has a higher amount of protein. You get more gluten bonds to... I think of it like the Rockettes linking arms. You get a strong gluten formation, which supports a good rise in the bread, but you also have to develop strength in the dough. You can do that a number of ways. We talked about in the book, you can develop strength through time, you can develop strength through kneading on the bench by hand, or you can develop strength through mechanical mixing. It's like a two-pronged attack. It's like strong bread flour, a nice mix to give you a nice strong dough, which in turn in the oven will support a strong rise. Because this bread has the raisins in it, you want that dough to be nice and strong so that it'll rise.
Jessie Sheehan:
Suspend. Yeah. Yeah. The leavening for this dough, as you mentioned, the dough can be made with a sourdough culture or it can be instant yeast. We're going to discuss the bread as if we had a sourdough culture. I think you guys like it at King Arthur. You like it for its flavor and improved keeping qualities. Does that mean that a bread made with sourdough culture lasts longer than a bread made with... I had no idea.
Jessica Battilana:
It does. Yeah. It'll take-
Jessie Sheehan:
Sorry. Jessica was nodding, so I was... But, yes. She says yes. I forget that people can't see us.
Jessica Battilana:
I know.
Jessie Sheehan:
I didn't know that.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. Also, we find that it improves browning and just really flavor. You get this flavor development. I think in this book we lay out the strategy. It's not a new strategy. We are not the only people to do this in the history of bread making or in the history of bread book writing. But this idea of building to bake. I feel like this is a really important idea, and so I would just want to take a minute to talk about it. You'll see in other recipes that'll say, "Ripe fed sourdough culture."
There's a lot of talk about like, "I've got to catch my sourdough culture at the moment that it's at peak." I think people get really bogged down by like, "Okay. It's going to peak in eight hours, and then I have to bake right when it's at peak." This idea of building to bake frees you from trying to catch your starter at the exactly right moment. Because what you do instead is you take a small amount of culture, so you don't need cups and cups of sourdough culture, at most in this book I think it's like four tablespoons of culture, and you mix that with a portion of the flour and the water in the recipe and you let that sit. It's called a pre-ferment. That is essentially acting as another feed for your culture helping to rev it up.
Jessie Sheehan:
I learned this way, and this is how I make sourdough. I learned this from Tartine, you always make the pre-ferment. I always want to call it preferment. Pre-ferment. But don't you still need to catch that tablespoon or that two tablespoons when it's at the right spot when you make the pre-ferment?
Jessica Battilana:
You have a little bit more wiggle room-
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. That's good to know.
Jessica Battilana:
... which is the great part. Would I say take your neglected culture out of the refrigerator and throw it in and hope for the best? Well, no, because you think about your sourdough culture like an athlete. If you lay on the couch for a week and then you're like, "Let's go run a race."
Jessie Sheehan:
Run a marathon.
Jessica Battilana:
Like, "I'd really rather not." But if you are like, "Hey, let's just... We'll go out for a mile every day and come back." Then on Sunday you're like, "Let's run five miles." You're like, "I can do that." Can you take neglected hooch-covered starter from the back of your fridge and assume it's going to make your bread rise? Well, no, you got to give it a little TLC. But I don't think with this building to bake, if you're catching it at the peak of ripeness or after it started to fall a little bit, you just have a little bit of a broader window there, which I think is nice.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's really good to know. Yeah.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to talk about the bread using the pre-ferment. But if you don't have a sourdough starter going, do not worry about it because their directions in the recipe, you'll add a little extra flour, you'll add some water and you'll add a little extra instant yeast, so you can go in either direction. On day one, first things first, we're going to soak some raisins in some cold water overnight in a small bowl or the night before you want to bake. Tell me why we need cold water?
Jessica Battilana:
You can do it in hot water too. It doesn't really matter, but you don't want them to get too soft and mushy. If you put boiling water on them, sometimes raisins can fall apart. You're just trying to plump them up so you don't have dry little nuggets in there. Also, so they're not going to take moisture out of your dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah, smart. Smart, smart, smart. I've never thought of-
Jessica Battilana:
If they're pre-hydrated, they're not going in there thirsty thinking like, "I'd like to drink some of this dough water."
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to cover the raisins. Does it matter? A dish towel? Should I picture an airtight cover?
Jessica Battilana:
In a plate, a little... Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great.
Jessica Battilana:
It doesn't matter.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to hydrate them at room temp for about 12 to 16 hours. Then in another small bowl, still on day one, we're going to combine our sourdough culture, which we've discussed is basically a little bit of your starter that you have on your counter that you've been building with water and flour for however many days or weeks or years at this point. We're going to add some bread flour. We have a little bit of sourdough culture, a little bit of bread flour. I wondered about this, I know the bread itself has bread flour. Why do we need the bread flour in our pre-ferment? Could we use all-purpose?
Jessica Battilana:
In theory you could use all-purpose, but this pre-ferment is going to be become part of your final dough. We're looking for strength. Even though it seems like it's a separate thing and it's going to get incorporated and there's the majority bread flour, you don't want to weaken that by adding an all-purpose flour. Also, it's nice just to have a recipe that calls for one kind of flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Jessica Battilana:
Would your bread fail with a pre-ferment made with a quarter cup of all-purpose flour? I don't think so, but I feel like we know with confidence that a stronger dough is going to be best case scenario here, so I say stick with the bread flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to add some cool water. Why does it have to be cool? Could it be room temp or do you not want it to get too speedy too fast? You want-
Jessica Battilana:
That's it. Yeah. You don't want it get too speedy, too fast. Because it's going to sit overnight, so if you really revved it up with warm water it would move faster. Right?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Yep. We're going to cover that again, sounds like not a big deal, piece of plastic wrap, plate, whatever you want. Let that stand at room temp overnight for about 12 to 16 hours. You could do all of that maybe before... I'm just trying to think timing wise. Maybe at the end of the day. 6:00 PM-
Jessica Battilana:
That's what I do. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
9:00 PM. Yeah.
Jessica Battilana:
I'll do it, yeah, in the evening. Martin says... He has a nice phrase to think about pre-ferments, which I think helps people understand the purpose. He says, "It's like a bouillon cube of flavor for your bread," so just that little amount of pre-fermented flour and water is just going to give a little-
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Jessica Battilana:
... flavor spike, which is a nice way to think about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Little flavor bomb. On day two, we're going to make our dough. In our stand mixer bowl, we're going to combine the pre-ferment. Basically, pre-ferment is what we call the culture after we've taken it, added a little bit of flour and water to it. I love that, pre-ferment.
Jessica Battilana:
You could do your pre-ferment in your mixer bowl if you wanted to save a bowl. I always want to save a bowl. I don't know about you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, I am a big bowl saver. That's a great idea. Do that pre-ferment in your stem mixer bowl. Or if you didn't, you're going to put your pre-ferment into your mixer bowl. You're going to add bread flour, a little bit of granulated sugar. Why the granulated sugar? For the instant yeast or for flavor and seasoning?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. Yeah. All of the above.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to add some fine salt. Why not kosher? I feel like we see kosher so much.
Jessica Battilana:
This is the nice thing again of baking by weight. If you're baking by weight, use whatever salt you want to use. It doesn't matter. As long as you're specking to the gram weight in the recipe, you could use kosher salt. I don't use iodized salt. I don't recommend iodized salt and bread, but you could use fine sea salt. We just use what we use in the test kitchen at King Arthur, which is a fine table salt, unionized.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. Now we're going to add some instant yeast, which is my personal favorite just because it saves a step, saves a little bowl. Is that the reason why you guys are recommending it?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. We have transitioned to exclusively using instant yeast in the King Arthur recipes because it can be added directly without-
Jessie Sheehan:
So great.
Jessica Battilana:
... blooming it before, so it just again streamlines it a little bit.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep. We're adding an egg. I wondered, should the egg be room temperature or is it not super important at this stage in the game?
Jessica Battilana:
Not super important because this is going to mix for so long, everything's going to warm up, but it doesn't hurt if it's from temperature.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to add some warm milk. We're going to use the dough hook attachment. We're going to mix on medium-low, scraping the mixer bowl as needed. My favorite King Arthur tool and tool generally is the plastic flexible bench scraper. Love that-
Jessica Battilana:
Love that thing. I love it.
Jessie Sheehan:
... so much.
Jessica Battilana:
It's a good... Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So much.
Jessica Battilana:
Good stocking stuffer.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. 100%.
Jessica Battilana:
Everyone should have one.
Jessie Sheehan:
100%. We're going to use our flexible bench scraper to scrape the bowl as needed, and we'll mix for about two to three minutes until we have a firm yet tacky dough. Then we're going to increase the speed to medium. I wondered about this. I was interviewing someone about a gluten-free bread recipe, and she was saying that she never turns her mixer above medium when she's making dough in a stand mixer. I said, "Is that like a gluten-free bread thing?" She said, "No, that's how I always make bread." I tend to put it a little higher than that.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. Interesting.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you guys have a position on speed? If you don't, that's okay, but I just wondered. I tend to go medium high, but then I suddenly thought, am I making bread wrong?
Jessica Battilana:
No, I don't think you're making bread wrong. I wonder too. It feels a little nebulous sometimes on a kitchen aid, what is true medium?
Jessie Sheehan:
Right.
Jessica Battilana:
That's interesting though that she said she only mixes on medium. There are definitely indications in this book where we mix I think on medium high. I feel like for the brioche.
Jessie Sheehan:
Maybe.
Jessica Battilana:
If I'm remembering correctly-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Jessica Battilana:
... we mix that a little bit more vigorously.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Jessica Battilana:
I was also going to say we talk about tacky versus sticky a lot. Tacky, to us, we think about being the back of a Post-It.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice. Yeah.
Jessica Battilana:
It's sticky-
Jessie Sheehan:
Glue.
Jessica Battilana:
... in your hands.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Yeah. Or tape. We're going to continue mixing on medium until the dough's smooth and elastic, an additional three to five minutes. Then with the mixer still medium, we're going to add some room temp unsalted cubed butter. We're going to do it one piece at a time, mixing until the first piece is fully incorporated before adding the next. Continue mixing until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and is soft, smooth and elastic. Three to five minutes. Again, we're scraping periodically with our dough scraper or is this don't really need to?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. I don't even think you need to at that-
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Jessica Battilana:
... point because really the scraping is just to make sure there's no dry bits. By the time you're mixing there, all the ingredients should be incorporated, so you're just building strength.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to drain our raisins, and with our mixer stopped, add the raisins. Then we'll mix until evenly distributed, one to two minutes more. We're going to cover our stand mixer bowl. Don't even take it out at this point. Is that correct?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Just let it rise at room temp until doubled in size, about one to one and a half hours. Again, I don't know why I'm so obsessed with covers, but are we covering it with anything? Cover it with a plate? Or do... We're trying to seal in.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. You want to cover it airtight at this point because you see a lot of... I hate... No shade to anyone's grandma who covers with a kitchen towel. You see a lot of that, but that is not an airtight cover. You're trying to prevent air from getting to the dough because what happens... I'm sure if you are a person that covers your dough with a cloth you may have seen in the past, sometimes you pull it out and then it's got a skin on it, which is not ideal because it's a drier exterior and so you're going to have some dry bits in your dough that then when you go to mix it all together or shape it are going to be obvious. Right? They'll be obvious.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think it can also preclude your rise because once it has that dry-
Jessica Battilana:
It sure can.
Jessie Sheehan:
... surface, the yeast is trying to bang through it and it can be a little funky.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. We advise plastic wrap. If you don't want to use single-use plastic, that's fine. You can get... As long as it's a reasonably tight-fitting plate or a beeswax wrap, any of that is fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Meanwhile, we're going to make our filling. In a small bowl we'll combine some light brown sugar, some bread flour and some cinnamon. Same question as before. Could we put AP in? I'm not saying people would, but I just like to understand choices.
Jessica Battilana:
Yes. In this case you could. You do need a little bit of flour. We learned in extensive, extensive, extensive testing, one of I think the big problems that people have with swirl breads is the gapping. You swirl it up. You've done your best. It looks good going in. You take it out of the oven, it looks beautiful. You cut into it, and it's like your spiral is not holding together. We did everything we could to solve for that. Some of that is in the shaping, which we will talk about later, but a little bit of flour there acts as glue for the other filling ingredients and helps glue those spirals together. It has a reason that it's in there, not just for extra flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to grease an 8.5 by 4.5 inch loaf pan, which in case anyone wants to know, that is my ideal loaf pan size. I do not like the 9 by 5s. I just love how sexy and slim the 8.5, the King Arthur particularly-
Jessica Battilana:
Has straight sides.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love those straight sides and those sharp corners.
Jessica Battilana:
I love a side.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know. We're all obsessed with straight sides. It's a thing, and we need t-shirts. We're going to spray with a cooking spray, which I loved because being trained in a bakery, that's what I use exclusively to grease. Was that a choice? Could you use butter? Could you use oil? Is it what you guys do?
Jessica Battilana:
You definitely could. I just think it's the cooking spray... I know you might have some and if you have some reservations about aerosol spray, you could grease otherwise. But it's very convenient, and it doesn't burn the same way that butter would burn in a pan. That's our default recommendation. Yeah. That 8.5 by 4.5 straight-sided pan, I feel like it sets you up to have a beautiful looking loaf of bread.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's the best. It's the best. Now we're going to lightly flour our work surface. You have us using bread flour. Sorry I keep going back to this. Could we do it with all-purpose flour?
Jessica Battilana:
Why do you hate bread flour so much, Jessie?
Jessie Sheehan:
Maybe I just want to say bread flour so much. No, I just want to understand because I know-
Jessica Battilana:
No, you could flour the surface with all-purpose flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm just always curious when I'm making something and it has a particular flour, can I pull out AP now or should I stick... That's why I keep asking you.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. For shaping it would be totally fine. I think when we were writing the recipe, it's like if you have a bread recipe that is... I think most people have all-purpose flour plus other flours. But we were like, "Well, what if they don't? What if they've just bought bread flour to make this recipe and then they're like, 'Now I need AP for dusting?'" But yes, if you have AP and you want to use that for shaping, dusting this work surface totally fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll lightly flour our work surface, then we're going to use our plastic bowl scraper to ease the dough out of the bowl onto the work surface. We're going to gently deflate the dough. What does that mean? Do you mean punch it? Do you mean just press it lightly?
Jessica Battilana:
No. Sometimes I see on the internet now people are so aggressive with... They've gotten their dough nicely risen. It's bubbly, it's happy, and then they come in with their fists and are just whacking it right in the middle. I get that we all have aggression to work out. I think the point is here you're just trying to get the big bubbles. You spend all this energy and time to get a rise in your dough, so you don't want it to completely knock it out. You want it to have some air in there. You're just looking to flatten it out, address any big bubbles because those will become bigger bubbles as it proofs and just give yourself a nice level surface to work out, but you don't have to punish the poor dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll gently deflated our dough. Then we're going to roll it into a 15 by 8 inch rectangle with the shortest side facing us. Do you have a favorite rolling pin? Do you like one... Tapered edges? Do you like one with handles? Tapered ends?
Jessica Battilana:
For this one, I don't have the ball-bearing type. I only have a straight pin and then I have one with tapered ends. For this I don't think it really matters because my tapered pin is long enough that I could get... It's longer than 15 inches, but the ball-bearing ones will work fine. This isn't such a big piece of dough that you have to worry about overlapping your rolling pin. I will say though, there was probably a time in the past where I'd be like, "It's close enough. It's probably 15 by 8," and I wouldn't actually measure it. But now I have a ruler in the kitchen, and I use the ruler. It's important to set yourself up for success by starting with the right dimensions and not just guessing. I do like to guess for other things, but in this case it's like, "Yeah. Don't guess. Actually measure that it's 15 by 8."
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to brush a light even coat of egg wash, which I love is made from egg and salt, which is the same way I make my egg wash, over the dough. We're doing this, I assume, so that the filling will stick to the dough. It's like glue.
Jessica Battilana:
Exactly. Just a little glue
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to sprinkle the filling evenly over the dough, leaving about a 1-inch-wide bare strip on the short side of the dough that's farthest away from us. I thought this was interesting because I've been comparing this base recipe to all the other variations. This was one of the recipes where we actually don't even press in the filling. Some of them we actually have to press to adhere, like the French onion. Here we don't have to. We're sprinkling it all over the egg wash and it sticks.
Jessica Battilana:
There's not a lot of volume to it, unlike some of the other ones. Yeah. It'll just stick right on.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to fold the outer half-inch of each long edge to enclose the filling. I assume this is to ensure it doesn't leak while baking.
Jessica Battilana:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we'll gently press down those little edges that we folded over. Then starting with the short side that's closest to us, we're going to roll into a log. Is the goal very tight?
Jessica Battilana:
I'm glad you asked because no. I would have thought before we did 1 million tests of these breads, if you want your swirl bread to stick together, roll tighter. That was what I had always done, and I had always had gappy swirl breads. You actually don't need to roll it really tightly. You want to give a little breathing room so that as the dough rises, there's a little bit of space between the swirls so that it has a place to go. Because it's going to go somewhere, and if you've really cinch it up tight, it will force the swirl apart. Just roll it. Don't give it the business. Just roll it away from you gently.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to pinch the center seam closed, and then we're going to pinch each end to seal, which is interesting. I have never done that with a swirl bread, closing up those ends. Is that again to protect against leakage?
Jessica Battilana:
Exactly. Sometimes I do a karate chop on the ends. I just put the sides of my hands. I'm showing you, and nobody can see this. But I put the sides of my hands down on the ends of the dough just to flatten them, and then I just tuck them under. You don't have to go crazy pinching it, it's just trying to get a nice tight little parcel.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to place the log seam side down in our prepared pan, and then we're going to cover again. This time when we're covering, we don't want anything flat on top of our pan because we want a one-inch rise above the pan. Are you draping?
Jessica Battilana:
Shower caps to the rescue.
Jessie Sheehan:
Shower cap. Okay.
Jessica Battilana:
Shower cap. If you go to a hotel, most hotels still give them out and I've never worn a shower camp in my entire life, but I do take them because they're great. You can buy bowl covers, too, that are reusable. But for a free option, shower caps are great. They're perfect because they are tight. They have a tight elastic seal, but they allow room for the dough to expand. If you have to cover with plastic wrap, that's okay too. But I would spray one side of the plastic wrap with cooking spray and put the sprayed side against your dough because we've all had it happen where your dough rises and then it bonds to the plastic wrap.
Jessie Sheehan:
I've had it happen. Yeah.
Jessica Battilana:
So many times.
Jessie Sheehan:
I've had it happen in the bowl when you're making sourdough, and then you pop it out and there's some piece that sticks to the fabric and that makes me ballistic.
Jessica Battilana:
And deflates the whole thing. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I can't even go there, it'll make me too sad, but anyway. Okay. We're covering with our shower cap that we got it at a hotel. We're going to let the loaf rise at room temp until it crowns about an inch over the rim of the pan, about an hour and a half. Towards the end of the rising time, we're going to preheat our oven to 350. We'll lightly brush the top of the loaf with that reserved egg wash and sprinkle with turbinado sugar, which you're giving us a choice, but I'm just telling everyone please sprinkle because that just sounds so delicious and yum.
Jessica Battilana:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we'll bake the bread until the crust is golden brown. The internal temp is about 190. It's going to be about 40 minutes. Do you guys believe that the best way to test your bread is temp? Is that ideal?
Jessica Battilana:
I think it is one tool in the toolbox.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep.
Jessica Battilana:
I think that certainly no professional baker who's baking hundreds of loaves of bread is tempting every single one to see if it's done. It acts as a secondary confirmation of what your eyes tell you. Right? I think if you're baking, and this is important, baking to full color is maybe our rallying cry for this book. Actually bake till something is GBD, golden brown delicious. Really get some color on it. Then you don't really have to worry about the inside being done. But I think there is sometimes a tendency, especially with newer bakers, to do a pale bake, light bake, which a is not as flavorful. Brown is the most delicious color. But also, yeah, then you might run the risk of not having it baked all the way through so you could have the temperature check to-
Jessie Sheehan:
That also is a pet peeve of mine with pie because people-
Jessica Battilana:
It's the worst.
Jessie Sheehan:
... want it to look a certain way, and so they pull it when it's golden brown. I'm like, "No pie is ever done at golden brown."
Jessica Battilana:
No. Honestly, if that's the only thing people ever learn from this podcast, Jessie, we will have succeeded.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly.
Jessica Battilana:
Bake to full color.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Jessica Battilana:
Really go for it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. I've said this before, so listeners, if you've heard this, I apologize. But I once heard Carla Hall say exactly what you just said is, this was at a pie contest, "There is flavor in the brown. That is where your flavor is." We're going to remove the loaf from the oven, turn it out of the pan right away and onto a rack. This helps the bread come out of the pan easily, preserves the crunchiness. Because if you keep it in the pan it's like a little steam oven, and-
Jessica Battilana:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
... it can get soggy. Then we'll let cool completely before slicing.
Jessica Battilana:
That's the worst part.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is the waiting?
Jessica Battilana:
Waiting till it cools. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
There are a number of other variations. I just wanted to go through them quickly so people get a sense. There's a dukkha filling, which is like an Egyptian condiment of crushed nuts and spices, and you have us toast fennel seeds and coriander, cumin until fragrant and, I love this, one to two shades darker than when you started. I feel like that's a great visual cue to this point about color. Then we're going to add some toasted hazelnuts, pistachios and sesame seeds. Pulse it all together. I love this too, we're adding a teeny bit of egg wash to this nut mixture. Before we might've added a little flour to help with our cinnamon raisin filling, now we're adding a little egg wash so it helps keep our spiral together and almost to the consistency of a wet sand.
Jessica Battilana:
Exactly. Yeah. Again, it's like gluing it together.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. This is one where once we've brushed our dough with the egg wash, we're going to press down to adhere the filling. I went through every single recipe just to confirm that there are no modifications to the dough, and there really aren't.
Jessica Battilana:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
This dough works. The only modification I saw, even with fillings, the Mexican chocolate filling for instance and the cinnamon raisin and maybe the lemon as well, you don't have to press do it, adhere the filling.
Jessica Battilana:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
But other than that, all of the directions are the same. With our Mexican chocolate, we're adding some mini chocolate chips where we added those raisins. Then we're adding some sugar, cocoa powder. I wonder, I'm like a big Dutch process obsessive. Is it Dutch process cocoa powder?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. Dutch process cocoa powder. Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Yeah. The color... It's not only flavor, but the color is so beautiful.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. It is.
Jessie Sheehan:
You want that dark. I imagine it looks beautiful when you see that cocoa.
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. You get that dark spiral, and it has a little bit of cinnamon and spice in it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Chipotle powder, cinnamon salt. So yummy. Again, not adhering. Then this one is so special, the French onion filling with caramelized onions and-
Jessica Battilana:
That bread's crazy. It's so good.
Jessie Sheehan:
... cheese and fragrant thyme. I thought this was interesting, to avoid any gaps in this swirl with the French onion, you need to caramelize your onions deeply and you need to grate your cheese finely.
Jessica Battilana:
This is another one that we really tested a lot because we were having gapping problems with this, and so we give a measurement for how much onion you should have after... They actually get roasted in the oven. It's hands-off, but you really need to cook them for a long time. I can't remember off the top of my head how much the final measurement of-
Jessie Sheehan:
It's only...Yeah. It's 35 grams. It's a quarter cup at the end.
Jessica Battilana:
It's 35 grams.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Jessica Battilana:
You really are cooking it down. We actually added that measurement later in the development game because we had folks saying, "Yeah. I've cooked the onions long enough," but they would end up with-
Jessie Sheehan:
Big gap.
Jessica Battilana:
... a cup of onions or something, or they just weren't taking them far enough. Then yes, the moisture from the onions would cause gapping. That bread is so good. I can't wait to make... This winter, I'm going to make French onion soup. Then I'm going to make the French onion bread to use as the raft on it. A double French onion.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, so good. I also wonder if you could almost... It's a little more labor-intensive, but almost... Well, maybe it wouldn't be, but almost make a pull-apart bread with it?
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Just cut... Rather than roll the bread up once you put down the French onion, cut it into squares and then put it... I think that could be just the-
Jessica Battilana:
Yeah. You could do like a monkey bread situation with it-
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, yum.
Jessica Battilana:
... sort of bun.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yum. We'll mix together that finely grated Gruyère with those onions. This is one where we're going to press to adhere since it's a thicker filling. Then the last is the lemon swirl bread, which I love this that I think is from your headnote. It's a zippy bread, and it's great for breakfast. I love zippy. It's a gooey swirl of zest and sugar. I love this too, it tastes like curd despite the fact it's only like a tablespoon of zest, which is pure baking magic.
Jessica Battilana:
It is baking magic.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right?
Jessica Battilana:
I don't know how Mel did it, but it's like it gets gooey in this really wonderful way. The sugar and the lemon zest. It gives you the... It has a little bit of flour in that mixture. It just gives the impression of lemon curd. That's a special bread. I like that one a lot.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Jessica.
Jessica Battilana:
Oh, man.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Jessica Battilana:
Oh, geez. Thanks so much for having us.
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.