Roxana Jullapat Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You're listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of 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 bake.
Today's guest is Roxana Jullapat, baker, pastry chef, and co-owner of Friends and Family Bakery in Los Angeles. An author of the baking book “Mother Grains.” This native Los Angelean is known for her devotion to whole grains and a pastry case filled with dozens of beautifully executed bakes, think Sonora wheat croissant, blue corn blueberry scones, rye chocolate chip cookies, and iron corn shortbread. And then there are the boules and baguettes and all the other wonderful breads that Roxana and her team make. Roxana joins me to talk all things sourdough bread. She's of course an expert on this subject and guides me through her baking process and the recipe for her fruit nut bread from "Mother Grains.” Stay tuned for my chat with Roxana.
Thank you to Plugra Premium European Style Butter for supporting today's show. As some of you know, I've been a big fan of Plugra for some time now and was introduced to it at my very first bakery job when I was just a newbie baker. Fast-forward to today, I'm a professional baker cookbook author and recipe developer, and I continue to rely on Plugra for all my baking needs. My fridge is always stocked with Plugra sticks and solids. I especially love that Plugra contains 82% butter fat. The higher butter fat content means less moisture and more fat, and as bakers know, fat equals flavor. Plugra butter is also slow churned, making it more pliable and easy to work with. I do a lot of baking this time of year for work and for myself and my family. Comfy bakes like my pistachio chocolate anytime buns and cinnamon sugar buttermilk donut holes, and I always reach for Plugra unsalted butter. I've also been making a lot of yeasted breads lately and I love the buttery flavor Plugra adds to my dough. Plugra Premium European Style Butter is the perfect choice From professional kitchens to your home kitchen, ask for Plugra at your favorite grocery store or visit plugra.com for a store locator and recipes.
Let's check in with today's guest.Roxana, so excited to have you on cheese, my cherry pie and to talk fruit and nuts sourdough bread with you and so much more.
Roxana Jullapat:
Thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yay. So in describing your dessert style, you've said that the kind of pastry you make is honest pastry and I love that. And in describing honest pastry, you've said that you're just not one to use tweezers to put flowers onto your baked goods, which I also love. Can you unpack for us what honest pastry is?
Roxana Jullapat:
Basically, it's very, very reflective of the ingredients that are in the pastry and of the technique that is used in the pastry. So yes, do I love eating all those pastries and desserts and food made with tweezers and tons of flowers? Yes, they're beautiful concoctions and I want to devour them and take all the photos and all of those things, and I have so much respect and admiration for the people that make them. It's just not the pastry that we make. Anything we make at the bakery, I just want you to feel that somebody put their hands in there and that it was a small batch and that it was baked fresh and that we can really speak to every ingredient that's in it, whether it is freshly milled flour to seasonal fruit to a little bit of brown sugar. There are things that don't have fancy names and they're really identifiable.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also wondered if you could tell us what the pastry case looks like on a Saturday or Sunday, 'cause I think I've read that they're maybe like 42 pastries, maybe more. I've also read that when people are surprised by that, you're kind of like, "I opened a bakery to bake." It seems like your philosophy as a baker is kind of go big or go home, right?
Roxana Jullapat:
Well, business is business. So Monday through Friday our sales are very conservative, they're very lunch oriented. This is also LA. This is the town of the cheat day. So Monday through Friday everybody's going to eat a little bit more conservatively. Sales are going to be a little bit different. People are going in for salads and sandwiches, a little bit of breakfast, high protein, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, We sell sourdough loaves and we'll sell our croissants here and there and spelt bread, blueberry muffins that are going out the door. But Saturdays and Sundays are the day that people are really coming in to buy a box of pastries. It's the one day that I get to use all my little treats like I made cherry jam and then I made apple butter and then we made pear confit. So this is our opportunity to use all that stuff. We also make all this laminated dough. Our croissant dough is the beast that we deal with every day. So we have all this dough to make awesome, beautiful, fun shapes. What are we going to put in there? That's how you end up with 42 things.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love, love, love, love. Now I want you to tell us a little bit about your gorgeous, informative first book "Mother Grains.” Can you tell us about what inspired it and what the kind of the premise is for those that don't know the book?
Roxana Jullapat:
So my background is actually in communications. I am a journalism major. So I always have been pretty good-ish about documenting my recipes and keeping a lot of things on file. So when we opened the bakery, it made perfect sense that we would document what we were doing, especially because all those recipes that I had collected over the year, this enormous repertoire. It was 20 years, 15 to 20 years, there's a lot of recipes. So we were morphing all these recipes into whole grain versions of themselves and I really wanted to sort of put that process in paper. In doing so, we kind of gather all this information. It made perfect sense to publish something. So I wrote a book proposal and much to my surprise, there was quite a bit of interest in it.
So it felt that the time to talk about grain was right and I felt that I had to be so persuasive and apologetic of why it was important to use grains and why you should start with just as little percentage and you will see you'll fall in love and you'll do more and more and more. And by the time the book was out, I just couldn't believe how people were like, "You don't need to explain it. This is exactly right. Yeah, sure, we'll put all that grain. That's fine."
Jessie Sheehan:
It's incredible. I love that. There were a couple of fun little fun facts from "Mother Grains" that I loved 'cause they really resonated for me, like little things that you do. I think it's probably a list in the front of the book, but one thing I loved was you say you always rotate your pans when you're baking, which I do too just from my bakery days and also because of hotspots in my own home oven. But it's funny, a lot of people don't. If they don't have to, they don't. But I always feel like the bake is much more even and just makes more sense to me if I do that.
Roxana Jullapat:
And not only that, you're doing it when the recipe is baked halfway, so it gives you an opportunity to see how things are going. It's a quick check.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too. I totally agree. And then I also love this, I think when you're talking about tools, maybe in the tool section of your book, you talk about the importance of your hands. I mean, I'm always literally in the tool section for my new book. I'm literally number one tool, hands. Please get dirty, touch things, separate an egg with your hands. It's okay.
Roxana Jullapat:
Definitely. And not only that is I love the idea. Of course we scale everything and we measure everything, but definitely, definitely everybody should know what one tablespoon of salt feels in your hand. Familiarize yourself with the process. Don't be afraid to put the spoon aside and scoop something with your hand.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I love that. And the final one that I loved is to bake on the dark side. Which is so true. I once heard Carla Hall say something like there's flavor in the brown.
Roxana Jullapat:
100%.
Jessie Sheehan:
And it's so true not to be mean, but these pale pies that people bake.
Roxana Jullapat:
No, thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
I'm just so confused. I know it's golden and golden is pretty, but actually it can be dark. It's okay.
Roxana Jullapat:
There is real science supporting this. This is called Maillard reaction, that caramelization of all these products generates flavor compounds. This is well-documented. It's a scientific fact. We have enough information to know that this is true, but also it's not a matter of flavor. Also, it's a matter of texture, right? Think about all the things that happen when we under-bake.
That means that pastries can sink in the center. That means that pastries can get doughy and feel dull, but it will also affect the way they look. I don't know. There's absolutely no excuse to go pale.
Jessie Sheehan:
I agree. We'll be right back.
Today's episode is presented by California Prunes. The best kind of prunes out there. I'm a big fan of California Prunes for two reasons. They're a great addition to your pantry when it comes to smart snacking and baking. California Prunes are good for your gut, your heart, and even your bones. They contain dietary fiber and other nutrients to support good gut health and vitamin K, copper and antioxidants to support healthy bones. I've started making myself a daily smoothie, which is a great vehicle for incorporating healthy foods into your diet. One of my favorite combinations right now is blueberries and kale with some prunes added for natural sweetness and depth of flavor.
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I've got great news listeners. Jubilee 2024 is taking place Saturday, April 20th at Center 415 in Manhattan and tickets are on sale now. Jubilee is the largest gathering of women and culinary creatives in the food and drink space in the US. It's a beautiful day of conversation and connection and I hope to see you there. You can learn more and snag tickets at cherrybombe.com. Now back to our guest.
Okay, now we're going to talk about your buckwheat fruit nut bread, and I love this, you've said it's a good gateway recipe because the add-ins in some ways are more integral to the flavor of the loaf than the dough itself. So it's a great kind of beginner sourdough, beginner bread recipe for folks. You have buckwheat in here which adds flavor and texture, and I love this too, that you've kind of put your favorite fruits and nuts in this bread and that the high ratio of that makes it really rustic, which I also love. We'll start with the starter. So first, can you tell peeps, I'm sure most listeners know, but can you tell us about what a sourdough starter is?
Roxana Jullapat:
Yeah, sourdough starters are basically a little culture. If you were to look through a microscope, you will see yeast and bacteria. So it's this sort of Petri dish of creatures that get along and do really good things when exposed to flour and water. And this is a live-in thing, so we say refresh the starter or feed the starter, and it is exactly what's happening. Anytime we add flour, which is starch and therefore energy for this living organisms, they are metabolizing this starch in a moist environment, which is why we add water and generating carbon dioxide and ethanol. So eventually alcohol will happen, which is exactly what happens when you make wine or beer, for example, beer being a case in which we use grain also.
If we are putting this in the right ratios to make a bread dough, this will give us the leavening to make this bread rise.
Jessie Sheehan:
A lot of people are intimidated by sourdough and by starters, and I love this line of yours, if you can read a scale, you can make a starter and that you've said that the key is sticking to your schedule. And I also loved this. You said that rye is the best flower for a starter because it's rich and fast acting enzymes. Can you unpack that?
Roxana Jullapat:
Yeah, it is kind of like the energy bar if you were to do it, and I'm not quite sure about the science behind it, but it is more what is it? Is it just like it is more available to the yeast and the bacteria in the sour to starter, so it happens a lot faster. If you were to do a side-by-side comparison, the starter fed with rye is the happiest. However, because it happens so fast, it can also collapse very fast, right? Because starters have you just mentioned that I recommend that you stick to a schedule and that is because it does have a lifespan, right? It will eventually die or it will eventually lose its oomph, so to speak. Which is why we have to feed it on somewhat of a regular schedule.
So rye starter is great, or say a starter fed with rye or a little bit of rye is good to get things started, but eventually you can rely on your wheat or your wheat flour. It's good, for me, in my opinion, I kind of like to use the flour that I'm using in my bread. That's the flour that I want to feed the starter with. Unless I'm using something like, say in this case we have a little buckwheat. I wouldn't feed my starter with buckwheat because buckwheat is a non-gluten as flour. So I definitely want my starter to sort of resemble the bread dough that is going to become.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I know we're going to add filtered water to our starter. We're going to go through the steps of the starter in a minute, but why filtered and do you buy that or do you have a filter in the bakery?
Roxana Jullapat:
Here's my dirty secret. I don't filter. So the reason why we filter is because we know that top water is rich in minerals and it can be harder in some cities than others. So we want to make sure that our starter is as pure as possible or that there is nothing, no heavy metals in there that are going to compromise the quality of a starter. I've made a starter for 20 years and I have to say that I have never seen anything affected by the water to the point where you're like, "Gotta get a water filter." Now I don't want any bred people here angry at me for telling people to not worry about it, but it's just my preference. I'm totally cool with tap water, LA tap water, right on the money. I drink it. The bread can have it. Sounds good.
Jessie Sheehan:
I would say same with New York. When I make sourdough, I don't filter my water.
Roxana Jullapat:
New York is famous for its water, too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, we have very tasty water. Okay, so on day one, this is going to be an eight-day process of making our starter. We're going to combine some dark rye flour .and is dark just your preference or is dark better than, I don't know, rye flour that well. Is there a dark and a light?
Roxana Jullapat:
Dark rye flour is the industry standard for whole grain rye flour. I have a very strong relationship with my local miller here in Los Angeles. It's a small company, women own and operated, and it's called Grist & Toll.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would they ship?
Roxana Jullapat:
Gristandtoll.com, baby.
Jessie Sheehan:
Amazing.
Roxana Jullapat:
Yeah, the rye flour is absolutely beautiful. All of Nan Kohler's flowers are absolutely beautiful.
Jessie Sheehan:
Fantastic.
Roxana Jullapat:
And I can speak with some authority years in to this grain thing. I find very few flowers compared to her, but there's great right flour all over and you should never be like, "Oh, you should only ship this flour from Los Angeles." You have flour. Go ahead and bake. That's more important. Those of us who have access to a local farmer's market, you'll be surprised there might be a flour vendor already.
Jessie Sheehan:
I always think it's important for people, just like you said, if you want to bake, you should be able to bake. If it means you're buying a supermarket brand, no shame in that.
Roxana Jullapat:
No shame in that.
Jessie Sheehan:
No shame never. So we're going to mix our a little bit of dark rye flour with some filtered water. Mix it together. Do you like to use a spatula at this point? A wooden spoon?
Roxana Jullapat:
I am a big fan of wooden tools. Wooden spatula is good. You know those little offset spatulas, they're great just because they're the right size. I realized this because all of a sudden all the bakers are like, "Where are the offset spatulas?" "Oh, in the bread station, they're easy to clean. They do the job. I whittle my wooden spoons."
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh, I'm ending the interview.
Roxana Jullapat:
No, no, no, no. This is the worst part. I am repurposing broken peels.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh.
Roxana Jullapat:
This just started by the way, this just started.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. Okay, so we're going to cover at room temp, and that was our first day, flour and filtered water. Then on day two we're going to add some bread flour and some whole wheat flour and a little bit more water. So now we add our bread and whole wheat and we're giving it a little bit of food. And on day three we add a little bit more water, a little bit more whole wheat, a little bit more bread, and now we're going to discard part of the culture from day one and two. And then we repeat on day four. On day five, we start feeding our starter every eight to 12 hours.
Roxana Jullapat:
So twice a day.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Prior to this was we were going 24. So it's our whole wheat, it's our bread and our water, and then we discard part of the culture. Are you saving any of the discard to make a pancake? To make a this, to make a that?
Roxana Jullapat:
Reality is you will always have more discard that you can use.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Roxana Jullapat:
But yes, it does make great pancakes. You can also dry it and spread it on a parchment paper and dry it and flakes and give it to other people that don't want to make their own starter. That's easy to reconstitute with a little water later. But yeah, you will always have more discard. So I think that anybody who's going to foster a starter in their lives should come to terms with the fact that there will be starter going down the drain.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes. On day eight, we're ready to use our starter. It should be bubbly, frothy, have a pleasantly sour smell, and then you'll be using some of the starter for the recipe and then the rest of it you'll continue to feed. That's how one keeps their starter alive. So now we're going to make the bread. You need to start with this bread. If you're going to make it in a Dutch oven in the oven, you need either a round banneton or you can make it, which I also love, in a loaf pan. But tell us for those that maybe don't know what a banneton is, and if one doesn't have a ton, can we use just kind of a shallow mixing bowl and-
Roxana Jullapat:
Absolutely all of the above. So I'm actually a fan of a loaf pan. I think that that will be a cookbook I would write, The Loaf Pan, For the Love of the Loaf Pan, but it's a great shape. Everything bakes well. There's a variety-
Jessie Sheehan:
Also, I have to say I love eight and a half by four and a half inch. So much better than nine by five. I mean I know it's so finicky, but it just looks the tight sides, the tight corners.
Roxana Jullapat:
It does it all. I think also what is good is there are so many little steps where you can be great in bread making and it's what maybe makes some people shy away from making bread. The fact that you put it in a loaf pan and gives you a good shape. Hell yeah. Can we just do that?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Roxana Jullapat:
So that's why I do like to bake this bread mostly in a loaf pan. It also then gives you really nice sized toast. But yes, you can use a bowl, right? It can ferment in that bowl and you can just release it from the bowl and then put it in the oven, in the Dutch oven. You could use a banneton, which is usually is a basket basically. They're made out of pulp, but a little bit of wood. Sometimes they're lined with a little linen. You could also use just a towel and have it on a plate. The only thing is that your dough will slack.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's nice to give it structure with some kind of shape.
Roxana Jullapat:
Structure.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I just wanted to mention, so we're getting our loaf pan or our banneton ready or a bowl, but it's going to take us two days. So peeps plan accordingly in the morning of our first day around maybe 6:00AM so we have lots of time. So this is for early risers or you can do it later and stay up late. But at around 6:00AM you're going to feed your starter. And so it'll be ready to use in about eight or 10 hours, and maybe that day you'll candy your kumquats.
And if you don't have kumquats, you can use grapefruit or orange or lemon peels, and you're going to candy by blanching three different times for one minute intervals and boiling water, and then simmer the blanched kumquat and sugar and water and a vanilla bean plus its scraped pulp until translucent and then cool completely. I love that. So that's our kumquats. The other thing we're going to do at this point is toast our pecans. And you have the most amazing pecan toasting tip, which is about eight to 10 minutes, but this is the part of the tip I love that you then cut the, if you're not sure, usually I just smell the nut and then I know it's ready. But if you're not sure, I love this. Roxana says to cut the nut in half, and if the inside is golden, you know you're there.
Roxana Jullapat:
You're there.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I love a visual. I think it's always nice when you write recipes anyway to have a couple of cues. So it's not just fragrant, it's not just thyme, it's also this.
Roxana Jullapat:
Well, and what smells toasted to you might be burnt to someone else.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, so true. So true. Okay, so now it's been about eight to 10 hours after feeding our starter, and now we're going to hydrate or autolyse our bread flour, our whole wheat flour and our buckwheat by mixing it together with warm filtered water.
Roxana Jullapat:
Why warm? So it will actually accelerate the process because we know that this starter, this family of yeast and bacteria performs better in a warmer environment. So you're basically giving your bread a leg up.
Jessie Sheehan:
Love it. And now we're going to let it sit covered with plastic wrap or a dish towel. What do you prefer?
Roxana Jullapat:
Either.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Roxana Jullapat:
Yeah, you can also put it in a container with a lid.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, perfect. For about one hour till a wet and sticky dough forms, can you tell us why we autolyse or hydrate?
Roxana Jullapat:
Yeah, so basically we talk so much about mixing and how important mixing is and how great it is to do folds into your bread to add strength to the dough. But at the end of the day, flour has all the components to develop its strength and flexibility, and that happens with water and time. So you would notice that from the beginning of that hour, 60 minutes later, that dough is completely different. If you were to even pull from it, you already see that flexibility and then you're going to mix it with the sourdough and that will make it a little stronger. And then you will also perhaps fold it onto itself, which will make it even stronger. But that initial step is everything.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that we're empowering our flour. So now we're going to soak our nuts, our kumquats, some figs, golden raisins and currants for about 10 minutes in a covered bowl and then strain them through a sieve. Why are we soaking?
Roxana Jullapat:
So the idea of soaking is to make sure that all these things that are generally dry have their own moisture so they don't pull out moisture from the dough itself. Love that. And then I strain through whatever works.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. And is that what you do with all any add-ins? I mean, not a chocolate chip, but any add-ins that when you're baking, you're going to soak?
Roxana Jullapat:
For the most part, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Like a regular, let's say we're making a loaf bread that's just leavened with baking powder and maybe a little bit of baking soda and it has currants in it. Would you soak them?
Roxana Jullapat:
I would say that if we're talking about say, a quick bread, I may not do that because I have a lot more control of moist ingredients in that kind of cake or quick bread then I would in a sourdough.
Jessie Sheehan:
Makes sense. And also because the sourdough, when you're working with yeast, be it commercial or natural, it's going to have to wait a long, long time with those. So smart. So now by hand we're going to combine the starter, the hydrated or autolysed flowers, the soaked fruit and nuts, some kosher salt, buckwheat honey. Why do we need the honey? I assume you like the buckwheat 'cause it goes with the buckwheat flour.
Roxana Jullapat:
Yeah, mother and child kind of sorta, just for that reason really. But I find buckwheat honey to be pretty freaking amazing. It happens because the hives sort of are collecting their pollen next to buckwheat plants and buckwheat in California is a cover crop, which means that it's a transition crop in between say, vegetables, right? Or other grains. Its role is to keep the soil rich and in good shape. I find that really romantic. So you have all those bees that pollinate all these flowers, that pollen creates a really, really dark amber honey, very, very, very assertive. Really, really delicious. Not for the faint of heart. It is a little bit higher in all the good things and it will help you fight a cold, all that kind of stuff.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you just add the little bit of honey to the bread for flavor or is it playing a role?
Roxana Jullapat:
For flavor, for synchronicity? Kind of like a little mystique in there. And also if you wish, you can also brush the top of the loaf when it comes out with that.
Jessie Sheehan:
We've mixed all of these things together to form the dough and you mix well to distribute all those add-ins. Then we're going to transfer to a clean bowl.
Roxana Jullapat:
Whatever works for you. At the bakery, obviously we use a lot of non-reactive bowls, so those are great. You could also use Tupperware. That works, Tupperware with a lid also.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. So we're going to let the dough proof at a warm room temperature for about three and a half to four hours until it's risen by about a third. Then we're going to shape into a boule. So that means we're going to transfer the dough to a flowered work surface. And is at this point, which flower would you use to flower your work surface?
Roxana Jullapat:
This bread in particular has refined bread flour, so I would just use that. That's easy enough.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're going to gently flatten the dough into a rough rectangle, bring all four corners to the center, kind of that thing you do where you're kind of pulling each corner over, pinch the corners together on the top and then invert the boule, turn the boule over onto your work surface. And then we're gently rotating the bull against the surface, which is like where you cup your hands?
Roxana Jullapat:
And that kind of creates a little bit of a seam at the bottom. We call that the belly button at work, actually.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So you're sealing the bottom where those four corners connected. Then we're going to generously flour our banneton if we're making it in a Dutch oven with rice flour. Now I also use rice flour, but can you remind me why I can't remember why everyone wants us to use rice flour.
Roxana Jullapat:
It's pretty gritty and kind of dry, so it's really good about not getting absorbed by the dough. So it remains that sort of that protection separation layer in between the banneton and the dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I know just because it's what I buy, that there's a Bob's Red Mill rice flour product. But is that another flower that you're-
Roxana Jullapat:
No, that's totally great.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, perfect.
Roxana Jullapat:
At this point it's a tool, right? We won't taste it, so maybe we don't want to spend a lot of money on it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, I hear you. And so we're going to place our boule inside our banneton with the seam up because it's going to get inverted later. If we're doing this in a loaf pan, we would just place the boule seam side down in the loaf pan lightly coated with a non-stick spray. And we're going to refrigerate either way, loaf or banneton overnight. And I thought this was interesting, why uncovered?
Roxana Jullapat:
When you leave it uncovered, you kind of build the skin and that skin makes it easy for us to either slash in the morning. It is very easy to invert it and then it's not sticky. So it's just for easy handles.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I feel like most recipes will tell you to cover and I've had sticky issues and also sometimes I'm not as great with my lame as I want to be. So that's such a great tip. Now we're going to bake the bread. So in the morning of the next day, we're going to remove the bread from the refrigerator about an hour before baking, preheat our oven to about 450 and we're going to place the lid on our Dutch oven.
Roxana Jullapat:
Do I love Dutch ovens? Yes. There's so many great ones and you can go as pricey, as Le Creuset, right? Or you can go as affordable as Lodge. They're all the same and really, really great. However, have you heard of the Challenger Baker?
Jessie Sheehan:
No.
Roxana Jullapat:
Oh, this is a beautiful, beautiful piece of equipment. So it is mostly a flat surface with a beautiful lid dome. It is a little bit pricey, but for those serious bread bakers I think is a really great tool. It's also very safe to use because it has handles on the top. Those Dutch ovens can get a little cumbersome. So that's a really great tool. That's really great toy, great investment if you're serious about this bread baking thing.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to place the Dutch oven or the Challenger baker into the oven for about 30 minutes before baking. Also, just a note to people, I know it's different in a restaurant kitchen, but it does take ovens a long time to preheat. You really want to give your oven time.
Roxana Jullapat:
And not only are we preheating the oven, it's almost like we're preheating the oven and then we're preheating the Dutch oven in the oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
Exactly. So it might even take longer than usual. So now we're going to cut a piece of parchment paper, a few inches wider than the boule, and we're going to invert the banneton onto the parchment paper to release the bread. And we're going to use a lame.
Roxana Jullapat:
It's just a razor. Whatever works for you. I would say that most of us or many of us have dull knives at home. So a knife is not great, but if you happen to have a really, really sharp, say Japanese thin knife, carbon steel or something like that, yeah, of course you can use that.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to use a lame or a sharp pairing knife, sharp Japanese knife to cut an X about a half inch deep on the surface of the boule. Can you tell us why we do this to let this-
Roxana Jullapat:
So basically, the slash is pretty first and then second is also our way of telling our bread this is where you want to open up and expand. If not, the bread will choose for itself, so it might explode somewhere else in funky shapes. We've all done that. But when we do this open, this is where we say this is your vent. This is where you're going to release all your gas and prep up.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to carefully remove our hot Dutch oven, remove the lid, lift our parchment paper from those sides since we made the parchment paper longer than the boule, but about the same width as the boule. Lift the parchment paper transfer to our Dutch oven, put the lid back on into the oven. If we're doing it in a loaf pan, we're just going to cover with foil into the oven. For both. We bake for about 30 minutes and then at the 30-minute mark, remove our foil. Remove our lid. And I loved you had a little explanation for why we're covering about helping the dough to retain enough steam. Can you explain that?
Roxana Jullapat:
Sure. So the reason why we cover when we bake in a home oven, we cover with foil in the case of the loaf, or you put the lid in the case of the Dutch oven is because we want the steam generated by all that hydration in the boule or in the dough to stay around the surface of your bread. And in doing that, keeping that sort of outer layer supple and allowing that dough to expand. If you didn't do that, the radiant heat from the oven will seal that outer layer, stopping that dough from expanding as much as it could. 20 to 30 minutes of covering your dough will give you that.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. I've always done that, but I didn't know the reason I was doing that. So I love knowing that. Now we remove the lid or the tinfoil, we bake another 15 to 20 minutes, and at this point that removal of the lid does help the bread exterior caramelize and bake, and we get our chewy crust. The bread is ready when the crust is a dark mahogany brown. We talked about the importance of a dark bake. And a digital thermometer inserted in the center reads 200. Are you using one in the bakery or are you so used to what it looks like that you don't even need it?
Roxana Jullapat:
We use thermometers every day. Every day we temp everything. It kind of like, it's sort of our thermometer to tell us exactly where we're at. Just knowing the temperature of the dough will tell us how long it will take for us for the bread to rise. Knowing the internal temperature of a loaf will tell us if it's ready or how much longer does it have. For example, in our deck oven now we know that it takes five minutes to go up by 10 degrees, so that's great information. So yes, definitely we trust ourselves and all our instincts, but definitely we are, they're just terrific tools. I love that.
Jessie Sheehan:
If it's the boule, we're going to invert it onto a cooling rack to release the bread and cool completely and before slicing. If it's in the pan, we let it stay in the pan for about 30 minutes and then we remove it, let it rest for about an hour before slicing. Why are we putting things in paper bags? I mean, not things, bread. I always do that or I always think that's the ideal. Why is a paper bag so better than plastic wrap, for instance?
Roxana Jullapat:
Plastic wrap of course works well. Paper is just a little bit of a friendly environment because plastic wrap is touching the skin and paper is still allowing our crusts to stir a little dry. Sometimes when you wrap it with plastic you'll notice that exterior of the bread can moist in a little bit, but either one works.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. Can you tell us a little bit about your rye chocolate chip cookies and your incredible cardamom buns, which I think might be your fave?
Roxana Jullapat:
Yeah, two strong faves up there. There were a couple of missions I had in life when I opened this bakery. One is like I want to make micros sons have Sonora wheat because it is the emblematic wheat of California. It grows well here. It has been here for a hundred years. Is the flour the southwest. It's sustainable, blah, blah. But then I also knew that I wanted to use a different flour in the everyday chocolate chip cookie. So chocolate and rye, I mean hello, best friends. Best friends, right? Very compatible flavors, excellent texture together.
So you have melty chocolate, a little bit of chew from the rye and rye adds a little bit of sourness or acidity to the dough that is a really, really good balance, adds a little bit of balance to the cookie. It actually became a very grown up cookie to me, which I'm fine, I'm fine. Not everything has to be chocolate chunk kind of thing. So that makes us really happy. That's a really, really interesting cookie. However, I have made chocolate chip cookies with every flour under the sun. Sometimes I want to do something else, but I think that would be a revolt, so I won't try that again.
Cardamom buns are near and dear to my heart. I found them just traveling. It was a completely unexpected experience. I was in a really beautiful bakery that probably one of my favorites in the world is called June of the Baker.
Jessie Sheehan:
I've been.
Roxana Jullapat:
Oh, beautiful. In Copenhagen, right? I've been every time I've been there and it was not what I went there for. I went there for a rye loaf and I bought two and put them in my bag and I was on my way to the airport. I'm in the airplane and I am like, "Okay, let's have one of those things." And it was really one of those moments where the earth stood still and it was just a really, really magical bite that I can still remember every second of that experience.
But what is really, really fascinating is that I didn't know that there was such a tradition of baking with cardamom in Scandinavia. My husband is Swedish-American. We had made pepparkakor together, but I don't really know that I understood the extent of the presence of cardamom in their baking. So I went down the rabbit hole and I did a gazillion testers. I happened to have a Danish baker on my crew. She's been with me for six years, Maya. And she kept telling me like, "No, that's not the one," we played around forever until we found our happy medium. I made a friend, a Swedish-American baker and writer in her own right, Erica Landon, she lives in Santa Barbara. And she was like, "Let me help you develop this recipe." So I had true experts behind this project and we make them only Saturday and Sunday. Only Maya and I make them to this day. My favorite thing to make, my favorite thing to eat.
Jessie Sheehan:
Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Roxana. And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Roxana Jullapat:
And you are mine.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugra Premium European Style Butter and California Prunes for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen and tell your baking buddies about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producer's Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu. And our editorial assistant is Londun Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.