Umber Ahmad Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You are 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 three baking books, including my latest, “Snackable Bakes.” Each Saturday I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Umber Ahmad. Umber is the owner and bakery behind the Mah-Ze-Dahr bakeries in Manhattan, Washington D.C., and Arlington, Virginia known for their traditional nostalgic treats. Umber has a fascinating backstory. She grew up in Michigan with her Pakistani family and had an impressive career in finance and investment banking before switching over to baking and hospitality. Umber and I chat about her culinary career and take a deep dive into nisu, a traditional Finnish bread, that was the very first thing she learned how to make. You won't want to miss this convo, so stay tuned.
Thank you to Plugrà premium European style butter for supporting today's show. I've been using Plugrà butter ever since my first baking job. My fellow bakers introduced me to Plugrà as the butter to use and the one with the best flavor. It was also the butter that they used at home, which says a lot. Ever since then, I've relied on Plugrà for all of my baking projects, like testing recipes for my cookbooks and my freelance recipe development work, and trying the recipes we talk about here on the podcast. Everything from chocolate chip cookies to galettes, pound cake, hand pies, choux pastry, and blondies. The pastry chefs and bakers I interview all agree and they're the best in the business. Ingredients matter. And a quality butter is key to all of these baked goods. Plugrà premium European style butter is a great choice because it contains 82% butter fat. Also, it's slow churned, making it more pliable and easy to work with. My go-to are the unsalted sticks. I get to control the amount of salt in the recipes and the sticks are individually wrapped, which makes them easy to measure. If you don't have a scale, no problem. Sticks or solids, salted or unsalted, whichever you prefer. Plugrà premium, European style butter is the perfect choice. From professional kitchens to your home kitchen. Ask for Plugrà at your favorite grocery store or visit plugrà.com for a store locator and recipes.
Let's check in with today's guest. Umber.
Umber Ahmad:
Jessie.
Jessie Sheehan:
So excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie, and to talk nisu, a traditional Finnish bread, with you and so much more.
Umber Ahmad:
Oh, thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to see you.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I've had the pleasure of visiting Mah-Ze-Dahr more times than I can count, including back in 2016 when you first opened. And when someone asks me about must see, must visit, must eat at bakeries in New York City, it is always top of my list.
Umber Ahmad:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
But for those that are not me and don't know about the bakery in you, how would you describe your dessert style and that of the bakery? Though I assume they're one and the same.
Umber Ahmad:
They are one and the same. That's a very good question. It's funny, I've been asked this question a lot and I very rarely have the same answer. I think I should probably get better at this. But the best way to describe it is to tell you what Mah-Ze-Dahr means. First of all, it's a word in the Urdu language, which is a language we speak in Pakistan, which is where my family is from. And it's a word that we use to describe the magic or the essence that makes something special. So imagine you bite into one of our brioche donuts and you think, oh my goodness, is it the pillowy brioche? Is it this creamy vanilla custard? Is it the sugar on top? I don't know what it is. There's a Mah-Ze-Dahr about it, kind of a magic. And that magic is something that you attach to that becomes very personal to you. So your Mah-Ze-Dahr with something will be different than somebody else's Mah-Ze-Dahr with the same thing.
And you fall in love and you come back for more. The basis and I would say the naissance of everything we do is to find that Mah-Ze-Dahr in every pastry and every flavor experience, and be able to impart that on someone else.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you've said that the bakery is sort of the perfect intersection of your expertise, the combo of your business acumen and your science education, which helps so much with recipe development and testing and your cultural knowledge, but that you're not a baker or chef by trade, but a lover of food and your road to baking and bakeries has not been straight. Can you tell us about bobby baker, who was an investment baker. Hobby baker, who ran a consulting firm focused on hospitality. At some point hobby baker has to go away, no longer?
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah, I think as being a part of an immigrant family, the focus was never on what you love to do. It was always what you should do, where you will find security, how you'll be able to take care of your family. And it wasn't, this is what I want. Well, that's too bad. This is what the greater good needs. I actually launched a program with Will Arnett, the podcast called Smartless. So they did a television show where they followed the three of the people on Smartless as they went and did these live shows during the pandemic. They filmed them as they're traveling between shows. And there was this conversation between the three, as Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes. And Will was speaking about his family, where he was talked about, "I want to do this." His parents said, "That's too bad. We don't care what you want. This is what is needed because you were part of a greater collective. You are one of many in this family, and you do what's best for the family."
And that's very much how we were. And it wasn't about you should pursue your passion, it was about what will keep you safe.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you even have been able to articulate to the young 17-year-old Umber that, God, if I could do anything I'd want to bake? Or did you not even know that yet?
Umber Ahmad:
No, I had no idea. I always thought I wanted to be a physician. I wanted to be just like my dad because it was the times that we spent together and it was about being able to care for people. I couldn't distinguish or separate out why I wanted to be a doctor from being a doctor. Being a doctor seemed like the natural thing. I just assumed that I wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to physically help people get better. I went from really thinking about my wants and my needs. And what I wanted was the satisfaction and the knowledge of knowing that I could help people. And I thought that's was being a doctor, but what I needed was to be able to nourish someone. And once I understood that, I went to look at what my skillset was and what I had spent greater than a decade doing, which was how do I take what I know how to do... By an undergrad education, I'm a genetic engineer. So I'm really into science. I'm really into all these things, how things work, how things are processed in the body.
From a business standpoint, I'm really focused on how do you grow brands. So I started working with hospitality people, restaurateurs, hospitality groups, brands to help take them into other geographies and help expand their reach, help expand their geographic reach, help them expand their economic reach, all those things. And the more that I did that, the more that I realized I was helping other people make their dreams come true. What a wonderful role. I mean, what a wonderful position to be, I'm going to help you achieve what you want to achieve. And there came a time where I said, "Gosh, couldn't I help my own dreams come true. Couldn't I become my own client and build this brand into something great?" And I didn't know what this brand was, I just like, "This brand is Umber." I'm like, "Mhm, no one's going to buy Umber, you can't package me and put me on the shelf."
But what does that mean? What do I do? What do I care about? And what I cared about was nourishing people. And as it happened, I became an advisor to someone, a new client of ours who's a chef in the city, who had a lot of restaurants, who had a television show.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can we say his name?
Umber Ahmad:
We can say his name. His name is Tom Colicchio. And one day I come into his office and he said, "I heard you made a cake for Fred." And I was like, "Okay." So Fred is the husband of a friend of mine who was, it turns out, was a friend of Tom's. I had made the devil in ganache, which for those of you that don't know is our, I would say probably one of our bestselling items. It's a chocolate dipped in chocolate, bon of chocolate with more chocolate on it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you tell us the components quickly?
Umber Ahmad:
It's quite literally a devil's food cake with a chocolate ganache frosting. But there's something about the way the cake ages that it becomes a little bit foggier and the frosting melds into the cake in a way that becomes indistinguishable. So Tom said, "I didn't know that you're a pastry chef." And I was like, "Oh, but I'm not. I have no business being in a kitchen." I still say that to this day. So I was like, "I have no business being in a kitchen." And he said, "I want to try your food." And so for three days I made everything I knew how to make. Kept bringing it to him and finally...
Jessie Sheehan:
Can I just ask? Because I think I've been a hobby baker at some point in my life. So you were already just on your own, developing your own... Having fun-
Umber Ahmad:
Having fun. I mean, working on recipes. And I always love this idea of if I change the level of protein in something, what happens? If I use just egg yolks and not egg whites with things, what happens? And always experimenting-
Jessie Sheehan:
The scientist in you was already-
Umber Ahmad:
Already working on things unbeknownst to the present. The physical today Umber, the future Umber was thinking through those things. I don't like cheesecake. And so I challenged myself to say, "What don't I like about it?" And it was, I think, the grittiness of it and just that intense...
Jessie Sheehan:
Density?
Umber Ahmad:
Density. And it almost felt like an obligation, it didn't feel like a dessert. And I didn't like that I had to suck it off the roof of my mouth. I didn't like that it was green. I didn't like those things. So I set about making a cheesecake that I liked, and I worked on it for probably three or four months and finally got it to a place where I was really happy with this. Food & Wine named it one of its best cheesecakes in America. New York Magazine did a whole spread about cheesecake, and they named ours number one. We beat out all of the traditional cheesecakes. It was amazing. I thought I was going to get hate mail, but it was great. Yeah. So it was that. I would just challenge myself like, what don't I like about something? How can I get it to where I like it? Not thinking anybody else would like it, but it was just something that I thought, well, if I feel this way, maybe someone else will as well.
Jessie Sheehan:
So those were the things you made for Tom?
Umber Ahmad:
Those are the things I made for Tom. Scones that you don't need butter and jam and clotted cream for. Biscuits that would hold up for a lot of strawberries that are macerated things, but still simple enough and fluffy enough that you can eat them alongside a piece of chicken. So those types of things. And I did all of that. And at the end of it, he looked at me, he's like, "Well, what do you want to do?" And I said, "I want to build the next great heritage brand. I want this food to live, not here, not today, but for generations. I want these to become the memories and the recipes that people will pass down to each other." So he said, "All right, then why aren't you doing it?" And so I started.
I would bake all night. I'd sleep for a couple hours, get up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, finish baking, go and make deliveries, go to work, come back from work, bake again. And I did that until I really understood that I can probably make a go of this. And I'd left investment banking and advisory work and started my Mah-Ze-Dahr bakery.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back. Today's episode is presented by California Prunes. I'm a California Prunes fan when it comes to smart snacking and baking. First off, California Prunes are good for your gut, your heart, and even your bones. Prunes contain dietary fiber and other nutrients to support good gut health, potassium to support heart health and vitamin K, copper and antioxidants to support healthy bones. And of course, prunes are a great addition to scones, cakes and crackers. Anything you are baking that calls for dried fruit, consider California Prunes. Prunes work perfectly in recipes with rich and complex flavors like espresso, olives and chilies. And they enhance the flavor of warm spices, toffee, caramel, and chocolate. If you love baking swaps and experimenting with natural sweeteners, you can replace some of the sugar in a recipe with California Prune puree. Prune puree is a cinch to make, as it's a blend of prunes and water.
You can find more details on the California Prunes website, californiaprunes.org. While you're there, be sure to check out all the delicious recipes, including the salty snack chocolate fudge with pretzels and California Prunes. Inspired by the recipe from my cookbook, Snackable Bakes. Happy baking and happy snacking.
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody. I'm Kerry Diamond, the founder of Cherry Bombe and the editor in chief of Cherry Bombe Magazine. The Cherry Bombe online shop is temporarily closed because we're switching warehouses. If you are looking for the newest issue of Cherry Bombe, be sure to visit one of our amazing stockists. Cherry bombe is carried by great bookstores, cafes, magazine shops, and culinary boutiques across the country and abroad. Places like Back In The Day Bakery in Savannah, Good Cakes and Bakes in Detroit, and Le Dix-Sept Pâtisserie in San Francisco. Visit cherrybombe.com for a stock is near you.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, let's talk about nisu.
Umber Ahmad:
Nisu, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Traditional Finnish bread and the first recipe you ever learned how to make.
Umber Ahmad:
It's the first recipe I learned how to make. It is a traditional Finnish bread. So nisu is the old Finnish word for wheat. Yeah. And so it was just always this bread that was in the house. And it was the thing that if someone came to visit, you slice it up, pop it in the toaster, put some fresh jam on it. If somebody was having a bad day, a loaf would be made. If someone had a baby, you would make nisu. It was always there. It was an omnipresent moment of connection, hospitality, grief, happiness, celebration, nourishment. It was nisu. Always nisu.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. Did you sell it at the bakery?
Umber Ahmad:
Funny story. I didn't start selling it until a couple of years ago because I was so afraid to not make it perfectly. It has to be perfect. What if people don't buy it? What will happen? And so we finally made it. We make it around the holidays. We do that mostly because in most American tradition and culture, these types of breads are sweet breads. So things like a stollen or a nisu, those tend to be very holiday or winter specific. So we just adopted it in that way. But yeah, we do make it now in the bakery.
Jessie Sheehan:
Some people will describe it at least online as a coffee cardamom bread. Is that fair to say?
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to talk about it. There's a glaze that you can put on it or literal coffee. So first things first, we're going to open up some green cardamom pods. Now how are we opening them? Do you break them with your fingers?
Umber Ahmad:
So you can break them with your fingers. That's usually how you do it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So it's not a super hard shell?
Umber Ahmad:
It's not super hard. The other thing you can do is you can just lay them onto a cutting board or onto the table and then just take a knife, the flat side of a knife and press them down just enough to pop open the shell itself.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then is it easy to get the seeds out?
Umber Ahmad:
Very easy to get the seeds out.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm embarrassed to say I don't know what I should picture. When you break it open, is it-
Umber Ahmad:
You break it open. They're almost like little-
Jessie Sheehan:
Poppy seeds?
Umber Ahmad:
They're a little bit bigger than poppy seeds and they quite literally fall out of the pod. So if you shake the pod a little, you'll hear them. And that's how you also know that they're ready to come out. So if you don't hear anything inside that either means they're still adhering to the shell itself, which means they're not really ready yet, or they were harvested too early. And you don't really want those because you want that full cardamom aroma and flavor. And I always use green cardamom. You can get white cardamom, you can get black cardamom. Black cardamom is typically smoked in some ways, so it tends to be very, very earthy, very interesting smoked flavor. We use black cardamom and green cardamom in Pakistani cuisine. And the black cardamom is if you're doing something like lamb or goat, or something that is really intense and strong and you need to be able to counteract that properly. In a bread that's just like fluffy and heavenly and cloudy, the green cardamom is perfect.
There is a spice store in New York City, it's called Kalustyan's. Rule number one of Kalustyan's is don't go hungry because you will come out with pretty much how much you would've paid in rent, in groceries, and it's phenomenal. They also will do online shopping and you can have things shipped to you. I like Kalustyan's in part because they go to specific geographies or countries and source the ingredients from those places. If you are interested in a particular type of cinnamon, you can get Ceylon cinnamon, you can get Mexican cinnamon, you can get a cinnamon that's in from the southern part of Africa. I like them for that. And they have a Middle Eastern and South Asian bend, so we get all of our Pakistani spices from there. I also really like a company called Penzeys. They're a great spice company and they have ethical sourcing, which I really appreciate. And again, I've never been to a Penzeys shop, but I've always ordered from them online.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we separate our seeds and we either use a mortar and a pestle or a clean coffee grinder to grind our seeds, leaving a couple of larger pieces just for a little more oomph.
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah, just for a little more oomph. And that's really even more just so you know you haven't grounded to its last bits, just to know that you've gone just far enough. And if you wanted to take those slightly bigger pieces out, you can or you can leave them in there and somebody will get a cardamom surprise. The one thing I will say about cardamom is you want to make sure that it's fresh. And I think that's true of all spices. You want to make sure that you buy them and use them quickly. The longer something sits, it's like coffee, the less aromatic, the less potent it will be.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to whisk the cardamom that we've just ground up along with some all-purpose flour.
Umber Ahmad:
I like to use anything that's unbleached. The bleached is nice because you'll get a different color, so it'll be whiter and a little bit cleaner in color. Because this is a spread, I like that to be unbleached. I also try to eliminate as many chemicals as possible. King Arthur has a good all-purpose flour that I think works really well. I also think that Pillsbury has a really good all-purpose flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
And often when I bake bread, I'll use bread flour. To you, is there a reason why you choose to use all-purpose rather than bread?
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah. We use bread flour in certain of our breads, and then we'll use all-purpose or cake flour in certain of our breads. And in baking, it all has to do with the amount of protein. It goes cake flour, then all-purpose flour than bread flour. So cake flour has the least amount of protein, all-purpose has a little bit more, and cake flour has a little bit more. And what the protein does, the protein's called gluten. And so that gluten is what gives you chewiness. So it really depends on how much chewiness you're looking for in a bread. So if I were making a sourdough loaf, for example, I'd want some chewiness. I'd want to have that little tear with my teeth. In something like nisu, I don't want a tear. I don't want this to be any sort of effort. I want it to be soft but not so fluffy that it will fall apart. So that's why I want a medium level of gluten, a medium level of chewy. So we go with all-purpose.
Jessie Sheehan:
I was working on some no-knead bread recently and kept making them with bread flour and I can't even remember where I read it, but somewhere I read trial purpose like the bread is going to rise. And I swear to God, it changed everything, Umber. And I've always been like, "I am a bread flour robot. I use bread flour." And now I've been transformed.
Umber Ahmad:
I love it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're whisking our cardamom, our all-purpose flour and our kosher salt in a large bowl. Then in a smaller bowl, we're going to pour in some warm water and sprinkle some dry active yeast. I wondered, I'm always turning to my instant yeast. Could you do this with instant?
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah. You can do it with instant. Yeah. Instant for me is also just a little bit more of a... I call it like a suspenders and belt situation. If you want to be just a little bit extra sure, go ahead and use the instant. Saf, makes a good... S-A-F, they make a great yeast. I also think Fleischmann's makes a good yeast. For me, it's about what's the youngest or the farthest away from expiration. I think even if it's something is going to expire in a week or two, you're probably pretty close to it not being good enough. The one thing I always recommend is maybe start with your yeast and your dry ingredients. Don't start with the wet ingredients until that yeast starts to bubble a little bit.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to combine the water, that yeast and sugar. And we're going to sprinkle both the yeast and the sugar on top of the water, mix gently. Is that a whisk at this point? A little fork?
Umber Ahmad:
I use a little fork. I think you could use a whisk as well. The only reason why I typically don't use a whisk is that the yeast starts to stick to each one of the pieces of the balloon of the whisk. And I don't have the patience to deal with that, so I just use a fork.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel you. So we mix gently with a fork, let dissolve and proof. And then in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. And I assume at work it's maybe a Hobart or something at home, do you have a KitchenAid?
Umber Ahmad:
I have a KitchenAid. I love a KitchenAid.
Jessie Sheehan:
In our phenomenal KitchenAid with the paddle attachment, we're going to beat some sugar and some eggs together until well combined. Is that like a medium speed? A high?
Umber Ahmad:
I do medium-high speed because I think it's nice to get it a little bit aerated. But you don't need so much air because you're going to put all this flour in there. So we just want to make sure it's mixed.
Jessie Sheehan:
Medium-high, perfect. Then we're going to pour in evaporated milk, which I love this as an ingredient. Is that traditional? Because I also saw recipes that said whole milk.
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah. In baking, scientifically evaporated milk is exactly what it sounds like. It's milk that a little bit more than half of the water out of the milk's been evaporated out. So you get something a little bit creamier. It's got a different color and flavor to it, but it also doesn't add so much moisture to this bread that you have to counteract with too much flour. So that's what I like about the evaporated milk as well.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wonder if you could use that in other instances where you're using a whole milk in a brioche or whatever. I wonder what the creaminess of that might be really nice. And is this still medium-high speed at this point?
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah, maybe a little bit and probably low starting out just because there's so much liquid.
Jessie Sheehan:
So it doesn't splatter.
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah, it doesn't splatter and you can just work your way up just a little bit. But it's really just to get it all incorporated, you want to have a homogeneous liquid base before you start adding in the yeast and the flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to add in the proofed yeast and mix until got combined. Again, maybe medium, medium-high.
Umber Ahmad:
Medium, medium-high.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then remove the paddle, attach our dough hook, add in that flour mixture that we had in the beginning. And mix together again, maybe medium and then up to medium-high?
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah, exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you said... I love this. Don't panic. The dough will be stiff. And you're going to start to add some room temperature salted butter, which I loved. Why salted?
Umber Ahmad:
And a lot of people will say, especially in baking, you can't control how much salt is in your butter. If you wanted, you could convert it out, use unsalted butter. And then for every... You're going to know this better than.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think it's a quarter teas-
Umber Ahmad:
It's a quarter teaspoon.
Jessie Sheehan:
Per half cup or one stick?
Umber Ahmad:
For one stick. So for per stick, you put in a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt. So you can also do that if that's easier.
Jessie Sheehan:
A little bit of room temp butter at a time, you say a tablespoon at a time until the butter is incorporated. Wait till it's incorporated before you add the next piece.
Umber Ahmad:
That's a brioche technique. Yeah, so that's how we make brioche. And it's a nice way to be able to incorporate the fat. Some people will do it the other way where they'll mix the butter in with the eggs and the sugar and then add the flour. But being able to know that you can homogeneously get the fat into the dough is important. And once you have that big sticky glob, you're not going to be able to put all the butter in there and have it be incorporated.
Jessie Sheehan:
So for about two minutes total, adding your butter. And then once all the butter is incorporated, continue mixing till you have this glossy finish. Again, a medium-
Umber Ahmad:
Medium, medium-high speed. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then I thought this was interesting. You'd turn your dough out onto your floured surface and knead until very smooth feeling with no stickiness. How come you wouldn't just use your stand mixer? Wait until it gets there?
Umber Ahmad:
I found with a stand mixer that the dough doesn't always mix evenly. I can't explain that in a more scientific way, but I found that being able to actually knead it by hand, it tends to get kneaded a little bit more thoroughly. And the thing about kneading is yes, you're trying to get a smooth dough, but you're actually working that gluten out. And that's the thing that you really want to make sure that you're doing. And for me, to be totally honest, being able to touch the dough is really important. There's something very tactile about making food and pastry. In our bakeries, in our kitchens, we have very gratefully a lot of automation. We have mixers and sheeters and things like that. But every piece of food that we make is touched by our hands in some way.
So we don't have anything that's completely automated. All of our croissants are shaped by hand. The breads are braided, are kneaded by hand to a certain extent. So that's why I think it's important. You also get a feel for it. It just keeps working it through and you get more of a homogeneous dough that way.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, and I like this. You say this probably depends on the weather, et cetera, and your ingredients, but you can add up to an additional cup of flour as you're kneading. If it's still continues to feel a little sticky. Just a few tablespoons at a time, you don't want to overdo it. But I like that. Then you're going to place the dough into a large buttered bowl.
Umber Ahmad:
I love glass bowls because they're non-reactive. So oftentimes you'll be working with something that's really acidic or something and you're maybe not thinking about it, and you put it into a metal bowl and then the alloys react and you're going to get a weird taste or something happens. And so I love the glass bowls. The bowls that I've used and have used and have purchased again and again, mostly because we break them in the kitchen. So we have certain glass bowls, but mostly we're working in large metal bowls. But we work so quickly that nothing sits for very long. But at home there is a set of 10 glass bowls nested sold by Williams Sonoma.
Jessie Sheehan:
I have it.
Umber Ahmad:
Oh my gosh.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, yes. Yeah, they're great.
Umber Ahmad:
They're great.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it because the teeny tiny one, it nests all the way to mature. I'm like, "This is so exciting."
Umber Ahmad:
I know. It's like you put in an olive, you're like, "It's bowl." One of the things I love about the bowls is they have a really interesting rim that when you try to lift them, because oftentimes we're lifting a bowl with one hand, we're having to scoop out the dough or use a rubber spatula to get all of it out, it actually allows your fingers to set really well. It's not completely smooth on the top. So it's a really beautiful design.
Jessie Sheehan:
Those are great. I love them too. So we're going to place our dough into this large buttered bowl, turning it over so that the fat is on all sides. Cover with a clean towel, place in a warm place until it's doubled in bulk, about 90 minutes. And then we're going to punch it down once it's doubled and let rise. Tell us what that extra punch does.
Umber Ahmad:
I always was under the impression that yeast only has so many rises in it, and that afterwards it's going to call uncle and be done. But that's not the case with yeast. And I think it's one of those where it's the rising process. It's really fast in the beginning and it slows down as it continues to rise. And so this process of giving it a punch to come down, almost reactivates the rapid rise process again.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to turn the dough out on... And we've let it rise again. That's 15 minutes, right? Yeah.
Umber Ahmad:
15 minutes. Yeah, not too long.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface. And now just like hollow, we're going to divide the dough into three equal parts, taking one section at a time. We're going to then divide those into three again. So it's going to be six ropes total.
Umber Ahmad:
Nine ropes total.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nine. Talk to me about that. Oh, right, because it's three-
Umber Ahmad:
Three per loaf. This is going to give you three loaves. Yeah. I am the nerd and I will measure it. So I will take it out of the bowl, I put the bowl on the scale, I tear out the scale at zero, I weigh the whole thing, I divide that number by nine, and I literally just pull out nine balls of dough. So I have that. Sometimes I like to do a four braid or a six braid, and then I'll measure out from that standpoint as well. And I will tell you, in this modern age of social media, a lot of my braiding I learned from Instagram. There is an Instagram account, it's called Challah Prince. I don't know if you know this. And it's a gentleman who I believe is out of Germany and does the most beautiful braiding, but does incredible little educational videos for them.
So I can do some pretty incredible braiding now because of that. So it's one of those things you can play with. The thing that I will say is I will do three, four, or maybe five, but I don't do things that are really intricate because you still want there to be some proofing and some pillowy bread to it. So if you're starting out, start out with a three braid.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So nine total. You're rolling out the ropes until they're about 12 to 15 inches long. Then you're braiding, pinching the ends and tucking them under. And then you're either placing the loaves on a baking sheet. Is it one loaf per baking sheet or can you put two?
Umber Ahmad:
You can get two. I usually do them on a diagonal. Yeah. I'll put two on a baking sheet.
Jessie Sheehan:
And do you need to grease it or put parchment paper down?
Umber Ahmad:
I like to put parchment paper down. Or if you have a silpat, you can use a silpat as well. But I typically don't put it directly onto the metal sheet because it will stick. I use the commercial baking sheets. And so I go to Webstaurant. Webstaurant is a great source for that. If you live in a city that has a restaurant supply store, I find those to be really good. Those tend to be heavier. I don't love the aluminum ones. The metal comes off.
Jessie Sheehan:
They feel too flimsy.
Umber Ahmad:
They're very flimsy. And then if you feel and ever get any black on your fingers or something, you know that's going into your foods. You want to avoid that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Or you can put these loaves into these individual buttered loaf pans. Is that an eight and a half by four, a nine by five?
Umber Ahmad:
It's usually a nine by five. Yeah. So a nine by five. And I don't have one in particular. There is one that I love, and I don't know the brand of it. But it almost looks from the outside like somebody has folded paper on it. I don't think if that makes sense. You can see the folds of the metal.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I know what you mean.
Umber Ahmad:
Do you know what I mean?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. But I don't know what brand that is.
Umber Ahmad:
I don't don't know what brand that is either. But I love those because they're very sturdy. They have sharp corners.
Jessie Sheehan:
I was just going to say I love sharp edges and I want the sides to be as vertical as possible as opposed to slightly tapered outward.
Umber Ahmad:
Exactly right. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that too.
Umber Ahmad:
I love that. And I actually think that gives you a better baking too. Because if the dough is thinner or narrower on the bottom and wider on the top, the bottom's going to be done before the top and then something's going to burn or something's going to be off.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's going to bake inconsistently. Totally. So we let our braided dough rise until it's puffy about 45 minutes to an hour, then we're going to preheat our oven to 375. And I love this. We have two options for finishing the loaf. One is egg yolk and milk beaten together sprinkled with pearl sugar. Where do you get-
Umber Ahmad:
I get it from Kalustyan's again. Yeah, I think any spice store should have pearl sugar. You can probably find it at your grocery store, I would imagine Whole Foods or Wegmans or-
Jessie Sheehan:
And describe it. It's just...
Umber Ahmad:
So pearl sugar is exactly what it sounds like. They look like small pearls and it's sugar. What's lovely about it is it's sweet, but it doesn't dissolve. And so it'll maintain its shape and maintain its color and its positioning when things bake. So it almost looks like a sprinkling of the first snow, which I love, which again, lends itself to a lovely holiday bread. It balances really nicely with the almonds. And I love slivered almonds or sliced almonds. So if you chop them too small, I love this balance between the sweetness and the size of a piece of pearl sugar and a sliver of an almond and slice-
Jessie Sheehan:
The flat, right?
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah, the flat.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you ever do it with a little bit of skin on the edge?
Umber Ahmad:
I love a little bit of skin.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, me too.
Umber Ahmad:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I love that. I love that. So egg wash, we have our pearl sugar, we have our almonds, and we're going to bake for 25 to 30 minutes. And I love your trick to testing. If the loaf is done, we knock and it should sound hollow.
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah, it should sound hollow. Yeah. And it usually will. And if it doesn't, put in for a few more minutes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Take a little longer. Because of our beautiful braids on top. Are you knocking on the bottom?
Umber Ahmad:
No, I knock on the top.
Jessie Sheehan:
You do? Okay.
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah. It's too hot for me to knock on the bottom.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Now the other way to do this is to bake the loaves as they are without an egg wash for 25 to 30 minutes. And then once removed from the oven, just brush with straight old espresso or strong coffee.
Umber Ahmad:
Well, if we do it in the bakery, so we work exclusively with La Colombe. And we love La Colombe, not just for for the taste of the coffee and the flavors, but they also do ethical sourcing. So they work directly with the farmers and they eliminate a lot of the middlemen. So they take the beans, they roast them themselves. And we get the beans within 24 hours of them being roasted and we use them within 72 hours of the roast. So we always really fresh. That's what we really like to do. I'm a big fan of Nizza, which is one of their classic espressos. And you can use it as an espresso. You can also use it as a brewed coffee. My very favorite coffee in the world comes from a region in Africa, specifically in Ethiopia called Yirgacheffe.
And Yirgacheffe, I believe is now the only place on earth that coffee grows wild. Coffee is a crop that has traditionally been planted and curated and cultivated and grown. And so it isn't natural really to any particular geography. It thrives in certain places in certain weather. So now that's why you find it in South America and Latin America. But in Africa, specifically in Ethiopia and in Yirgacheffe, that's where it grows. So having that coffee, if you can find it, I know La Colombe will do it. I believe the month of July, August, September is when you can find it. That to me is so floral. It's got just a beautiful finish. It's not bitter, but it's not so weak that it feels passive. It's still coffee. So if you have something like that, I would use something floral with the cardamom. It's a nice balance.
So with the coffee, you can do one of two things. You can brush it on top, or what you do is you put a bunch of coffee into a nine by 13 pan. So a brownie pan or something. Take the entire loaf, flip it upside down, and almost half roll it in the coffee, flip it over, and then sprinkle it generously with just granulated sugar. Yeah. So you're almost like quasi-soaking your hot-
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm getting-
Umber Ahmad:
Fresh.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tiramisu vibes.
Umber Ahmad:
Oh, absolutely. Oh, totally. Just something like that. Just dip it, pause, take it out, and then do the sugar. And then you do get this, oh, this gorgeous coffee crust. Oh, so good.
Jessie Sheehan:
I just want to talk about a couple of Mah-Ze-Dahr recipes that I adore. Tell us about the brioche cinnamon rolls.
Umber Ahmad:
The brioche cinnamon rolls are an absolute slice of heaven, and they were born of my commitment to not wasting anything. It's just something that's really important to us as a team, us as a brand, and to me personally, just thinking about how we can leave the world a little bit better. And it's so difficult in a food business because we have food trucked in, we have ingredients brought in, we have stuff flown in, and so we do everything we can. I buy carbon credits at the end of the year to make us a carbon-neutral business. But everything that we do is to say, how do we minimize waste? So when we are making the brioche donuts, we roll out the brioche and we punch the round donuts. We actually tried to make square donuts for a while, so we'd have no waste, but nobody wants a square donut.
So we take all of the scrap from the donuts and roll it and make cinnamon brioche rolls from it. And now the cinnamon brioche rolls are so popular. We have to make our own brioche in addition to all the scrap to make them. And really what we do is we roll out the brioche dough, and then we make a very decadent voluptuous mixture of brown sugar, unsalted butter, kosher salt, and cinnamon. And that's really all it is. And we take that and we just lavishly slather it all over this brioche almost to the edges. We roll it up, we chill it so we can cut it easier. We cut them up and we bake them. And then when they're done baking, we cover them with a cream cheese frosting. I grew up with a royal icing frost. I think we all have, which was just start with a bag of confection sugar, which seems like all of the recipes of our childhood is you start with a bag of confection sugar, and that's really how we made it.
But here, the cream cheese is so lovely because it gives us this added level of complexity of flavor, a little bit of tartness. It offsets the sweetness of the cinnamon sugar, and it just melts into the little crevices of the cinnamon rolls.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my God, Umber. Award-winning, best in D.C. chocolate chip cookie. Is there a secret? I mean, you can't give away your secrets. But is there something special that you guys are doing when you make that cookie?
Umber Ahmad:
That was one of the recipes I worked on a lot because I love a slightly chewy cookie with a little bit of a crunchy edge. I'm not a person who wants a crispy cookie, and I also don't want a cookie that tastes raw and that's uncooked and fat inside. I want there to be a real good balance. So it's a couple of things. One is, and you're going to love this, we use a combination of flours. So I want the fluffiness of a cake flour, but I also want a little bit of the chew of the bread flour. So we use both of those and we use a couple of different kinds of chocolate, different levels of cocoa, percentages of chocolate, and we rest our dough. So I mean, I think that's something that now has become a lot more commonplace, and I'm so happy about that. To rest your dough means to allow it to meld together and meet its mates in a way that you don't get to do if you bake it immediately.
So we rest our dough typically for 36 to 48 hours on the cookies before we make them. And I think those are the things that make it particularly caramelized, and you get the crunchiness and that chewiness.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right. I promise only two more. I'm obsessed with your brownies.
Umber Ahmad:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
So could you just tell us a little bit about the dark chocolate brownies?
Umber Ahmad:
Yeah. So I love our brownies. We grew up with box brownies, and I still... Listen, I will eat a box brownie.
Jessie Sheehan:
I have a recipe in “Snackable Bakes” that's literally trying to be a box brownie because I love them so much.
Umber Ahmad:
How did I not see that?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Umber Ahmad:
I'm making those tonight. Oh, love them. Every time I ate a box brownie, it took me to a place of, this used to be really good. Why doesn't it taste this way? So I set about making my adult version of a box brownie memory. I wouldn't say they're like box brownies, but evoking that same kind of memory, but having it grow up. I always feel like so many of the things that we do in our lives mature and evolve as we grow up. Our style, what we wear, what music we listen to, conversations we have. But then people want us to go back to eating a pink cupcake on a gingham tablecloth, and that's not who we are anymore. So why not elevate those experiences? So we take the brownie, and ours is a 100% cocoa brownie, which is a little bit different. A lot of people use melted chocolate, and we don't. The downside of that is they'll tend to dry out faster than one with melted chocolate, but ours somehow managed to maintain that fudginess. We do that.
And then the butter is a particular thing for me. Some people use melted butter, some people use room temperature butter. We take melted butter and ice-cold butter and mix them together. And we mix them together and get them to the place where it almost looks like mayonnaise with chunks of butter in it. So I still want some chunks left because what I love about chunks of butter, when you bake them in the oven on a relatively high temperature, the water in the butter evaporates and puffs up. So all of a sudden you're getting this push of heat and puffiness and airiness. It gives you a little bit of that crumb, but the melted butter and the mayonnaisey butter still gives you that little fudginess. So that's where we get that. Yeah, it's science. Yeah. Baking is science. A lot of love.
Jessie Sheehan:
I mean, that's like a pie technique. That's what you do with pie. Do I love the idea, doing that in a brownie? Finally, vanilla sugar dusted brioche donuts.
Umber Ahmad:
Oh, the thing of dreams. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I mean, do you sell out of those? I mean-
Umber Ahmad:
We do. We sell out of them every day. People say, "You should make more." And it's like, yes, we know.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Thanks for telling us.
Umber Ahmad:
Thank you. Yeah, it never occurred to us. The thing about the brioche donut that I love so much is that it meets so many different needs and wants and interests and loves. And so it is our traditional brioche, which is also our cinnamon roll. And what we do is we make them and we will cut them. We cut them in a very particular way, similar to biscuits. If you actually cut and twist, you're going to lose the rise. So it's one of those things that we're teaching our new pastry cooks is there's no twisting. You can't twist. You cut with intention, purpose. You're in, you're out. And I think that's something also, particularly with pastry, that I learned in my life is you can't be afraid. Right? I mean, I think there's a lot of fear oftentimes, or trepidation about trying a new recipe or a new technique, and you just have to go in there. You have to show them who's boss.
So when you're cutting a brioche donut, you cut and you remove, you cut and you remove. There's a lot of handling of this dough. We don't want a lot of people touching it. We want it to still maintain its integrity and we fry them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you have another little cutter for the hole?
Umber Ahmad:
We do. Yeah. We have a different cutter for the hole. You can get a donut cutter that has-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Do those work?
Umber Ahmad:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
No. Yeah.
Umber Ahmad:
Only because the diameter of the hole won't be what you want and also the thickness of the actual ring won't really be what you want. So be in control. How big do you want it to be? You measure those things. And then we will fry up both the brioche donut and the hole. We give you the hole. What happens to the holes?
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, honey, I love you for that hole.
Umber Ahmad:
And when the donuts come out, we let them cool just ever so slightly and then we toss them into an enormous bowl of vanilla sugar. We use our vanilla bean. We use all the caviar inside the beans to make the pastry cream. And then we'll take the beans, we dry them out overnight in a really low oven, grind them up, mix them with the sugar, and that's the sugar that goes on. We like it to be slightly warm, so a little bit of the sugar melts in there and the rest of it stays on top. The pastry cream that we make, that we inject in six different spots in the donut, has very specific technique. And one of the things that we do is oftentimes people will make a pastry cream, and once it's done cooking, they'll put it into a hotel pan or put it into a bowl, cover it, cover the surface so they don't get that skin. They'll put it straight into the refrigerator or the walk-in. We cool our pastry cream by mixing it.
So we put it into a large Hobart and we mix it on a very low temperature. And the Hobart mixer itself has the suspended bowl. And then under the suspended bowl, we fit a large bowl with ice in it. So we cool it, but we're also mixing it. So the entire time that it's cooling, it's actually being mixed. So you get something that has a level of creaminess that you didn't know was possible. You inject that into a fluffy fried piece of dough, and that's it. It's that simple.
Jessie Sheehan:
Because sometimes when you fill a donut with something, it doesn't have a hole. But yours have a hole and they're filled.
Umber Ahmad:
Ours have a hole and they're filled. So there's a particular type of machine. It's made by a company called Edhard, E-D-H-A-R-D. They specialize in these machines that fill things. So you can fill cannolis and donuts and all those beignets, whatevers you want. And each one of the extruders is specifically designed for what you're trying to achieve. So we also make a vanilla choux, which is a pâte à choux that we build a really thin pastry cookie on the outside. We fill that. That has almost like a needle coming out of the machine, and we can fill those. It almost looks like a disc that has six little needles poking out at the top. We stick the donut on top of it, we depress the machine and it fills with the cream. Yeah. And so we go through a test every day, and it'll be myself or one of our chefs where we just randomly pick up the donuts once they're all done, just to feel them. And there'll be no fewer than five or six that get put back, be like, "This isn't heavy enough. It's not heavy enough. You need more cream."
Jessie Sheehan:
Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Umber. And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Umber Ahmad:
Oh, thank you so much. Well, you are my cherry pie.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugrà premium European style butter, and California Prunes for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on your favorite podcast platform. And tell your baking buddies about us. Be sure to check out our other episodes and get tips and tricks for making the most popular baked goods around. From birthday cake to biscuits to blondies. 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 and Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.