Mindy Segal Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi peeps, you're listening to She's My Cherry Pie the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and cookbook author, and my fourth book is coming out this fall. Each Saturday, I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
My guest today is Mindy Segal, a James Beard award-winning pastry chef, cookbook author, and the owner of Mindy's Bakery in Chicago. Mindy opened her first restaurant, Hot Chocolate, back in 2005 after honing her craft in some of Chicago's top restaurants. In 2022, she opened Mindy's Bakery in Wicker Park. She also has a product line called Mindy's Edibles, which includes cannabis infused gummies and chocolates with distinct flavors. In this episode, Mindy and I are talking all about Danishes. Mindy walks us through the steps for how to make the popular breakfast treat, including everything you need for the perfect dough, and her favorite sweet and savory toppings. Mindy is an epic human and a visionary baker, and she was so much fun to chat with, so I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Thank you to Grappa Nonino for supporting today's show. Grappa is a traditional Italian spirit made by distilling pumice, the skin, seeds and stems of grapes, left over from the winemaking process. Generations have loved to sip grappa or use it in cocktails, and some even use grappa as an ingredient in baked goods and desserts. I've used bourbon, rum, and amaretto before, but never grappa. So the folks at Grappa Nonino challenged me to create some special treats with their award-winning grappa varietals. I made a chocolate pudina with Nonino's Monovitigno Chardonnay Grappa, the varietals notes of bread, vanilla, and pastry paired so well with the chocolate. Nonino's Monovitigno Merlot Grappa, with its notes of rose petal and cherry, and its fruity finish was the perfect addition to my ricotta cake with strawberries. A trifle is always a showstopper, so I made a raspberry trifle, but swapped out the traditional sherry for Grappa Nonino Monovitigno Moscato. This varietal's floral, sage, thyme, and vanilla flavors were an ideal complement to the tart raspberries and sweet mascarpone cream. Nonino has been distilling grappa since 1897 and has been led by generations of amazing women.
From Silvia Nonino, Italy's first female master distiller, to Silvia's three granddaughters who run the distillery today. Keep an eye on my Instagram, jessiesheehanbakes, to learn and see just how I use Grappa Nonino in my baked goods and desserts, and to get the recipes. You can also learn more about Grappa Nonino at grappanonino.it.
New York Bombesquad, team Cherry Bombe is on the road this summer and they'll be at Sound View Hotel in Greenport on the North Fork of Long Island for a special dinner with Chef Camille Becerra on Friday, July 26th. To learn more and get your tickets, visit cherrybombe.com.
Let's check in with today's guest. Mindy, so happy to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to chat Danish with you, and so much more.
Mindy Segal:
Oh God, I'm loving every second of this.
Jessie Sheehan:
There are so many things that I love about you, okay?
Mindy Segal:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
So first of all, you're a self-professed milk chocolate girl, and I'm as well. You've been described as Chicago's pastry whisperer, and your mantra at your bakery is to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. Can you unpack that last one for us, and maybe give us an example or two?
Mindy Segal:
Yes. All right, so I am in awe of the regular chocolate chip cookie, the Toll House cookie, all-American chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream. But when I say those things, I say, "Well, let's make vanilla ice cream, but let's make vanilla ice cream the way that no one ever thought about it." Although they're eating it, but they have no idea of the complexity that goes into it, and that's the trick that I love to do with people. We came up with that line when I wrote my cookbook, to make the ordinary extraordinary, because my cookies are so simple and yet so complicated.
Jessie Sheehan:
I thought that this was maybe also an example of that sort of mantra, taking something ordinary and making it extraordinary. I read that you never throw away just an ordinary tea leaf because instead you can turn it into an extraordinary sugar.
Mindy Segal:
Yes, and that's what I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you tell us about that?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, so I can't tell you where in my brain I came up with this idea. It's probably because I don't like to throw anything away, and I always know that something has a flavor, no matter what stage it's at. I buy tea from a guy, Rodrick Markus, but his company is Rare Tea, but he's a specialty guy, and he gets the best of the best. So for instance, he has chamomile tea, but it's like chamomile tea on steroids. I'm a pastry chef, so I like to poach fruit and I like to do things like that. So strawberry chamomile preserve or something like that, which we're going to talk about the Danishes. But anyway, you make a tea syrup, then you strain the tea out of it, and you're left with this tea mush from the sugar syrup. We take the tea leaves that are softened in the sugar syrup, and I put it in a bowl with a lot of sugar and we mix it up, and I do it with my hands and I can smell it, and it's floral. It's so delicious.
Put it on a sheet pan, dry it out, and then grind it and then it's sugar. I can't begin to tell you how much life there is still left in the tea, which means we shouldn't be throwing our tea leaves away.
Jessie Sheehan:
I want to talk about your dessert style, which is likely also related to this concept of making the ordinary extraordinary. And I know that perfection doesn't interest you, which I adore, just flavor. Can you talk about how that manifests itself in your baked goods? I read this about you and I love it, "Insanely intentional about flavor and the prospect of delicious".
Mindy Segal:
I am, that's a great line. It's my personality. So this is why I like milk chocolate so much, okay? I'm sorry, segueing. Dark chocolate is very fruity and the higher you go... It's so sharp, fruity, and I almost feel like... Don't get me wrong, I like dark chocolate, but I almost get this feeling that it's fruit not chocolate, which it is, right? Duh. But milk chocolate has all these layers. You can get coffee, you can get nuts, you can get fudge, you can get some sort of fruit, like banana and caramel, butterscotch, and they're all these different percentages. So there's so much depth to it, and I feel like standing alone, it's delicious. Cherries, let's say cherries, because cherries are in season at this moment in time when we're talking, and Cherry Bombe, so you know. But you take cherries, you pit them, you poach them in Kriek, which is a sour cherry beer, and then you strain them out, dry out those cherries that you poached, use them for something else. And then you have this beautiful, fragrant cherry broth, let's say.
Has a little hints of vanilla, orange, the Kriek, then you poach cherries back in it. And so you're getting this double whammy of cherries, then you can take that liquid and make sorbet with it. So what I'm saying is is that a life of a fruit or a life of a product has multiple layers, and when you put that in a dessert altogether, you're getting this explosion in your mouth, but you don't know why, because you don't need to know why. What you need to know is that you like it and it's delicious, it's yummy, it's something that you talk about and think about. And that, to me, is my job. My job is to make you remember everything that you taste that I make.
Jessie Sheehan:
And would you say that within that job is your style, is your dessert style?
Mindy Segal:
It's my fanatic, it's my brain that never stops. I mean, I am so inspired by things like colors and stripes, and vintage and blah, blah, blah, and tea service and whatever, I'm just inspired. Style, whatever, and everything triggers something. So when you're creative, hopefully you have that in you.
Jessie Sheehan:
So this obsession with flavor is what sets your gummies apart. In fact, it's what actually pushed you to make your own chocolate as well, a dark milk chocolate called Lait Extraordinaire. Tell us how you approach the flavors of the gummies, I've read like a plated dessert, correct?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah. So when I started the brand with Mike, the company that I work with, Cresco, wonderful company. It was very hard to get my point across to people that are in the corporate arena. I'm telling you, what I thought of was, "I'm going to make a line of gummies that, if you went to the Santa Monica Farmer's Market in peak season for every single flavor, you would know exactly what I'm talking about." Because you go to the Santa Monica Farmer's Market, and you get those Harry's Berries, or you get peaches or you get a citrus, and everything is exactly what you... A peach is a peach. When something like is... The plum tastes like a plum. I said to the group, the ideation group, "I want to approach these gummy flavors as if I'm going to the farmer's market and you're tasting that flavor." So what I had to do is sit everybody down and make desserts, and state my case for every flavor that I wanted to do, you know what I mean?
And not every flavor made it, but the ones that did and the working with the food scientists to get that right flavor, it was really fun and really great. And then what I created was like, "You want a mandarin orange gummy? It tastes exactly like a mandarin orange." Poached cherries, you get the vanilla, you get the orange, you get everything. So they did a really good job.
Jessie Sheehan:
Incredible, and same thing with your chocolate? You love milk chocolate. So in the bakery, you're kind of combining chocolate anyway.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Mindy Segal:
Well, I think all pastry chefs do that, of which is funny and ironically, that I didn't think that anybody did it but me. And then I started talking to pastry chefs and like, "Oh yeah, we do a little bit of this, a little bit of that." I'm always taking combinations and percentages of all different chocolates, all different ones, to create a flavor. And so I was like, "Well, why don't we just make our own chocolate and then we can use it?" And so that's what we did.
Jessie Sheehan:
I've also read that you march to the beat of your own drummer and that you are very anti-trend, how do you block out the noise?
Mindy Segal:
Well, I am really good at it because I've been doing it for a really long time. As a creative in a field that has many creative people, you could literally get lost in other people's ideas. What's the fun of that? Why would you want to do that? You have a brain, you're creative, close your mind and make what you want to make, and don't worry about what everybody else is making because you're not that person. So you can't be somebody else, you got to be yourself.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, before we dive into Danish and your recipe, I just want you to tell us a little bit about Mindy's Bakery, which you opened in 2022 to lines around the block. The lines are still there three years later, can you tell us the vibe? Can you describe the baked goods you sell?
Mindy Segal:
Oh, I can sure tell you that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, good.
Mindy Segal:
Literally, I wanted this bakery to be basically unfinished, not perfect. And I wanted it to be like you were coming into the pastry kitchen to buy pastry, you know what I'm saying? Kind of funky. And I literally stand right by the pastry table, and it's literally this table that I bought, it's from Italy from the 1800s. It's the baker's table, it's huge, and I have the most incredibly funny front of the house staff. So the whole idea is that it's very personal. I wanted you to feel like when you come in to the bakery, and you finally get to the person who's going to put the stuff in a bag, it's like, "We're so glad you're here. We're so glad you came. We're so glad you thought about us." And with excitement and like a baby, when a baby's so excited or a dog is shaking the... We just love that you're here, and so we treat you that way. As soon as the door opens, "Welcome." And I just have very friendly people, and it's funny because I'm standing right there, and I hear them talking and describing the food.
You'll always hear me go, "And it has this in it, and it has that. Oh no, it's not that, it's this." And I'll correct it, and it's funny, you don't even see me, but you can hear it because I'm right by the speed racks.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is that purposeful for you to be so close so you can keep... Or is it-
Mindy Segal:
Yes, I want to hear everything.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I love that.
Mindy Segal:
And we play loud music and I make playlists. I love music... I'm like a huge music nerd. I mean, the playlists are crazy. Then sometimes, we'll just stop and start singing.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I also love the way you divide the menu. You have first bake and second bake, which I thought was so clever, and I also loved that you will divide the individual baked goods up by the dough. These are the Danish dough baked goods, these are the croissant dough baked goods, I love that.
Mindy Segal:
Yes, and laminated brioche, which is also really cool.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, we do that.
Jessie Sheehan:
And would you say there's a specific word or few words that describe the kind of baked goods you are making?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, perfectly imperfect.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back.
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Now back to our guest. All right, I wanted to talk about Danish. First just generally, can you define what Danish dough is for the listeners in your own words?
Mindy Segal:
Well, I can best describe it that when you go to the airport and you want to buy coffee and something sweet, it's that thing that looks rolled up with a bucket fruit inside and glazed with apricot glaze. Like that's a Danish to me. You think about it, it's like this cheese Danish with unknown cheese, unknown fruit... I call it bucket fruit, and it's sweet and it's soft, and it's warm and it's like a little hug, like a little snuggie. It's an enriched sweetened dough, like challah, but laminated. So it's soft... Well, my Danish dough, I can't really talk about everybody's Danish dough. I mean, a lot of people make Danish with croissant dough, so it's a soft and pillowy. Best description.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is there a traditional Danish shape? I think of them as open-faced almost in the sense that the topping is on the top.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, I think a traditional Danish shape, where you roll it, and then you roll it and spin it. So then there's this little hole and that you fill that with the bucket fruit and the bucket cheese, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. We don't do it that way, we actually fill it... Oh God, I don't even know how I came up with this idea, we fill it like a tart.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Mindy Segal:
And it poofs up.
Jessie Sheehan:
Around... So is the filling still exposed?
Mindy Segal:
Oh yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, love, love, love.
Mindy Segal:
Oh, I put fruit compote with the wet inside of it. It's really weird what we do.
Jessie Sheehan:
And at the bakery, you use the Danish dough for other pastries too, like the morning bun-
Mindy Segal:
The morning bun. Yeah, and then we do a savory Danish, and then we do a sweet Danish, and it changes seasonally. And then I do... Oh my God. Okay, I'm going to blow your mind. I do also make... I call them strombolis, and I make a savory stromboli every day with the Danish dough, and then I do another one with my laminated brioche. But yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Incredible.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, they're really good.
Jessie Sheehan:
Let's talk about the recipe exactly. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to freeze or chill three flours together, which are bread flour, whole wheat, and cake. We're going to add a little wheat germ, we're going to add sugar, which I assume is granulated, and some kosher salt. We whisk this together?
Mindy Segal:
Well, you mix it together and then put the butter in, and throw it in the freezer.
Jessie Sheehan:
Two questions about the butter, it's unsalted?
Mindy Segal:
It is.
Jessie Sheehan:
And do we care about the shape that... Should the butter be cold or warm, or it doesn't matter because we're freezing it?
Mindy Segal:
No. Yeah, everything needs to be frozen to grind it, and then we grind it, but they're just haphazard in that mix because we want the exposed butter to create the steam.
Jessie Sheehan:
Of course.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
In the bakery, when you're doing this freezing step, you're doing it in a hotel pan, which is almost a humongous 9 by 13. We would do it at home in a mixing bowl, do you have a favorite type? Like a glass bowl, a metal bowl?
Mindy Segal:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Mindy Segal:
I would say that that beautiful pottery vintage bowl that you found at the flea market 14 years ago.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, love.
Mindy Segal:
That's the best.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect, perfect.
Mindy Segal:
It has to be from 14 years ago.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, and then my question is why all three of the flours?
Mindy Segal:
There's a combination. You need the bread flour to strength, and then the cake flour gives it like that pillowy, beautiful, light, tender... Yeah, and then the germ is for texture.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then in terms of the shape of the butter, have you sliced it?
Mindy Segal:
So we take... You can do multiple things.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Mindy Segal:
I mean, you could literally take the frozen butter and grate it. You can do anything you want, so listen, I can't... If you don't have a Robot Coupe, a grinder at home, you could literally take it on a box grater and do it like that, and then just form it, so it really doesn't matter. We call it... Well, I used to call it the Hot Chocolate cut. So it's like you take that big pound of butter, that butter block, cut it in eight, then you turn it over, you cut it in four, then you turn it over and you cut it in four, and you got these perfect little blocks. It doesn't matter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, perfect. So we're either processing or I love your grating idea, but we're going to process the butter and the dry ingredients to make a variety of different size small butter pieces. Are you pulsing or are you guys...
Mindy Segal:
Pulsing.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're pulsing, and then we're going to freeze that mixture again?
Mindy Segal:
You don't have to though.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Mindy Segal:
Okay, I'm going to tell you that right now. You don't have to. And it's funny, the Danish wasn't really coming out well, and I could see it in the bake, and I was like, "Okay, tell me what the process is." And I saw they were over-freezing everything, and everything was so cold that the butter didn't have time to ruminate in the flour, you know what I mean? So I was like, "Please don't make it frozen." Because the original recipe is not frozen, it's like almost room-temperature butter. And I was like, "That's a little too far over there, and we're too a little far over there."
Jessie Sheehan:
Meet in the middle.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, meet in the middle, so yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to combine some honey with some milk, whole milk, I assume?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And some eggs. And are we whisking these together? And do you have a favorite whisk that you love?
Mindy Segal:
A fork.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great answer.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, sorry.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, a fork. Love, love. And again, the honey for the flavor? What made you add the honey?
Mindy Segal:
I put honey in every single bread that I make. I don't know why I do it, I'm just a grandma. I do it for good luck. It's just soft and sweet, and it adds something. I look at it like... It's almost the corn syrup of bread, but it gives it that elasticity and sweetness, and nature's bee is coming into your food... Okay, I don't know.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Mindy Segal:
Here I go.
Jessie Sheehan:
In case people want to start doing this, would you get a super flavorful honey that you love?
Mindy Segal:
You can. Oh, that would be beautiful. I mean, sometimes like wildflower honey is beautiful or orange blossom. Orange blossom honey is my favorite honey. You can go to the store, the convenience store, and buy honey. It's just a touch.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. It's a Mindy touch.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to pour the honey, the milk, and the eggs with some instant yeast and water into the mixer? So I had a couple of questions, we're not using that water to proof our yeast in any way because we're using instant?
Mindy Segal:
No, I do. I always start out the same way, I take my water and my yeast, and I mix it, and then I get everything else together, and then I put everything together. Maybe it's because I feel like I need to awaken the yeast, even though it's instant yeast. I don't know. It's because I'm not a technical pastry chef, so I have these things that I do, and then I have to teach it to people that are technical and they look at me sometimes like I'm weird or they don't know where I'm coming from, but it's like, "No, trust me, I know. It works."
Jessie Sheehan:
Is it warm water?
Mindy Segal:
I use tepid, and then I let it sit. I leave my eggs... I leave everything out at room temperature, so everything's just together, and symbiotic and kumbaya.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I love it that you use instant yeast, I love instant yeast.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is the water because you want the neutrality of the water so that the butter is really flavorful in this? Could you use more milk at this point?
Mindy Segal:
Probably.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, why not?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, okay.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we have all of our wet ingredients in our stand mixer, and we're going to put the dry ingredients and our butter on top of that. Is that specific to the bakery, that everything goes on top? At home, would you want us to do a little bit at a time?
Mindy Segal:
No, never.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Mindy Segal:
You want it all at once.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Mindy Segal:
I basically like to put my wet ingredients first and then put my... But you could do it either way now that I think about it. But yeah, and then all you're doing is just mixing it really quick. Real quick mix. Quick mix.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I was going to ask what speed and for how long is fast?
Mindy Segal:
It's almost like bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. Like that.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you're done?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, pretty much. So it's like a weird looking odd dough. It's almost like when you make biscuits, you don't mix it perfectly, then we leave it in the refrigerator overnight. We want everything to marry just like a chocolate chip cookie, we want everything to get together, get to know each other, relax a little bit.
Jessie Sheehan:
Chill, chill.
Mindy Segal:
Calm down.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Mindy Segal:
And then the next day, we take it out and we turn it.
Jessie Sheehan:
The dough will be kind of wet and sticky at this point?
Mindy Segal:
In the morning, it's sort of not...
Jessie Sheehan:
But when we put it into the fridge for that overnight chill, it's kind of weird, and it's in a greased bowl-
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, covered overnight.
Jessie Sheehan:
Chilled out overnight.
Mindy Segal:
yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then the next day, we're going to turn the dough three times. When you say turn, is that letter folds?
Mindy Segal:
I do letter folds.
Jessie Sheehan:
People may know, but can you just describe a letter fold?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah. Well, when you fold a letter, you fold it three ways. So you fold it and then you fold it over, and then what you do is you turn it. And you have to be consistent with your turn, but this dough is not a flaky dough, this dough is a poofy dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
Pillowy.
Mindy Segal:
Pillowy.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Mindy Segal:
They're pillow poof.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, so it's a different dough. So you cut it open and it's like you see the structure of the dough, but it's not like a croissant, you know what I mean? When you get those open structure, it's not like that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Totally. It's almost like when you pull dough apart and it's almost like a cheese pull, except it's a bread pull.
Mindy Segal:
Right, exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. And are you pausing in between letter folds and letting it rest?
Mindy Segal:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're just doing three letter folds? Love.
Mindy Segal:
And by the way, you can take the scrap and turn it again, and use that, and you wouldn't even know the difference. You don't throw anything away.
Jessie Sheehan:
We do our three letter folds, we're going to wrap... Are you guys using plastic wrap?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, we're going to wrap in plastic wrap. The direction is to freeze. At home, could we just chill in our refrigerator?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, you could literally... I mean, after the third turn, let it relax a little bit, and then you could just use it.
Jessie Sheehan:
You could bake it off?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. Again, if we froze it, we defrost it in the fridge. In the bakery, I know at this point you're going to use a sheeter to-
Mindy Segal:
You don't need a sheeter.
Jessie Sheehan:
You don't need it at home? Is this a fair thing to say? Is a sheeter like a huge pasta machine kind of?
Mindy Segal:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, good. I just came up with that last night and I was like, "Is that the best way to-"
Mindy Segal:
That is so funny because I talk about that too.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, so we have our giant pasta machine, if we are in a bakery. But at home, we just grab our rolling pin.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, you could literally roll... It's so resilient.
Jessie Sheehan:
And is there, first of all, a favorite rolling pin? And second of all, are we talking a quarter inch, an eighth of an inch?
Mindy Segal:
Honest to God?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Mindy Segal:
It's up to you, I can't tell you because I don't know what you're making with it, but we roll it... It's almost like, what is that? Like a-
Jessie Sheehan:
Quarter?
Mindy Segal:
Quarter of an inch?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, and then we can do different things with it. So we can roll it really thin, we can turn it again, we could then take it and then we could put another kind of fat in it, turn it again, and then do something crazy with it, which is something that I do quite often.
Jessie Sheehan:
And at this point for you guys, you have your piece of dough in front of you, you're ready to make your Danish. Are you cutting it into circles?
Mindy Segal:
We do a couple of different things. So we'll roll it out, and then the first thing that we do with the dough... Because it has stages. The first thing we do with the dough is we cut it into circles and we fill our Danish dough... It's like a tart ring, then when we put that away, then-
Jessie Sheehan:
When you say put away, do you mean chill or just it-
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, chill.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, because we have to be prepared. So then we take the scrap, reroll it, and then we take that and we brush it with either a tea syrup or a fruit syrup, or whatever, and then we make our morning bun. Then any other scrap that we have left, we make into sheets, and then I make the stromboli with it. So everything has a purpose.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. Love, love, love. The first cut, let's say, before you're rerolling any scraps, that's going to be our Danish?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And those are put into pastry rings or tiny tart pans, not with the Danish dough going up the sides?
Mindy Segal:
Yes. I use it like tart dough. I treat it like a tart.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah. Love, love, love. I love that.
Mindy Segal:
Simple. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Mindy Segal:
And then from the refrigerator the next day, on to the table, fillings, bake. We don't proof it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah, love that too.
Mindy Segal:
Because it proofs in the oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
Question for you, tools. So a pastry cutter or a pizza cutter is basically... We don't need a little paring knife, the pastry cutter is what you want at this stage. Or a mold, a huge biscuit cutter almost?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, that's what we use to cut them out. Like a entremet ring.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, and then yeah, that's what we use.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Any egg wash? Is that tiny-
Mindy Segal:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
Don't even need it?
Mindy Segal:
Not for the Danishes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Mindy Segal:
Not for the Danishes, but for the stromboli, and some of them we use egg wash for.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love. I wanted to talk about a couple of the fillings. So this one is Labneh Cheesecake Danish with Brown Butter Streusel, and I happen to know that not only are you a milk chocolate girl, you're also a brown butter girl.
Mindy Segal:
Oh my God.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, and Honey Drizzle. So tell us about adding these items.
Mindy Segal:
It's a take on a cheese Danish. Our cheese filling for anything, our base, is cheesecake custard. So we take cheesecake and we bake it in a water bath in large, deep hotel pans. And then we take it out and put it in a container, and we use that... It's my cream cheese buttercream, it's our base for cheese filling. We might add lemon curd to it, we might add creme brulee custard to it. In this case, we're adding labneh to it. And the reason why we're doing that is because sweet tart, morning, honey, Danish, crispy top, everything? Get out.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Mindy Segal:
Get out.
Jessie Sheehan:
Just a minute, just a minute. So I'm picturing a huge hotel pan.
Mindy Segal:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Filled with cheesecake filling, but no crust, obviously.
Mindy Segal:
No, it's like... Yeah, we just bake it like a custard.
Jessie Sheehan:
So bake it so it's a little looser than a cheese-
Mindy Segal:
No, it's baked like a cheesecake, but it's in a hotel pan. And then we cool it down, we take it, we put it in a big container. It's like a whole process. You should see it soak-
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you whisk it up or you just scoop it and plop it?
Mindy Segal:
No, we scoop and plop. But then what we do is we'll take it and this custard, we'll take it with buttercream and we'll melt it almost halfway, and then mix it together very lightly so that it doesn't form air bubbles, and you get this like... Yeah, there's no way I can describe it except you have to eat it. It's like having-
Jessie Sheehan:
So it's like cheesecake buttercream?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh. And you put that on cakes?
Mindy Segal:
We put it on cakes. It's the cheesecake custard that's a base. So we have certain bases that we marry together, so we'll have cheesecake, we'll have brown butter custard, which is ridiculous. We'll have crème brûlée custard, we'll have lemon curd, orange curd, passion fruit curd, key lime pie filling. All these fillings are like our bases.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh. Yum. And don't tell anyone, but I don't even cheesecake that much, but that sounds incredible.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, no, you would like it. It's almost like a pastry cream.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Oh my gosh, incredible. So we have our little pie shaped Danish-
Mindy Segal:
It's half and half, we'll mix it-
Jessie Sheehan:
So half labneh, half the cheesecake custard?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, it gets other things in it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Put down-
Mindy Segal:
But I'm not telling you. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we do brown butter streusel on top, and then the honey drizzle. Does the honey drizzle come after the bake?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, after the bake. So what we do is we take a piping bag because it's easier, more consistent. We pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe the custard, and then we put the brown butter streusel around it. And what happens is is that it bakes up and almost over a little bit, but it pays respect to the filling so that you see the filling and you know what you're eating. Does that make sense?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Mindy Segal:
And then when it comes out and it cools, we brush it with a honey syrup. So we make our own honey syrup.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. Tell me about... I love this savory one. Tell me about the House-Seasoned Pork Sausage, Egg, Cheddar & Chive.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah. We make our own sausage, which is crazy. We make everything. So we make our own stocks, I braise, I smoke... I have a smoker. We take pork belly and we cure it like pastrami, and I smoke it in my smoker. So anyway, we make our own sausage, we fill it with an egg on top-
Jessie Sheehan:
Cooked sausage?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, on top. And then, yeah, it's just a breakfast sausage.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you bake with the raw egg on top or do you add-
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. And then it just bakes in the oven and then you're ready?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, it's delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh. And then I love this gluten-free one, this gluten-free-
Mindy Segal:
I make Danish with gluten-free.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Rosé-Macerated Raspberries with Crème Brûlée Custard, which is what you just referred to, and Gluten-Free Brown Butter Streusel. First of all, is there a way, without having an entire other podcast on this, although I would love that, to tell us a little bit about your gluten-free flour blend?
Mindy Segal:
Honestly, I use King Arthur. Yeah, I don't make my own blend. And then I make gluten-free bagels too, and I use a different flour for that. So it's specifically designed for a bread, and we just literally interchange it with the flour. I don't do anything different.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Mindy Segal:
Even with my bagels.
Jessie Sheehan:
And this Rosé-Macerated Raspberries with Crème Brûlée Custard, would you ever put that in a regular... Is that only what you do with gluten-free? It just depends?
Mindy Segal:
No, it just depends. Everything is contingent on what's in season for the most part. I mean, sometimes we do strawberries in the winter, and I'll just take strawberries that I got from my farmer and freeze them. And then what we do is we just do it with port wine, a little bit more like a feeling of winter, you know what I mean?
Jessie Sheehan:
Love.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I know we don't proof after we fill, we just bake. But just curious, I assume you're using convection, but about how long are you baking for and at what temp?
Mindy Segal:
I love that you asked me that question because I get that question all the time, and I'll give you my answer and then I'll give you the technical answer. Okay, because I always say to people, "I have no idea. Why don't you check?" Because I was trained to never use a timer, which is the craziest thing. I worked under a pastry chef and she's like, "If you need a timer, then you're not focused and paying attention," which could be wrong or could be right. At least that's what I got out of it, so I don't even use timers. So the people that work for me sometimes... I'll come up with a new cookie and they'll say, "Well, how long does it take in the oven?" And I'm always like, "Well, see for yourself. You use your senses, you figure it out, you touch things, you know. You just know." I would say about 25 minutes in a convection oven at 325, we don't bake anything at 350, do 325.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which would be 350 in a regular oven?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I like what you're saying a lot. I mean, the timing really... It's not even consistent from kitchen to kitchen.
Mindy Segal:
I can't even tell you, I don't know what your kitchen... I don't know the humidity, I don't know season that you're looking at, I don't know altitude.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you don't know the kind of oven-
Mindy Segal:
I don't know your oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Mindy Segal:
I have no idea.
Jessie Sheehan:
I always think your senses, you see it, you smell it, and then you feel it.
Mindy Segal:
Well, I believe that nothing really happens in eight to 10 minutes of baking. So if you're checking your oven at 30 seconds, you're a Nervous Nellie and you don't have confidence. So take a deep breath and relax, and if you have to put your timer on, put your timer on for 10 minutes and then you'll see. But 325 to me is the sweet spot temperature, 350 is almost a little too hot, where it's happens and it browns, but it doesn't cook. So I feel like 325 is that time where things are cooking, and slowly cooking and slowly developing, and I think that's the sweet spot temperature.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. The worst is when you've cooked... It looks ready visually but the inside is not cooked because the heat was too high.
Mindy Segal:
When you put cookies in a convection oven at 350, they burn and they don't cook, so I'm sensitive to that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, also, just what kind of pan are you baking-
Mindy Segal:
Sheet pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
Sheet pan with parchment?
Mindy Segal:
Parchment paper. Yes, right.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then you have your molds.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, and I spray the molds. Spray, spray.
Jessie Sheehan:
The molds have a bottom?
Mindy Segal:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's just the sides?
Mindy Segal:
The rings, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah, it's the rings. Love. Love, love, love.
Mindy Segal:
You can also do it... I do large format Danishes, but I wanted to tell you that I also sometimes use the Danish dough for my quiche instead of pie dough. Yeah, so I use that and it makes a beautiful quiche.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, I wanted to talk about a few other recipes. Tell us a little bit about that gluten-free bagel, if you don't mind.
Mindy Segal:
Well, I would love to talk to you about it. It's my pride and joy. So a couple of years ago, I went a gluten-free, and I was like, "I'm trying to think about how I'm going to get through my day without eating a bagel." And I was like, "Well, I'll make a gluten-free bagel." And it was a little bit of a journey because I kept following these recipes, and doing these weird dances, and... Praying to the gods and everything. And then I decided, "Well, I'm just going to make something that I feel instinctuously is what a gluten-free bagel should be, and I'm going to treat it just like my other bagel." I'm very proud of my gluten-free bagel.
Jessie Sheehan:
You should be.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yum.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, I eat them all the time.
Jessie Sheehan:
And there's a couple of flavors that are listed on your bakery menu. Can you share some of the flavors of your bagel?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, we do Plain, Sesame, Everything. Our Everything has fennel in it, and then we do a couple other ones that are great.
Jessie Sheehan:
Maybe something with garlic?
Mindy Segal:
We do. We do a Garlic Challah bagel that's a favorite of everybody's. And then we do a Raisin with Smoked Sugar baked on top of it, and so it gets this hard crust and then you've got the interior of it. It doesn't have large raisins because we puree the raisins, it's so good. And then the one that is my favorite is the Black Russian. So it's a Black Russian Everything bagel, and that one is really, really cool.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about your bow stock because I read it was your pride and joy.
Mindy Segal:
The bow stock is pretty cool, so we-
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell people what it is just in case they don't-
Mindy Segal:
Well, it's like day old bread, like a toast. It's like a french toast on steroids. So it usually has some sort of like frangipane on it of something, but the one that I particularly love... So I love laminated brioche, just like I love the Danish. It's very similar, but we'd make brioche, take out some of the butter, and then use that in the butter as the butter block. Very special dough. One person makes it in my kitchen only and it's really wonderful. So I'll take that and I'll roll it, a sheet of it, and bake it in a bread tin. And so you get this bread that has... It's open, very open and weird structure. One in particular that I'll talk about is I'll make coffee, I'll put malt in it, I'll dip that bread in that, and then I'll make flourless chocolate cake, and I'll pipe that on and then put the streusel on top of that. That with a Lait Extraordinaire is extraordinaire.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, that's a fun one.
Jessie Sheehan:
Flourless chocolate cake batter piped on top of the bread?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
What the what the?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, what the what?
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my God.
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, what the what?
Jessie Sheehan:
Then tell us about the Blueberry Pop Tart.
Mindy Segal:
The Blueberry Pop Tart is we make a blueberry paste and then we take the liquid from making that paste, we make a glaze with it, and then it's all of our scraps from when we fill our individual quiches. We'll take that and then we'll fold it, roll it and fold it, roll it and fold it, so it's like puff pastry almost. And that's what we make our pop tarts with.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh. And then finally, the Hot Fudge and Smoked Sugar Thumb Prints. Oh my gosh.
Mindy Segal:
Oh yeah, that's in my book. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Incredible. Talk to me about what... Hot fudge, is it a ganache center?
Mindy Segal:
Yeah, right. But it's hot fudge, so we cook it down and let it separate, and then bring it back together.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then Smoked Sugar is just a flavor-
Mindy Segal:
Smoked sugar. It's like demerara sugar that's put in a cold smoker and it literally tastes like a campfire.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Mindy Segal:
And we make them and then we roll... Yeah, they're delicious.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Mindy Segal:
Everything is delicious, right?
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, I can't wait to come. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Mindy.
Mindy Segal:
Oh, you're welcome.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Mindy Segal:
Ahhh.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Nonino and California Prunes for supporting this episode. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and tell your baking pals about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Elizabeth Vogt. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our content and partnerships manager is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie, and happy baking.