Kerry Diamond:
Hey, Bombesquad. You’re listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. I’m your host Kerry Diamond. It’s the final week of 2021 so we’re re-airing some of our top shows of the year. One of our most popular episodes featured Molly Baz: author, recipe developer, and food video star Molly joined me on Radio Cherry Bombe this past April to talk about her debut cookbook, Cook This Book. It’s a beautifully designed book. A lot of cookbooks all look the same but put this book really stands out for the distinctive design. Stay tuned for our chat and learn more about the book and why so many folks love the dynamic food personality Molly Baz.
Today’s show is supported by Kerrygold, the makers of beautiful butter and cheese from Irish grass-fed cows. If you are baking anything this week or working on any New Year’s Eve cheese boards, keep them in mind. We will hear a word from the Kerrygold folks in just a minute. As for Cherry Bombe news, we have a brand new issue that’s out right now. It’s all about beautiful baked goods and the talented folks behind them. You can find a copy of the new Cherry Bombe magazine at your favorite local bookstore, magazine shop, or specialty store. Visit cherrybombe.com for a list of stockists. Maybe you’re new to Radio Cherry Bombe, if so, thank you for joining us. Or maybe you’ve listened all year long. Either way, be sure to subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast platform. We’ve got a great new season in the works and will be featuring all your food world favorites. Let’s hear a word from Kerrygold and will be right back with Molly Baz.
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Kerry Diamond:
In anticipation of the interview, I made some jammy eggs because I read how much you love eggs.
Molly Baz:
I do love eggs, especially a jammy egg. What kind of jammy eggs did you make?
Kerry Diamond:
I did a six-and-a-half-minute jammy egg, so...
Molly Baz:
And just ate them straight up?
Kerry Diamond:
I just did a little pepper and salt, flaky salt, nothing special.
Molly Baz:
My favorite way to eat a jammy egg... If I'm not going to actually do it up, there is a recipe in the book for jammy eggs, and it has this amazing nutty sauce on it, but if I'm just doing a quick and dirty jammy egg, I do eight minutes in boiling water and then straight into an ice bath. Then once I crack them open, I do salt, pepper and vinegar on the yolks, because I find that the vinegar brings out the fatty yolk flavor instead of doing olive oil. It's just adding more fat. It's really amazing. You should try it.
Kerry Diamond:
Why are you such a big egg fan?
Molly Baz:
I think they're just so versatile, and they stay in your fridge forever. I'm never without eggs. They don't go bad as quickly as other proteins, and they can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. They're just... You use them in baking. The egg is a really magical ingredient in cooking.
Kerry Diamond:
That is true. Are you raising chickens in Los Angeles?
Molly Baz:
No, I'm not, although most people are probably, at least not yet. We just bought a home here, and we're not quite at the phase of figuring out the whole landscaping and who's going to live on the property.
Kerry Diamond:
Given how many egg and chicken recipes you have in the cookbook, I thought for sure you would be working on a chicken coop.
Molly Baz:
It would be smart. It would be smart.
Kerry Diamond:
Why did you move to Los Angeles?
Molly Baz:
It was accidental for sure. I was out here on a vacation with my husband's family in March of last year, so right at the beginning of the pandemic. We were out in Palm Springs as the country basically shut down during that exact same week. We were living in Brooklyn at the time, but on vacation in California, we had to make a game-time decision, either go home, go back to Brooklyn and maybe get trapped in a small apartment there for who knows how long, or extend our stay in California a little bit longer because the weather was nice, and we were really digging it. Since we weren't going into work anyway, thanks to the pandemic, we were like, "Let's just try it."
Molly Baz:
I think we definitely thought it was going to be a month, maybe six weeks max, and then the pandemic would be over. We just got a rental, an Airbnb rental in the desert, and we ended up living there for two or three months, just continually extending our stay. Meanwhile, our apartment was just sitting empty in Brooklyn. Then we got bored of the desert, and moved to LA, and continue to stay in LA, and continue to neglect our apartment back in Brooklyn. Eventually, we saw a house that we wanted to buy, and we bought a house, and then paid a moving company to just pack our entire apartment up, and ship it out to us. We literally have not gone home since the start of the pandemic.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. Wow. Well, are you loving LA? I'm so obsessed with the farmer’s markets out there.
Molly Baz:
People always say... Whenever I meet people, they're always like, they assume I'm from LA, and so I feel like I'm in my place. Now. I've been wanting to move here for years. It never made sense. I was never gonna leave my job at BA to be in LA, so it was just a pipe dream for a long time, and then it became a reality, and I am loving it.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm happy to hear that. All right, let's go back to your college days, because I read that you studied art. I was curious, why art and how did you wind up in the food world?
Molly Baz:
I come from an artistic creative family. My dad is a photographer. My brother was an artist in high school and in college. He doesn't do it as much anymore, but our whole family's pretty creative. I decided to do an art history major, because I thought like... I'm a really visual person. Aesthetics really resonate with me. This seems like a really cool lens through which to learn about the history of the world. It wasn't because I particularly was like, "I want to open a gallery or work at a museum." It was just that I like the aesthetic lens through which to understand everything around me, and so that's why I took a major in art history.
Molly Baz:
But about halfway through my time in college, it became very clear that I wasn't going to pursue a career in art history once I graduated, and that I was going to have to figure out how to be in food.
Kerry Diamond:
Why food?
Molly Baz:
I think I just had an awakening in my late high school, early college years, where I realized that food can be delicious, and it wasn't something that I really thought about growing up very much. Food wasn't a big part of my childhood. I mean, I didn't grow up in a foodie family, and it just wasn't like... It wasn't as big a part of my life growing up as it is now, obviously, and so I just think there was a moment where I realized that food can be something so different than what I knew it could be. A lot of that has to do with some time I spent studying abroad and in other cultures and outside of America. I just got totally obsessed with it.
Kerry Diamond:
You decide you're pursuing food. How did you even go about that?
Molly Baz:
Restaurants were step one for me. Food media as an industry was something I was always interested in, but I knew it was going to be hard to crack into it just out the gates without ever having it on a culinary school or had any experience whatsoever, and so I decided that I really wanted to brush up on my skills and really truly learn how to cook and be a professional cook. Instead of going to culinary school, the day after I graduated college, I went straight into a job working in a restaurant on the line. That phase of my life lasted maybe four years of working in restaurants, and I think I bounced between four or five, maybe five years, four or five different restaurants from a French bistro to a super fine dining Michelin-starred restaurant to a Middle Eastern spot, just like did the circuit and got my chops in cooking, and then burned out.
Molly Baz:
I always knew I didn't want to have a restaurant. Five years sounds like not very long of a time period, but I never wanted to own a restaurant. I just wanted to learn how to cook. It was a great place to do that, and it was really fun when I was young to be in restaurants, to be in that energy, but ultimately, I burned out from it, and was like, "I don't want to open a restaurant, so what are we doing here?"
Kerry Diamond:
I mean, being a line cook is no joke. I mean, tell people what your life was like when you were a line cook.
Molly Baz:
My life was like don't see any friends because my days off are Monday and Tuesday, and that's when people are getting back to the grind. I go into work at 12:00 or 1:00 PM, and I get off work at 11:00 PM or midnight, and so I'm not seeing them after work anyway. Our schedules are just completely, completely different. Every day is just like the greatest hustle of all time. It's like every day, you start over again, and you start with your prep and you get to service, and then you start this dinner rush and you get the adrenaline. It's just like, "Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go," until you basically collapsed at the end of the day.
Molly Baz:
There's so much energy in it. I really do you miss that adrenaline rush. I don't feel it in my career anymore, because nothing is as important as getting a dish out the window when you're working in a restaurant, but that's what it was. It's just an insane grind that was really fulfilling and exciting, but then also ultimately really draining.
Kerry Diamond:
I think it takes a really special brain to work in a restaurant, both front of house and back of house, because... I mean, I don't know if you know this, but I used to own restaurants. No, I don't any longer, but I would be in the kitchen just hanging out or saying hi or checking on people. I did not work in the kitchen. Once the ticket started firing and the orders were called out, it just scrambled my brain, and I never understood how the chef and the line cooks handled it.
Molly Baz:
Not to toot my own horn, but I feel like I really got it as a line cook and could get into that zone and just tune everything else out, and just like tickets, tickets, tickets, tickets. It really is... It's how much information can you pack into your brain at one time, because you're juggling, let's say, eight different tables, and they all have special requests, and they're all coming up at different times, and you have to keep it all in your brain. Because if one thing falls behind, everything is messed up for the night. It's like you're holding on.
Molly Baz:
You're ripping everything so tightly, and it requires so much concentration. That's why the energy is so intense in the kitchen, but then I think the best part of the night is coming out the other side after the rush, and the release of all of that energy, and letting go of all that information, which is so rewarding.
Kerry Diamond:
Did I also read that you owned a catering company?
Molly Baz:
Yes. I co-owned a catering company with a woman named Amanda Elliot. It was called Rustic Supper. That was my transitional phase out of restaurants. Although it's still cooking, but it's less... The schedule is a little bit better, and it's less time-consuming. We can be a little bit more choosy about who we work with. Ultimately, I burned out on that as well, because I had to cater to my clients. That's what I was being paid to do, but if they wanted pesto chicken salad, that's what they were going to have, and I wasn't going to get to be snooty and turn my nose up about it.
Molly Baz:
That didn't fit well with me and my personality.
Kerry Diamond:
But what did you learn from that experience? That was your first entrepreneurial experience, right?
Molly Baz:
Yeah. I learned how hard it is to work for yourself. I think I forgot about that experience. Now that I'm working for myself again, I am reminded every day. It is such a hustle, and it's so hard to say no to things. I remember just trying to take on anything we could back then because we were trying to grow this company, and we didn't want to miss out on any opportunities. I still feel that now that I'm not working at BA anymore, and I don't have the safety net and comfort of a company. You're your own boss, and you're only as successful as the effort that you put in.
Molly Baz:
That can be very tiring. I am more exhausted by working for myself in this phase of my life than I ever was working with Bon Appétit. I thought working at Bon Appétit was a lot.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about your book. It's so fantastic, Cook This Book. Why did you choose that title, Molly?
Molly Baz:
Oh man, the title... When I sold the book proposal, the title was ‘Cook Like A Boss,’ and I think it's because in my proposal, there was a sentence in my proposal where I said the phrase cook like a boss. My agent was like, "Let's use this as the title. It'll be a working title. It doesn't need to be the title of the book." I was like, "Okay," because I definitely don't want it to be the title of the book. Then we sold it with ‘Cook Like A Boss,’ and the publisher was so into it. They were like, "We love ‘Cook Like A Boss.’" I was like, "No, it's not me."
Molly Baz:
I can't believe I even said that in the proposal. This does not feel me. I went through a lot of iterations with my friends and family just like... It took months and months. I think we were pretty down to the wire, and it still had no title, and the publisher was still like, "We could still do ‘Cook Like A Boss.’" I was like, "Definitely still don't want to do that." I think it might have been my brother in one of many brainstorming sessions who said, Cook This Book. Although that's his story, but I think I came up with it, but he claimed that he did.
Molly Baz:
It's called Cook This Book because it feels like it's very straightforward. I think that's what my brand represents is it's bold. It's concise. It's straightforward. There's no bullshit. All you have to do is cook this book. I got you. I'm holding your hand. Just cook your way through this book, and you'll be golden.
Kerry Diamond:
It was interesting hearing you talk about studying art history earlier, and caring about art and aesthetics because I love the design of your book so much. Who were the designers, and how involved were you in that part of the process?
Molly Baz:
My graphic designers are Violaine and Jeremy. They're a French graphic design team. They have also a type of foundry in Paris. They're based in Paris. It's a couple. My husband actually found them. My husband is in design, and so he does spatial design, but he has dabbled in graphic design, and his world... If my world is aesthetic, his world is aesthetic to a whole nother degree, and he lives and breathes this kind of stuff, and so he was following Violaine and Jeremy on Instagram. Originally, we were going to just go with the in-house designers at Potter, and I felt like hiring someone who actually was outside of my world, so Violaine and Jeremy don't do book publishing primarily, and they certainly don't do cookbooks.
Molly Baz:
They've done one cookbook, but it's not like their thing at all. They're really not even orbiting in the food world at all. I liked the idea of bringing just a totally fresh perspective to cookbook design that wasn't informed by what's already out there, because they're probably not even looking at what's already out there. Plus, they're French.
Kerry Diamond:
How did this blue become your signature color?
Molly Baz:
I had a blue jumpsuit from Alana Cone that I used to wear a lot, and then when we started working on the book, the blue was a big part of the primary color scheme, and then it really wasn't, I think, until we landed on the cover, which is blue that it became solidified for me like, "This is the color of my brand," yellow and red support. Blue is the color, because there were also versions of the cover that were different colors. There was a yellow cover. There was a red cover. There was a like cream-colored cover.
Molly Baz:
I think once we locked in on the blue cover, it was like, "Okay, we're moving ahead with this color. I love this color, this Yves Klein blue color," and it stuck. Now, I'm obsessed with it. It is me.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you know the code for your color, either the Pantone or the...
Molly Baz:
I don't know what it is. I have it. Ben has it on his computer like XXYHMG whatever something or other, but yes, we have one.
Kerry Diamond:
It took me a few years to memorize the Cherry Bombe pink.
Molly Baz:
Oh, really, you have it memorized?
Kerry Diamond:
Funny. Well, after... I mean, once you've designed eight million emails, you have it memorized.
Molly Baz:
Totally.
Kerry Diamond:
I love it, and I love the reference to Yves Klein. It's very cool. It made me think of the white stripes, that you have this very specific color theme running through the whole thing.
Molly Baz:
Totally. I mean, that's part of... This book is coming out at a really interesting time in my career, because I've launched myself out on my own, and so I really intentionally took the branding of the book. I'm trying to create a visual world around Molly as a brand, and not just around the book, because I've just launched myself, and so I think it's so important to have a consistent visual language that's recognizable for any brand, and whether that's a big brand or just a person.
Kerry Diamond:
I read in the credits that you had an editorial consultant. I had never seen that title in a book credit before. Who were your consultants, and what does that mean?
Molly Baz:
Andrea Nguyen, who is a very well known Vietnamese cookbook author, did a cultural read on my book for me, and I hired her because I know that a lot of my food is inspired by other cultures, and it was really important to me that I pay respect to those cultures appropriately. She helped me look through everything, and do a sensitivity read to make sure that I was properly attributing and crediting other cuisines and cultures where it was appropriate. That was something that was really important to me throughout writing the whole book, but I wanted to get an objective set of eyes on it.
Molly Baz:
She's obviously been writing books for years and years and years, and she's in the Clarkson Potter family, and so she jumped in to help on that.
Kerry Diamond:
I would imagine that's something that a lot of cookbooks, if not all cookbooks, will have moving forward.
Molly Baz:
I think so. I mean, it's an important part of being a part of the Food world right now, and it's a constant conversation. It's something that I think about a lot, and I really want to do things the right way. It's surprising to me that that isn't a part of cookbook writing, and it isn't a qualification for putting a piece of work out into the world in the same way that you would for a scientific paper. Doing your research and making sure that everything that you've said is sound and properly credited is just as important in a cookbook as it is in any part of academia.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, it'll definitely be interesting to see if others follow suit. I also want to ask you about the QR codes, because I'm so jealous that you have QR codes in your book. I always wanted to put QR codes in the magazine, but we've never quite been organized enough to make that happen. How did that idea come about, and what do you get when you zoom in on the QR codes?
Molly Baz:
The QR codes were an idea that my friend, Declan Bond, had. We were having a conversation about the book, and I think I was saying to him like, "How do I make this book resonate with my audience?" I know that my audience is a very young millennial, if not younger, population. They're on their phones all the time. I don't want this book to just be a physical book. I feel like there's gotta be a way to bridge it in the technological world that we all live in, day in and day out, and he brought up the idea of putting QR codes in there.
Molly Baz:
At first, it was like, "This seems wonky. QR codes, they had a bad rap for a while. They were big 10 years ago, and then they fizzled really quickly and fell out of style, and they're very ugly."
Kerry Diamond:
Right, but you made them look cute.
Molly Baz:
Well, yes. It took an effort, but yes, we did figure out a way to make them cute. The QR codes in the book are set inside these cute little egg head characters that Violaine and Jeremy designed, because we had to figure out some way to make them more fun than just an ugly scrambled box. The basic concept behind them is that there are techniques and concepts in cooking that are really hard to describe in words. The reason that I decided to make these videos that are accessed through the QR codes is because I sat down to write a recipe and was trying to explain in the recipe how to chop an onion.
Molly Baz:
It's an interesting exercise. You should try it. It took me literally two full paragraphs, because my recipes are written in a very handholdly way where I'm not just going to say chop an onion, I'm going to tell you how to chop it. I'm not just going to say slice the garlic. I'm going to tell you to smash it and peel it and then slice it, really lay it out for you so that you don't have to do too much thinking about what I'm actually asking you to do. The instructions to chop an onion took two or three paragraphs because it was cutting in half through the root, and peeling back the skins, putting them cut sides down on the cutting board, then making perpendicular slits to the cutting board all the way up from the bottom to the top, and then going perpendicular to those, da, da, da, da, da, coming crosswise.
Molly Baz:
It was an insane amount of information for a very simple task, which is just: dice an onion. I was like, "There's an easier way to do this. I'll just show them how to do it. It'll take me 30 seconds, and we'll put it in the QR code, and then I don't have to write two paragraphs about it. I can just say chop an onion. If you don't know how to chop an onion, pull up this video." That was the first concept of the QR videos, which I was like, "This needs to be a visual explanation. It can't be words."
Kerry Diamond:
How many videos did you film?
Molly Baz:
There are 21 techniques in the book. They're not in every single recipe, and some of them are repeated throughout. But basically, as you make your way through the recipes, you'll encounter these QR codes. You pull them up on your phone, and they immediately take you to my website where they're hosted. They're all super quick and dirty technique-driven videos. They're not full recipe videos. The idea is not that you then go on this tangent or YouTube keyhole after watching them.
Molly Baz:
The idea is that you learn something that you don't know how to do, and then jump right back into the recipe to finish it. It's just meant to support the experience of cooking through the recipe.
Kerry Diamond:
I know you said they're on your website, but are they exclusive to people who buy the book?
Molly Baz:
Yes. They are hidden links. You can't access them unless you have the QR code, so they're not public at all. You gotta get the book.
Kerry Diamond:
What is the most Molly of the recipes?
Molly Baz:
Oh my God, I don't know. I think this is the most Molly. I mean, obviously, there's a Caesar salad in it, but that's kind of a cop out. I think that the recipes that... It's one of my favorites, and it's the first recipe that I ever developed for the book. I developed it when I was working on the proposal, because when you read a proposal, you have to provide some sample recipes. As soon as I started writing my proposal, I was like, "I know what the first dish is." It's the pastrami roast chicken with schmaltzy onions and dill.
Molly Baz:
I love roast chicken. I think people know that about me. My husband also loves pastrami. I also love pastrami. We love schmaltz. We eat a lot of dill in our household, and so all of those things just came together in my head. It's like, "Why have no one ever pastramified a roast chicken?"
Kerry Diamond:
Tell everybody what that means, to pastramifi a roast chicken.
Molly Baz:
To pastramifi just means to apply a pastrami as spice blend to the roast chicken or to the whole chicken before it gets roasted, and then it gets roasted over these onions which soak up all of the schmaltz from the chicken, and the spices cook into them, and then it gets finished with lots of dill. It's a very Jewish chicken, roast chicken.
Kerry Diamond:
Can you walk us through what the spices are?
Molly Baz:
It gets rubbed in a paprika brown sugar, cracked black peppercorn and salt rub. Then typically, you would also see mustard seeds in a pastrami spice blend, but mustard seeds are not something that are super common, I feel like, in people's pantries. I decided to bring the mustardy flavor into the recipe in the form of Dijon mustard on the side for serving, because we always eat our roast chicken no matter what it's flavored with. We always eat it with Dijon mustard on the side. I think it's a pretty French thing, but it just felt like that was the appropriate place for the mustard.
Kerry Diamond:
What's your temperature and timing secret to a good roast chicken?
Molly Baz:
450. I like a really, really hot oven because I feel like roast chickens just never get brown enough if they're not at super hot temp, 450, and then depending on the size of it, 45 to 55 minutes. I also feel like most roast chicken recipes ask you to cook it longer than it needs to. I definitely err on the side of a just barely cooked chicken versus an overcooked one, which maybe is disgusting, but is just much more moist and flavorful for me.
Kerry Diamond:
Are you a fan of spatchcocking?
Molly Baz:
I do love to spatchcock. I actually especially love to do half chickens. Spatchcocks I feel are... They're unwieldy and hard to... You have to have two pairs of tongs, and grab both legs at the same time. It's a little bit tricky, and so normally, if I'm doing a crispy skin cast iron spatchcock, I'll just cut the chicken in half, and then do the exact same thing, but you just aren't flailing around with two pairs of tongs.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a good point. Your answer might be the same as what the first one was, but what is a good gateway recipe to the entire book?
Molly Baz:
It's a hard question to answer because I don't think that... The idea here is none of these recipes are harder than the other one. There's not a hierarchy of difficulty in the book because nothing in cooking is inherently difficult. Maybe breaking down a whole animal is challenging and requires a lot of knowledge of the anatomy of a pig or of a cow, but any number of recipes in this book is not particularly challenging. It's like, "As long as you just follow the steps and listen to what I'm saying and think about what I'm saying, you can do anything. You can cook anything." I don't think there's one that's like the gateway recipe.
Molly Baz:
The egg chapter is particularly important because there are so many really different ways to cook an egg, and that I think that people get really intimidated by egg cookery. I think that people are... They're comfortable frying an egg, but then if you ask someone to scramble an egg, they're like, "Oh shit, when does the butter go in? Is it pan hot? Is it... Am I using a whisk?" It's so easy to mess up, and then poaching eggs feels like, "Oh, I would only ever see that in a restaurant," and so I think the chapter here that I want people to pay attention to the most is the egg chapter because egg cookery just isn't that hard. It's pretty simple and there's nothing to be scared of.
Kerry Diamond:
You know what still confuses me slightly is the Julia Child omelet. Have you done one of those, where she shuffles the pan back and forth, and then-
Molly Baz:
Oh, like a French omelet.
Kerry Diamond:
I guess, like a French omelet.
Molly Baz:
I think you do the Julia Child omelet. I do the Jacques Pepin omelet. They're probably the same omelet because they were friends, but yeah, that was... I don't actually have an omelet in here, because I was like, "I feel like that's 2.0." Even I don't have a total and complete mastery of the perfect French omelet, so to expect a novice cook to jump into that just feels like maybe that's for book two. But yeah, they're super quick, and you're constantly whisking and then you're hitting the pan. That omelet technique is that would be, in my opinion, the most difficult way to cook eggs.
Kerry Diamond:
It's a lot of drama in a very short time.
Molly Baz:
You're sweating by the end of it.
Kerry Diamond:
Exactly. I'm asking because we're doing a whole Julia Child conference.
Molly Baz:
I know that.
Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned Jacques. Jacques will be part of it. He's cooking with Angie Mar. She's bringing an oxtail riff on the classic beef bourguignon. You are doing one of your launch events with Jacques, right?
Molly Baz:
Yes. I am so excited/nervous. He agreed to host one of my cookbook virtual tour events, which at first, I was super bummed that I can't do a traditional tour, and then I realized if I have done a virtual tour and had been able to go to bookstores across America, I probably wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to be in conversation with Jacques Pepin, because I don't know that I would have ended up going to his home in Connecticut and cooking with him. I'm actually really grateful that this virtual tour is permitting me this experience. I am super excited to meet him. I've never met him before.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, he's fantastic. You have a few other great events. Do you want to tell us about them?
Molly Baz:
The events for the virtual tour are... There's one that's hosted by Now Serving, which is a really awesome cookbook store here in LA. I'll be in conversation with Nyesha Arrington, who's another LA native cook. There's a carbonara party that's happening and is being hosted by Crate and Barrel. Then the launch day event, which is hosted by Sixth and I is going to be in conversation-style event with Ruth Reichl, who is another one of my culinary idols. I lost my breath when I found out that she had agreed to co host this event with me. I never in a million years that I think she would, and I've just...
Molly Baz:
She has just been such an inspiration to me since I was a child and since I first started looking at Gourmet Magazine. My brain can't compute the fact that I could be at this juncture here where she would agree to have a conversation with me. It doesn't even register.
Kerry Diamond:
Ruth is amazing. She's so supportive. She's so talented. I still have some of those. Well, I bought them on eBay, but I have some of her Gourmet Magazines. The covers were so cool. It was-
Molly Baz:
That magazine was to die for.
Kerry Diamond:
Very different time. I want to ask you a few entrepreneurial questions. I know we touched on it a little bit earlier, but you are on Patreon. You have a look club, as you call it, right?
Molly Baz:
Yep.
Kerry Diamond:
Why did you decide to go on Patreon versus say Substack or YouTube?
Molly Baz:
I went on Patreon for two reasons. When it came to a decision between going on Patreon versus using a different platform for newsletters, I did it because Patreon is much more customizable, and that as I was saying earlier, I'm trying to really build out this whole aesthetic for all of the pillars of my brand. If a weekly recipe drop, and newsletter is one of them, I really wanted to make sure that it looked right, and it looked good and it felt me. Patreon allows you to customize, and I could use MailChimp and do my own formatted newsletter whereas some of the other newsletters services are just text format. It's not very visual, so there's that.
Molly Baz:
But then the other thing that I think is so great about Patreon is that you unlock this whole community and world, whereas a newsletter is more just like... Everybody's in their own individual inboxes receiving what you sent out for the day. The Patreon, we're all on this platform on the Patreon website where people can communicate with each other, so other patrons can talk to each other. They can comment and see each other's comments. There's a discord element there where people can chat with each other, and I can drop photos and recipes.
Molly Baz:
It's just a much more dynamic version of a community for me. I thought like, "That's the kind of community I want to build is one where there are lots of ways to partake, and there's lots of participation."
Kerry Diamond:
It's $5 per month, right, to support your Patreon?
Molly Baz:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
What do people get? You mentioned that they get recipes. They get a newsletter. I'm asking because I bet there are a lot of folks out there who are chefs or other entrepreneurs or bakers who are thinking about doing something like this, but haven't taken the leap just yet.
Molly Baz:
Mine is mostly focused on recipes, because that's my favorite part of what I do. I think they're the best way to get to actually teach people how to cook, which is my number one MO in life. The other cool thing about Patreon is that you can really put any kind of content behind there. Carla Lalli Music, for example, uses it for video. She shoots two videos a month and puts those behind the paywall. Some people do audio podcasting, and put that on their Patreon.
Molly Baz:
Mine is mostly a weekly recipe drop and newsletter, and then there are some other recurring columns that I do, and there's the opportunity to pull your patrons, and ask them like, "Do you want this or this week, or what do you think about this," and option for a lot of feedback, but it is very flexible in the sense of allowing you to use whatever media you want on Patreon. Who knows, maybe in the future, it expands beyond recipes and newsletters for me to some other kind of media.
Kerry Diamond:
Any tips or tricks for someone who's considering starting a Patreon?
Molly Baz:
I personally think that the way to be the most successful on Patreon is to actually first grow your audience off of Patreon. I think it's a really hard proposition for people to ask them to pay for content if they don't totally know what they're going to get, and that you haven't totally established what your offerings are and who you are to them. I feel like my best advice is to really focus on growing yourself for free, I guess, first, and get people hooked on you and hooked on your content before you then ask them to pay for it.
Kerry Diamond:
How about YouTube? Are you done with YouTube for now?
Molly Baz:
For now, I mean, I think about it all the time, and I do miss being on YouTube. I miss shooting video. The idea of launching my own YouTube channel and having to run that and manage that while I'm also managing Patreon, which is totally a full time job is so overwhelming to me. I just don't think I can handle it. Again, I'm only out on my own now for the first time, and it's only been six months. I'm still getting used to figuring out how to manage my own schedule, and prioritize things. I've started this Patreon community, and it really committed to making sure that it's the best thing that it can be.
Molly Baz:
I don't want to divide my attention too much, and I feel like a YouTube channel would require a lot of me, and so it's maybe a down-the-line type of thing.
Kerry Diamond:
You're so thoughtful about your business and how you're building and running your business. Do you have mentors or business advisors? Who do you turn to?
Molly Baz:
I turn to my husband a lot. We talk about work all day long. I don't have a manager. I have an agent. Well, my book agent, Nicole, who was at first just my literary agent, and then we've now been working together for three years. She's expanded to being my agent just across the board. She is so smart and insightful, and she knows me and my brand and what I'm all about so thoroughly after having worked together for three years that I really value her insights. She's definitely a sounding board for a lot of the decisions, but it's something that I've thought about, I think about a lot, is I feel like I want a brand manager who has the big picture in mind, because I have it from my perspective, but I didn't go to business school.
Molly Baz:
All I can think about is like, "How do I want things to feel, and what kind of... How am I going to be creative in my career?" I don't have someone who's telling me like, "This is the right move, and we should be approaching this way. You should be looking at it from this perspective." I do feel like eventually, that's something that I would like to bring on, because it's a lot.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. I mean, you've navigated so much over the past year. I was just wondering just who was helping you? Who was advising you, who you turn to?
Molly Baz:
Really, what I've done is just find the right people that are really trustworthy to put in the places that I need them, where I don't have the time and energy to commit to it. I think it's like the baby steps of building a company. It still doesn't feel like a company because it's just me, but there are people who are really great at what they do, who touch all the different parts of my brands, and I could not do it without them.
Kerry Diamond:
When are your aprons back in stock?
Molly Baz:
The aprons are going to be back in stock on April 20th, which is pub day for the book. Up until now, they've been available only in exclusive drops, so I'll announce when they're available, and they'll be on the site for five days and then gone. But starting on April 20th, the core apron collection, which is the blue, the red and the yellow are going to be permanently in the store. If you are looking for an apron, April 20th is your day.
Kerry Diamond:
Good to know. Can you describe the aprons for folks who haven't seen you in them or seen them in action?
Molly Baz:
The aprons are... I have always worn crossback aprons. I have... To begin, I wear mostly jumpsuits, because I have a hatred for tight things around my... I can't wear things that are tight around my waist. It just makes me feel so icky, and so aprons obviously tie around your waist like the classic apron. I've just never been comfortable in them. They get all jammed up, and I just think they're unflattering, and so I've always worn crossback aprons, which are basically smocks, so the apron that I made that I designed with my merch team exactly the way I wanted. It has two little pockets, one on the chest and one on the hips, which is perfect for putting your phone.
Molly Baz:
They're just very comfortable, and they are also very cute, I think.
Kerry Diamond:
Cool. Well, I'm happy to hear they'll be back in stock. I know all your fans will be happy also. Let's do a little speed round, and then we'll let you get out of here because you've got a lot on your plate right now.
Molly Baz:
True.
Kerry Diamond:
What was your last pantry purchase?
Molly Baz:
Last pantry purchase, roasted sesame seeds.
Kerry Diamond:
Most used kitchen implement?
Molly Baz:
Microplane.
Kerry Diamond:
Oldest thing in your fridge?
Molly Baz:
There's a jar of sauerkraut in my fridge that was there when I moved in, so it's not even mine, so God knows how old that is. I don't know. I haven't gotten rid of it.
Kerry Diamond:
I was just going to say the previous tenant left the sauerkraut, and you did not get rid of it.
Molly Baz:
Yeah, because I was like, "I might need sauerkraut." It's a handy thing to have, but I've also never dared open it because I don't know how old it is or whose it was really. I don't know why I haven't gotten rid of it.
Kerry Diamond:
What kind of music do you listen to in the kitchen?
Molly Baz:
My preference would always be Motown and soul. I love all these, and I love that feel-good kind of sound when I'm cooking. It's just easygoing.
Kerry Diamond:
When you're in a professional kitchen situation, what is your footwear of choice?
Molly Baz:
Hokas, which are a SEGA brand, not a kitchenware brand by any stretch of imagination, but they are the most comfortable sneaker on the planet.
Kerry Diamond:
What is one of your most treasured cookbooks?
Molly Baz:
When I was first starting to think about cooking professionally, and I started the Supper Club actually back in college, and the book that I consulted the most was the Flavor Bible, because I was just like, "I wanted to learn everything about every ingredient, and I wanted to figure out every kind of new fangled-flavor pairing that I could, and the Flavor Bible is such an incredible resource from that perspective, and I used to just lie in bed, and just look up an ingredient and be like, "What other wacky ingredients does this pair well with?"
Kerry Diamond:
That's so cool. Last question. When everybody can travel again safely, where would you love to go?
Molly Baz:
There are so many places. France always. I have such a soft spot for France. I don't know if that will be the first trip that we take. I really, really want to go to Tokyo with my husband because we've both been there separately, but never together. I think that it is a city that strikes the perfect balance between design and food, architecture design and food.
Kerry Diamond:
That's great. Well, Molly, thank you so much for your time.
Molly Baz:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
I can't wait to Cook This Book. It's a beautiful book.
Molly Baz:
Thank you so much.
Kerry Diamond:
Whether you just love recipes or you're a cookbook design nerd, I think it'll make both camps happy.
Molly Baz:
Thank you, so nice to see you.
Kerry Diamond:
That’s it for today’s show. Thank you so much to Molly Baz bars for joining us back in April. You can find Molly Baz’s cookbook Cook This Book at your favorite local bookstore. Also, another thing to mention, Molly launched her own membership program this year called The Club. You can learn more about The Club at mollybaz.com. If you enjoyed the show I would love for you to subscribe to your favorite podcast platform and leave a review. We are busy planning on 2022 shows so let me know what guests you’d love to hear from next year. Thank you to our system Producer Jenna Sadhu and the team at Cherry Bombe and thanks to you for listening. You’re the bombe.