Zoë Kanan 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 Zoë Kanan, baker, pastry chef, and founder of Zoë's Doughies, and on-going pop-up series featuring her signature donuts, bagels, and desserts. Zoë has had a fascinating career and has worked at celebrated bakeries like Four & Twenty Blackbirds and Milk Bar. She helped open a Jewish deli in Mexico City, made layer cakes at Early June in Paris, and was even Oprah's pastry chef for Thanksgiving 2022. Amazing, right? We'll be taking a deep dive into Zoë's donuts in today's interview, 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. 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. Zoë, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie, and to talk donuts with you, and so much more.
Zoë Kanan:
It's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me, Jessie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Christina Tosi of Milk Bar fame, a former boss of yours and recent podcast guest, has said about you, "Everything Zoë makes is warm, soulful, and clever. She respects tradition, but looks for something new, something that hasn't been discovered before." Can you unpack that for us and, in so doing, describe your dessert style for us?
Zoë Kanan:
My style, I would say, I focus on baked goods and bread. I also dabble in desserts. But, I'm always looking for a personal connection with almost everything that I make, and that's what I mine my past experiences for inspiration. I would say, in the last few years, my style has really developed as an exploration of my Jewish roots, and pointing to a lot of classic Jewish baking, and bringing in some of the ingredients and techniques that I love from today.
Jessie Sheehan:
You have worked with some of the best peeps in the business, Christina, as I mentioned before, Dianna Daoheung, Melissa Weller, Emily and Melissa Elsen. Since COVID, you've been doing your own thing and being your own boss. Can you tell us about some of the projects you've been involved with? I know you've been doing some work abroad, both in Mexico and in Paris.
Zoë Kanan:
Yes. Really since starting to work for myself, my schedule opened up a lot, so it gave me the flexibility to take on these projects that were different from what I'd done in the past, which was mostly restaurant work and very anchored in a space and a concept. It was probably 2021, I had the opportunity to do some consulting on a project in Mexico City, that's now open. It is a Jewish deli and bakery in Condesa.
Jessie Sheehan:
That is so cool. What things were you consulting? I should know this, but consulting means developing recipes for the place, or developing the whole menu?
Zoë Kanan:
I think it can mean a lot of different things. But in my case, it started out really specifically focused on developing a menu of baked goods for this deli project, and I was working with some folks who already have a small group of coffee shops there called Qūentin Café. They already had a baking team, so it was really just bringing in someone who had experience with these, specifically New York style, Jewish baked goods, and they wanted to keep things pretty classic.
But one of the challenges of Mexico City is the altitude. It's an incredible place for so many reasons, food is so vast and delicious. Baking though is a different story because Mexico City is really high in the air. It's almost a mile and a half higher than New York, so sea level. So that affects baking, specifically. Ingredients are drier. You have to make a lot of changes with hydration and leavening, so it was a big learning curve for me going down there. It was a lot of different factors at play, but it was a fun challenge, and I'm really proud ultimately of the work that we did. The place open, it's called Mendl Delicatessen. So if you're in Mexico City, and feel like a bagel, or a babka, or a challah-
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about Early June in Paris.
Zoë Kanan:
Early June is this wine bar in the 10th Arrondissement in Paris. Because of my friend Susan... This is one of the things I love about starting to work for myself, is being able to work with a bunch of different friends of mine. Susan is a friend who has a really incredible pop-up called Doshi. Susan had cooked at Early June before, and invited me to come along with her as her pastry chef and baker for this culinary residency.
So we collaborated on a menu, we cooked at Early June in a very small kitchen for four weeks in January. Here I was thinking it was going to be chill January, like it is in New York with New York restaurants, and it was completely packed every single night, Fashion Week and lots of international visitors. But Susan and I collaborated on a menu that highlighted a lot of seasonal products. It was seafood season in January, so all of the fish was incredible. Then for me, it was citrus season, so I used a lot of corsican citrus. But, that was my second time to Paris. I haven't spent that much time in Europe, so that was just a really magical time.
Jessie Sheehan:
That sounds incredible. Besides traveling for work, you've also done some work closer to home. You've worked with Christina Tosi on something that I want you to tell us about. And, da, da, da, da, Oprah. Can you please tell us about your work with Christina? Christina deserves a da, da, da, da too.
Zoë Kanan:
She does.
Jessie Sheehan:
She does. They both get a da, da, da, da. Christina and Oprah.
Zoë Kanan:
A dream team. I've worked with Christina, worked for her, for years. Then, since then, have been connected to her in various ways. But I was fortunate enough to be asked to work on her latest cookbook with her, All About Cookies. A big cookie fan, it's one of my favorite mediums to explore in my baking, so that was a really fun project to work on. So I got to develop a bunch of recipes for the book, that included everything from, "Okay, we're looking for a recipe for this, something crunchy and with nuts." Sometimes I would have directives like that, and then other times I would try to worm my way into Christina's brain and come up with something that feels like it really works with the Milk Bar world. A favorite cookie that I worked on was a buttered toast cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh.
Zoë Kanan:
We toasted the flour first, that goes into the cookie, and browned the butter. So, we're already developing these really deep flavors. It makes this really flat, crispy, almost crinkled cookie, like the Sarah Kieffer crinkle cookies. It looks like that, but it's crispy. Then when they come out of the oven, you brush them with melted butter, which I'd never seen before in a cookie. I'm sure it exists. But they came out, and I was like, "After you toast bread, what do you do? You brush it with butter." So, that seemed like the natural finishing touch.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh. All right. Tell us about Oprah.
Zoë Kanan:
That was a pretty special experience, and I was in Mexico when I found out that this was happening. So my friend Sumaiya, who's a pastry chef here in New York, reached out to me with this opportunity for Thanksgiving. I had the chance to go to Oprah's home for her personal Thanksgiving, this was last year, so 2022, and do a stint of, actually my first time really, personal chefing. But I was working for Chef Mei Lin, who's an incredible chef and “Top Chef” winner who's based in L.A., and I got to make pies for Oprah's Thanksgiving.
Jessie Sheehan:
Please tell us everything, and then tell us what Oprah's favorite was.
Zoë Kanan:
She's from the south, so the request for pies was to keep things pretty classic. Which, I think a lot of people feel that way for Thanksgiving. You want the comfort items. So the ask was sweet potato, pecan, and a lattice-top apple. Within the directive, I went in my own direction a little bit. With the sweet potato, I did sweet potato chiffon. So, it was like a baked mousse and then I included pineapple and cardamom in the custard. I like to bring a little bit of fruitiness to the thanksgiving pies I make because the meal is so rich and heavy. Then when you finish with pie... You want to feel completely overstuffed on Thanksgiving, but I think adding a little bit of fruit or little hints of acidity just helps everything go down and keeps you making your way through your slice of pie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh, those sound incredible. All right, before we jump into donuts, I wanted you to tell us just a little bit about your pop-up series, Zoë's Doughies, about how the series started, how it's going.
Zoë Kanan:
Okay. So Zoë's Doughies was born at my friend's restaurant space in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn called KIT, which was formerly MeMe's Diner. My friend Libby decided to close MeMe's. She kept the space, and I think had a lot of foresight into how things were changing during COVID, and how chefs were working differently, maybe not attached to their restaurants anymore. So I fit squarely in that category, and she helped me develop my pop-up there. Zoë's Doughies was actually her nickname for me, so it was an easy name for the pop-up. The first one was in December of 2020.
Jessie Sheehan:
I was there.
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, you were there, Jessie. It was a Hanukkah pop-up.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is it possible that one day Zoë's Doughies, or some version of that, could become a brick and mortar?
Zoë Kanan:
This is very new, and it's not fully fleshed out yet, but there will be a brick and mortar location coming to the Lower East Side this winter. It won't be Zoë's Doughies exactly, but will be the first time that I am baking in my own place. It's crazy to say.
Jessie Sheehan:
I can't wait. Now there's one recipe I think that has made a pop-up appearance, and maybe will even make a brick and mortar appearance, and that is your recipe for squiggle donuts, or donuts on a stick or a skewer. They're your signature. At first, I was hoping you could tell people what the donut looks like, for those that have never had the pleasure of trying one. I want you to be able to visualize it. Can you tell so peeps can visualize?
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah. So it is like a rope of dough that is formed into a squiggle shape. So, imagine a snake. Yeah, there's squiggles. It's like that sign that you use when you're saying something is an approximate, the little wavy dash. They look like that. Then they're threaded with a skewer, and they're fried on the skewer, and glazed and eaten on a stick.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about the inspiration behind the squiggle idea.
Zoë Kanan:
Growing up in Texas, I went to the rodeo, I went to a lot of county fairs, and ate a lot of fair food, and I always have had a soft spot, as many people do, for that kind of food. There you're having corn dogs, and eating corn on the cob. It's all food that's made to be eaten and enjoyed while you're walking around. So that is always in the back of my mind, those foods. Then, during lockdown, I found that I was watching a lot of these videos on YouTube. There's this whole category of these videos where it's people going to a state fair, or a night market in Taiwan, and basically just walking around and eating all of the food that is at every single stall, and showing how it's made.
It's a lot of things that are served in bags, or served with a toothpick, or served on a stick. So, I'd watch these extended videos. So then, as I was planning to do the Hanukkah pop-up, donuts were already on my mind. As I was thinking about what flavors I was going to make, these two things in my brain just merged and I was like, "Has anyone done donuts on a stick?" I haven't seen that specifically in any of these videos.
But people are going to be grabbing this stuff, and taking it to go, and maybe walking to the park and eating it. So, it made a lot of sense to me in the format of a pop-up, especially at that time. So I experimented with a few different shapes. I did almost little donut holes, and strung them through the skewer. I posted a few different options on Instagram and had people do a survey of what they liked the most, and the squiggle won. So, we went with the squiggle and we haven't looked back.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think that is so genius. We're going to talk about the recipe. But the donut recipe you use for the squiggle, is that your go-to yeasted donut? Do you use the same recipe for a regularly shaped donut?
Zoë Kanan:
I changed the recipe a little bit. I was realizing, because I didn't need the donut to rise in the exact same way, it's being threaded through this skewer. I found that I was able to put more butter into the dough than I might otherwise. Also, I lowered the sugar on the recipe a little bit, just because I personally like a really fun, flavorful glaze. So I wanted to keep the donut almost treading like savory so that I could really get away with bringing high impact sweet fruit flavors in the glazes.
Jessie Sheehan:
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Kerry Diamond:
Hi everybody, I'm Kerry Diamond, the founder of Cherry Bombe, and the editor in chief of Cherry Bombe Magazine. 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 stockist near you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to talk about the recipe for these squiggle donuts, which I am going to call Zoë's Doughies.
Zoë Kanan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. First things first, we're going to make the dough.
Zoë Kanan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to dice or chop some unsalted butter. First question is, is there a knife? Do you use a bench scraper to chop your butter? Do you use a knife?
Zoë Kanan:
I use a bench scraper to chop butter. There's something about either the finish of the blade or something, it always sticks to a knife really badly. I feel like, as a baker, I'm always like, "What can I get away with just rough chopping with a bench scraper?" There are some that have a sharper edge, actually, which I sometimes like. I usually go with what is at the restaurant supply store, but I like one that has enough of a handle that you can really grip. I like the ones with the wooden handles.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to set the butter aside to soften, and then we're going to pour some milk.
Zoë Kanan:
It's whole milk. Most recently, I was doing a pop-up at Stissing House upstate. They stock tons of beautiful dairy there, and I was using Ronnybrook dairy there, which is a go-to. With baking, it depends on what you're making, but you don't necessarily need to use the top quality raw milk because it's getting cooked. But something that's really flavorful and rich, so I like Ronnybrook, which is a local to New York.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to pour the milk into a heavy-bottomed pot.
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah. At home I have a Goldilocks pot, which is a smaller brand that a friend started, and I recommend purchasing from them. It's all very high quality. It's most similar to All-Clad. Something that has a heavy bottom, milk can scorch. So you want something that's not... Like an aluminum pan is not what we're going for here.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to pour the milk into our Goldilocks pot.
Zoë Kanan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And, we're going to warm it to just above body temperature. Would that be on medium heat?
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, on medium heat.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you do the thing where you stick your knuckle in to see what the temperature is?
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, exactly. I just stick my knuckle in. If the milk gets too hot, that's also fine, but you would need to let it cool down before you put it in the dough. "We want it just right," as Goldilocks would say.
Jessie Sheehan:
As she would. So we're going to whisk some all-purpose flour and some bread flour. Why do we need both?
Zoë Kanan:
My go-to is King Arthur for these flours, it's the most widely available. Because I'm sometimes traveling to do my pop-ups, I like to stick with something that I know is consistent. I like to use both bread flour and all-purpose flour in this donut. It has so many different kinds of fats going into the dough. It's got eggs, it's got milk, it's got a lot of butter. I find that the additional protein quantity, the additional gluten that we build from using bread flour, helps give the dough more structure. It gives a donut a better bite.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're whisking all-purpose/bread flour, sugar, and instant yeast.
Zoë Kanan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that you use instant. I always use instant.
Zoë Kanan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And, salt. Is the salt kosher?
Zoë Kanan:
The salt is usually kosher salt, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to crack eggs into a wide bowl. I guess I would ask, at home, would you use metal? Would you use glass?
Zoë Kanan:
I usually use metal at home. The reason I say wide bowl is because we are then going to, you'll see next, pour the eggs into the bottom of a stand mixer. I like to crack the in bowl first. That way, it gives you a double check for any shells that might have gotten into your dough, which can inhibit the gluten structure. It's like introducing a little knife into the dough as you mix it around. So no eggshells, please.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that idea. I never thought of a little cracked eggshell being a tiny little knife. So, then we're going to pour our eggs into the bottom of our mixer. If you're making this at home, obviously, and you're not in someone's kitchen, are you using a KitchenAid?
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, KitchenAid. This is a really, really wet dough, so it does well in a KitchenAid. Sometimes making a bagel dough, for example, or something really dense in your KitchenAid, you'll start to smell those mechanical smells, your mixer will get really hot. You won't experience that with this dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. So then we're going to fit our KitchenAid or our stand mixer with our dough hook attachment, and we're going to pour in the warm milk. I just wondered about that. Why do we need to warm the milk if we're using instant yeast?
Zoë Kanan:
The warm milk, it's about a couple of things. Fermentation, hydration of the flour. This is all about desired dough temperature, which is a concept in bread baking. Because we are adding a lot of butter to the dough, which we've previously cut to soften, and there's lots of eggs, lots of milk, we have a really wet dough that we're forming. The butter needs to be able to incorporate into that dough. So if we're using milk from the fridge, eggs from the fridge, our dough's really cold, so it's less accommodating to incorporate those pieces of butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Could you use room temperature milk? Or, you really find that the warm milk is what helps everything incorporate the best?
Zoë Kanan:
Room temperature is definitely fine. Then, it's additionally about fermentation,
Jessie Sheehan:
Which means flavor in the end?
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, flavor and structure.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to add our dry ingredients to our stand mixer bowl, and we're going to mix at a low speed for about four minutes or so, to allow the dry and the liquid to hydrate and combine. Then we're going to increase the speed to medium for about six minutes until the dough begins to pull away, though not entirely, from the sides to the bowl. You say a small ball begins to form around the bottom of the hook. I just wanted to understand, you know how sometimes when you're mixing bread dough or yeasted dough, lots of balls form? The dough gets broken up into... When you say small ball, do you mean all of the dough together in a ball, or do you mean individual?
Zoë Kanan:
I would say it's like a third of the dough begins to form into its own mass around the bottom of the hook. Because, like I said, this is a really wet dough, it won't pull away entirely from the sides of the bowl, which is sometimes a visual cue that a lot of recipes will point to for when you've worked the dough enough. Because this is so wet, that won't happen. But, just a small amount of the dough will start to do that.
Jessie Sheehan:
I get that. That makes sense. Now we're going to let the dough rest for five minutes. I feel like that's a little unusual to have a rest at this point in the yeasted dough-making process. Can you tell us about our five-minute rest?
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah. That is actually a trick that I picked up when I was reading this book that is by Justin Gellatly, who is a pastry chef in the U.K. He was the pastry chef at St. John Restaurant. This is really a trick for when you're asking your mixer to do a lot of work at home, a stand mixer. Kneading a dough for, at this point, I don't know how many minutes we're up to-
Jessie Sheehan:
10.
Zoë Kanan:
Total. 10 or so, that's a lot of work for the mechanism. So I like to give the dough a rest to allow the mixer some time to recover, and also the dough, because we've been building that structure and the dough's been having this intensive workout. The next phase of the recipe is when we're incorporating the butter, so allowing the gluten to just settle into itself, the flour to hydrate, it just is a little bit of a break for the dough to prepare for the next step of adding fat to the structure.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you recommend this for any enriched dough that we're making? If we're making a brioche, or we're making something else that calls for a lot of butter, to give the dough a little rest before you add it?
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah. If you have the time, I definitely would recommend that. I think it's good for the health of your equipment, and then it has this additional benefit of the dough too.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to start our mixer again on medium speed, and we're going to begin adding our softened butter a little bit at a time. Does the fact that we're adding all this softened butter, does that make this a "brioche" dough?
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, this is a brioche-style donut. All of the elements of brioche are there. There's such a wide range of what we think of as brioche, which usually can fluctuate with the amount of eggs in the recipe, the quantity of butter in the recipe. Typically, I would say the difference with this dough is that often, when I'm making brioche, I don't always have milk. I'm often just relying on that alchemy of eggs and butter to flavor the dough. This donut recipe has the addition of milk, which helps with browning and adds this additional beautiful dairy flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
So when each addition of the butter is nearly incorporated, that's when you're going to add the next amount until all the butter is added. Then you're going to mix for an additional two minutes. The dough is glossy, and elastic, and smooth, at this point. I know if you were making this in production, in large amounts, you'd transfer it to a greased covered tub, at this point. What would you suggest we use at home?
Zoë Kanan:
At home, I would recommend using the largest bowl you have that will fit in your refrigerator. This dough has a lot of yeast in it. Again, that's all because of those enrichments. It's going to grow quite a bit in the refrigerator, where it rests overnight. So I would say, put it in the biggest bowl you have. It doesn't really matter whether it's glass, or plastic, or whether it's stainless steel. I use these big plastic bowls at home that I got from H Mart. The most important part of this is just that you're spraying the bowl with non-stick spray, or coating it lightly with oil.
Jessie Sheehan:
I have a question about something you said, you said the dough has a lot of yeast because of the enrichment.
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
In general, is that what we're going to see with enriched doughs, that the yeast level is going to be higher because the yeast is fighting against all of that fat?
Zoë Kanan:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
I got you.
Zoë Kanan:
The yeast has to do a lot more work because those fatty ingredients are weighing down the dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
That makes sense. At this point, we're going to cover our plastic bowl with plastic wrap, or a dish towel, and let it rest at room temp for 30 minutes to an hour. Are we waiting for it to double in size before we knock it back?
Zoë Kanan:
We're not waiting for it to double in size, and that's because this dough is doing a slow fermentation overnight in the refrigerator. So, this is really just a kickstart to that fermentation. Also, the dough has just been born, it's done all of this work to bring these ingredients together, so this period of room temperature resting allows the flour to hydrate, and the structure to begin to form, the yeast to begin to start munching away. So this room temperature time is just a kickstart for those things, then we introduce the lower temperature when we go into the fridge overnight.
Jessie Sheehan:
Why do we knock it back?
Zoë Kanan:
You knock it back, so that just rearranges the structure of the dough, and it's helpful for the yeast so it finds new things to eat.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love, love, love, love, love. So now we're going to transfer our bowl to the refrigerator to chill and ferment overnight, and the fridge is going to help just that slow chomping, and that's developing flavor and structure.
Zoë Kanan:
Exactly. Exactly. I keep going back to this, but this dough is so sticky, it's so wet. It's actually really hard to work with. It's impossible to work with room temperature, so it has to be thoroughly cold.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to divide and shape the next day, and then we're going to take the dough out of the fridge and we're going to portion it on a lightly flowered surface, and you say this is best done in a cool temp with a shaping buddy. I assume you need the buddy because you have to move fast, and the dough's most pliable when cold. We're going to form the dough into 15 inch ropes, which I think you've said is like akin to what you do when you make challah. You've written, "As you form into these 15 inch ropes, you're freezing each rope as you go if the kitchen is super warm?"
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah. This depends on how many you're making. I'm usually making hundreds of these. So if you're at home and just making 12, then your approach would be a little different. But I start collecting each rope onto a tray, and once I have 15 or 20 formed, I'll move the tray into the freezer and start working on a new tray. That's because I knead, the warmth of your hands rolling the dough, it's now a thinner piece. That means it starts to be softer and more susceptible to the warmth of a room. We want to then re-chill the dough so that it's ready for the next step.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I assume you're taking the dough, you're weighing it on the scale, you're dividing it by however many you're making, and then each one of those pieces of dough, you use your hands just to gently roll out the dough into this 15 inch rope.
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, there are a few more steps to these than the classic donut, but I have gotten really fast at making them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yay. Now it's time, the fun part, we're going to squiggle the dough. Which is a verb, to squiggle. We're going to place one of the ropes on the counter and we're going to form it into a squiggle shape with five humps, so each end is facing you. What ends are facing you? The ends of the humps?
Zoë Kanan:
The ends of the rope. The ends of the rope are both facing you.
Jessie Sheehan:
The idea is, each one is a little hill.
Zoë Kanan:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And they're five hills, and the peaks of the hills face away from you.
Zoë Kanan:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
I got you.
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, the beginning and end of the rope both face you.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is it fair to say that we could do the squiggle with any donut dough that we have?
Zoë Kanan:
Definitely. You can squiggle with any donut dough you have. One thing I haven't tried is a cake donut. But because cake donuts don't have the same gluten structure, I think it's possible it could be done, but I think it would require cutting strips and freezing. I haven't worked that out yet. But if you do it, let me know.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to carefully insert a skewer into our squiggle. So, a couple of skewer questions. Type of skewer? Size of skewer? I assume we're talking wooden.
Zoë Kanan:
We're talking wooden skewers. We're talking wooden, although there's no reason why you couldn't use a metal skewer if that's what you have around and you want to experiment with this shape. So a big revelation for me with skewers is, when I switched from using round skewers to using square skewers. Square skewers, the corners that are on the square grip the dough better. So an issue I was having when I first started making these is that the squiggle would slide down the skewer. The skewer wouldn't necessarily support the weight of the donut. With the square skewer, that's a non-issue.
I look for bamboo skewers. That's typically what's available, and they're less splintery than wooden skewers. I often look for the ones that have a little handle on the end, because it's easier to hold. I use a different brand every time. One thing that's hard about pop-ups is, I have to buy a lot of things from Amazon, and I'm often like crunching timelines and different brand, "Oh, no. This one's out of stock." So a lot of inconsistencies and experimentation, but a 10-inch bamboo skewer that's square.
Jessie Sheehan:
In terms of the size of the squiggle, is a little bit of the skewer poking out each end?
Zoë Kanan:
Yes. I find that the very tip of the skewer needs to stick out about an inch and a half at the top to accommodate for the growth of the dough in the fryer. A 10-inch is just a good size. It gives a little bit of room at the bottom so that you can easily hold the dough, and just looks best with the dimensions of the shape.
Jessie Sheehan:
So that makes me think that, when we're thinking about a pot, if you're planning on squiggling a donut, you want to make sure that you're buying a skewer, ideally maybe a 10-inch pot, you want to make sure that the donuts can lie flat in the oil.
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, that's a really great point, and that has been an ongoing thing for me when I'm making these. If I'm using a professional fryer, it's already that shape. But often, I have a frying setup that my friend Ali from C&B taught me about, which is a hotel pan filled with oil, which is a rectangular shaped pan that is very just standard professional kitchen equipment, smallwares. I'll use that, either on top of an induction burner or on my stove top. That is the best way to fry a lot of donuts at a time.
Jessie Sheehan:
Wow. So, hotel pan. Peeps, you should just imagine a 9 by 13 pan on steroids. So, over almost two burners on your stove?
Zoë Kanan:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I love that. Brilliant.
Zoë Kanan:
So, that is a hack. Doing that on an induction burner has allowed me to be able to make these outside, which is really fun.
Jessie Sheehan:
But, can you just have one burner and then the hotel pan is on the burner?
Zoë Kanan:
I have done that. It's more stable to do it with two. Occasionally, this won't be shocking, we're rolling the dice at pop-ups with our setups. So, ideally it's two side-by-side because that's more supportive. But I have done it with one, and it's just a deep hotel pan, which is four to five inches deep, filled halfway with oil.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. That's such a great tip. So, we're carefully inserting our skewer, it's bamboo, it's square, it's 10 inches, and we're going to go through the center of the squiggle, making sure to pierce directly through the middle, and then sliding each bit of dough down the skewer to space out and finalize our shape. Then we're going to snip the ends to even out. Are we snipping the ends of our skewer, or snipping the ends of our dough?
Zoë Kanan:
We're snipping the ends of our dough, just wanting each end to align exactly with each other. So sometimes it'll be just the tiniest little sliver of dough, because one of the standout aesthetics of these donuts is the squiggle shape. So, I find that them being more even just helps. It's a little bit more pleasing shape.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to transfer our skewers to a parchment-lined non-stick sprayed sheet tray. Do you also spray the paper?
Zoë Kanan:
Yes. I spray the paper, and that's because it's an unusual shape. It can be hard to lift off the parchment. So, it's really important that the parchment is sprayed to help with ease of transferring the dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
At this point, the skewers can be frozen raw for up to three days. I'm always scared to freeze raw yeasted dough. But, do you just do it and you're not scared?
Zoë Kanan:
It depends on the application. The thing with freezing yeasted dough is that there's just a shorter timeline. It's not like a cookie dough where you can just put it in a bag, put it in the freezer, and forget about it, and pull it out like three months later and it's fine. The yeast has a much shorter lifespan. When I'm freezing these donuts, I find that there's a decrease in the capacity of the yeast to rise after three to four days. With these often at pop-ups, I'm just breaking up the process. So that's why they go into the freezer, so they don't over-ferment. I would never do it really for more than a night or two.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, good to know. Do you either let the donuts come back to room temp, and then rise beyond that when you're ready to bake off a frozen donut?
Zoë Kanan:
Yes, they defrost. Ideally, I'm not freezing them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right.
Zoë Kanan:
So then they just go back into the refrigerator overnight after they're shaped, or they're fried later that day.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right.
Zoë Kanan:
Then they come to room temperature, and then they rise for an additional 45 minutes to an hour. This really depends on the ambient temperature of your room. But because the squiggle is such a narrow piece of dough, they rise very quickly.
Jessie Sheehan:
If you've just created your squiggle, you've stuck your skewer in, could you bake right then? Or, you would let it rise for 45 minutes?
Zoë Kanan:
I would let it rise again then. It's not going to double in size or anything. It grows about 30% to 40%, I would say, before it's ready to fry.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. Why is that? Why are we often told, "Double, double, double?"
Zoë Kanan:
I think that's just a baseline visual cue for people. Baking with yeast, it can be intimidating for people at home, and for professionals too. I think that just is a catchall to make sure that your dough has risen enough if you don't know what you're looking for. But, that might not be what's best for the actual outcome of the recipe.
Jessie Sheehan:
Finally, we're going to fry. So we're going to bring our donuts to room temp and then proof, we said that, for 45 to even 90 minutes, depending on the temperature of your kitchen. We're going to heat some canola oil. I wondered if you'd be comfortable with any neutral oil, or if canola is your go-to.
Zoë Kanan:
I think any neutral oil. I prefer canola oil to a vegetable oil. I think Wesson is what I normally would buy from the grocery store. Any neutral oil, so a grapeseed oil is very common, more expensive. Also, another one that's beautiful to fry in is rice bran oil. That's really nice-
Jessie Sheehan:
Rice bran?
Zoë Kanan:
And had good flavor. Yeah, rice bran oil. But, any oil will do. Often, in the professional setting, you're buying a ginormous, many gallon jug of what's called fryer oil, or a frying blend, which isn't as commonly found in the grocery store. But, that's often what I'm using.
Jessie Sheehan:
So, we're going to heat our oil to 350 degrees. Are we using our Goldilocks pot again at this point?
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, our Goldilocks pot or your hotel pan.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right. Right. Great. We're going to gently lift the skewers off the tray, and place them in the hot oil. We're going to allow them to puff up for about 20 seconds. Then we're going to flip them, and fry to golden brown about 45 seconds. Then flip them again for an additional 45, until golden brown. So I found this fascinating because I feel like you're always told not to re-fry a side. You're supposed to just do 45 seconds on one side, 45 seconds on the other, and then pull it. Talk to me about the 20 seconds, then flip for 45, then flip back.
Zoë Kanan:
So the 20-second rise, basically, I find that is the perfect amount of time for the dough to get its initial puff. Then I find that the way, because the dough is just being shocked with that intense temperature, and because this is a pretty well-fermented dough, often if I don't flip it after 20 seconds, I get these really large air pockets that will start to form. So, this is the best technique I've found for really keeping those big air bubbles from forming. As soon as I see the dough grow to the amount that I'm looking for the final product, before it develops any color, I'll then do that immediate flip, and that just helps keep a neater structure, a neater shape.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is that because we're squiggling, or would you do that with a regular donut?
Zoë Kanan:
I often do that with regular donuts. I actually recently did a really fun pop-up with Danielle Spencer at Win Son Bakery in Brooklyn, and they fry a ton of donuts there, because mochi donuts, and they have this red rice donuts.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love their mochi donuts so much.
Zoë Kanan:
It's really, really, really a special donut. But Danielle was the one who was asking me if that's what I normally do. I had done that before, but I hadn't incorporated that into my process. But when we were frying them all for that pop-up, we really found that was the best way to get the most consistent shape. So, now that is standard practice for me.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Now we're going to use a spider, or a slotted spoon. Maybe tell people what a spider is, in case they don't know.
Zoë Kanan:
A spider is one of the best names, I think, for a standard kitchen tool. But, it's basically a long-handled slotted spoon, but it's not a slotted spoon to the extent that it's little holes. It's normally a grate or a grid, almost imagine a cooling rack in a small little round shape. That is what is the typical tool for removing items from a fryer. It has enough support 'cause it's a wide base, to hold the item up, but also allow the oil to drain.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to use our spider, or our slotted spoon, to transfer the donuts to a cooling rack that's inside of a sheet tray, and we're going to allow it to cool for 10 minutes, and then we're going to glaze. So when we glaze, are they still slightly warm?
Zoë Kanan:
This is an interesting question because it depends on the glaze. I often am waiting for the dough to cool for a few minutes. If I glaze them immediately right when they come out of the fryer, then the glaze really just falls off, or absorbs into the dough. Because I'm putting a lot of effort and introducing a lot of flavor to the doughs through the glazes, I want them to really just coat and envelop the dough. The way that I do that is by making a glaze that's the right consistency, almost ribbon consistency, a little bit thicker than you might think, and glazing them when they just have a hint of warmth to them.
Jessie Sheehan:
Are they all confectioners'-based glazes?
Zoë Kanan:
They are all confectioners' sugar-based glazes. I use a squeeze bottle to glaze them, a giant squeeze bottle. If you're home, you can mimic that with a piping bag. It depends on if you want a thinner, more classic yeasted glaze, then you're just looking for a little thin crackly shell, so that you could glaze right away. But because I'm often using whole fruit, or all of these other ingredients, I really want that to be a main element. Confectioners' sugar I have not found success with any other ingredient making a glaze. I have this conversation a lot with people who make donuts. Because, for me, I really need the glaze to set. I need it to have that crackly shell. It's what you're looking for from a donut glaze. It also keeps the glaze from just schmearing all over the place when they're being transported or eaten.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about the honey graham cracker glaze.
Zoë Kanan:
That is one of my signature glazes. It was the very first glaze that I made. It was in a different form. I was calling it a Speculaas glaze. I tinker a lot with this process, but this was very Milk Bar-inspired. Essentially, I take a honey graham cracker, and I bake sheets of it. Then I will grind it into crumbs, and I will make a cookie butter from those crumbs, and add confectioners' sugar and milk, and let that hydrate overnight. Then the next day, I will blend it in a Robot-Coupe or a food processor to emulsify into that luscious cookie butter glaze.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about apple salted caramel.
Zoë Kanan:
That was the second one I did with my friend Savita Bhat. This was a Halloween theme, so we were thinking about Halloween carnivals, and we made apple juice using this technique that I learned in a cookbook. You freeze an apple whole, and then you defrost it and you just squeeze it. Wring it out like you're going to squeeze a lemon, and you get the most pure beautiful apple juice from that. So we started with that, and made our glaze.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is the peel on it when it's frozen?
Zoë Kanan:
Yeah, the peel's on it.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you squeeze it with your hands?
Zoë Kanan:
You squeeze it with your hands. You could put it in a cheesecloth or something. Certainly the recipe where I was reading about the technique, they were needing this very clear, pure, gorgeous apple juice. For me, I'm making it into a glaze, so I just was ringing it with everything I had. But it was a great way to get apple flavor, because apple is a hard one for a glaze. But that was the best technique I found, and that gave us this really beautiful flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Because usually you have to cook down apple cider, and it takes forever.
Zoë Kanan:
Exactly. Here's the thing with donuts, and with glazes, my worst fear is that they are too sweet. It's always going to be sweet. We love sugar. You want sweetness from a donut, usually. But because I'm bringing all of these other flavors into the glaze, I'm always trying to achieve this balance of acidity. With the apple juice, I wanted that fresh green apple flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that.
Zoë Kanan:
So, that's why we went with that direction.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Zoë. I Just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Zoë Kanan:
Thanks, Jessie.
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.