- Liza: Welcome, everyone, to "food.

curated.” a show that takes you behind the scenes to meet today's most inspiring food makers.

Stick around for a mouthwatering episode, covering fresh trends in the field of baking.

(upbeat music) I'm Liza de Guia, documentary filmmaker and food lover.

I invite you to discover the people and passion behind good food in New York City.

This is "food.

curated."

Funding for food.

curated.

is made possible by.

Stele is a globally curated collection of artisanal and independent perfumes.

Hand-picked olfactory experiences that tell a story.

Available online and at two New York locations.

For more info, we're at Stele (dot) nyc.

Support for food.

curated.

comes from CMD Psych.

Bringing a holistic approach to child wellness and women's mental health care.

Helping patients find balance and harmony in their lives.

For more info, head to CMD Psych (dot) com Additional Funding provided by.

(music) Bakers are always innovating.

Look around, you'll notice new energy, ingredients, and artistic expression blossoming.

Many women owned bakeries are leading these changes going against tradition, advocating healthy grains, or bold new aesthetics.

The women in this episode are driven by their own rules and personal missions, sprinkling a little more joy on the baking world.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) -Anna: I think cakes are having a bit of a moment right now and embracing new ideas, especially ones that aren't just clawingly sweet or just covered in sprinkles, maybe sweet with a spice, sweet with an herb, sweet with layers of flavor to it.

Expanding this idea of, like, bringing fresh flowers and asymmetrical design, and people are really drawn to a new style of cake.

And I'm all for it.

Hi, my name is Anna Gordon.

I am the Founder, Chef, and CEO of the Good Batch Bakery based in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

(upbeat music) (mixing sound) I'm gonna be building a desert watercolor cake right now, which is, yeah, inspired by really a sunset in the desert.

And it's built with a palette of this just light peach, pale sienna and this more fuchsia and a yellow.

The ombre of colors on the inside of the cake as well.

A lot of it was just kind of trial and error to see how I wanted it to look in my own style.

And I'm gonna leave the top open 'cause you'll see how I'll take all the frosting from the side and put it onto the top.

So that's where we start.

(laughs) It makes me happy.

It evokes an emotion, you know, like... (upbeat music) These watercolor cakes are just very exciting to me because I get to incorporate sort of my artistic style directly into a product.

and then there just becomes a point where it's like, okay, that's it.

- [Liza: Gotta like...] - Anna: Don't touch it.

- [Liza: Spatula down.]

- Spatula down.

(upbeat music) The Good Batch bakery is primarily a cookie bakery, specializing in American baked goods.

We do cookies, ice cream sandwiches, and cakes.

I think our philosophy is making really good food that people crave and want to come back to, using real good ingredients, natural ingredients, making cookies that are hearty and memorable, and putting as much effort into a cookie as say, as someone would maybe put into, like, a three-course meal.

Certainly, our ice cream sandwiches in particular, they're, I think what makes them so special is that they are a bit of a plated dessert in a sandwich form.

This is our coffee macaron ice cream sandwich with a tahini-almond macaron cookie, coffee caramel buttercream, coffee ice cream, and crushed espresso beans.

(upbeat music) (sprinkles mixing sound) I love ice cream sandwiches, I always have.

I'm clearly a Chipwich fan.

This is very much homage to that.

This is a lemon buttercream on top of a confetti birthday cake cookie.

So each of these pucks, gets rolled into sprinkles.

Yeah, when I was developing an ice cream sandwich, I really had the whole experience in mind.

I wanted to make sure that when you bite into the sandwich, that you're getting the crunch of the cookie with the soft melt of the ice cream.

And it was really important that the ice cream didn't melt before the cookie.

So the whole thing is kind of coming to room temperature at the same time.

There's no dripping, there's no spludging.

(gentle music) When I started The Good Batch, it was in 2010, and I was fresh out of pastry school.

And I knew I wanted to start my own cookie company.

I am such a cookie lover.

It's just always been something close to my heart.

And I was specifically baking my own recipes.

I was really fascinated by the baking science and taking a recipe that I thought was interesting and kind of going on a journey with it and bringing it to somewhere else that I hadn't seen before.

I really, like as much as possible, when I'm doing something colorful like this, to have to kind of put in a couple different colors.

So this is, like, an orange and it blends into a yellow.

And I find that the messiness gives a little bit more of a natural look.

It's a olive oil cake, and on the inside is a strawberry cream, which is a strawberry curd that I folded in with fresh whipped cream.

And then they're topped with these colorful petals and leaves.

That is actually a lavender Italian meringue buttercream.

All right.

So with this new cake menu, I knew I wanted to freshen up what we're doing, and I started with our existing cakes.

And really just took everything that we're already doing and elevated it.

I brought in new technique, I brought in new flavors.

And I really wanted to have a cake that was untraditional, both to our existing menu and also cakes in general.

And the top I just had a lot of fun with.

So this is a new cake.

It's a brown butter caramel cake.

And it is a vanilla cake layers with caramel, a house made blackberry compote, brown buttercream, crunchy little bits of our brown butter cookie.

We take and turn it into a little bit of a crumb.

And I wanted to bring in a bit of a sharper flavor to it, which was the blackberry.

I wanted something to kind of play with those flavors and give a little more dynamic and dimension.

Mmmm.

Oh, I don't stop to eat these often, in it's composed form.

Mmmm.

This would make a very delicious wedding cake.

And then there's a little bit of saltiness from the cookie crumb, which is really nice too.

It's a really good cake.

(laughs) I am kind of always drawing ideas out.

And painting and drawing for me, it allows me to take these ideas which are often very visually based, and then put them down on paper.

And as someone who loves to wander in the woods a lot, I think I can draw inspiration from nature more.

I can draw inspiration from being in an art museum and seeing things on the wall and incorporating that into buttercream.

(laughs) (gentle music) It's been a really fun process.

In fact, it's probably been one of the most fun, creative projects I've done with The Good Batch.

(gentle music) - [Liza] Pretty - [Anna] Oh.

(gentle music) - Nora: Sometimes, like, when I see a starter that's perfectly ripe and about to be mixed.

I'm like, (snaps finger), Yes!

(gentle music) Nora: Grains are not the most exciting thing to think about.

I also do think it's something that we take for granted.

We can just grab a bag of flour and it's there.

When I see flour downstairs, I'm thinking about, like, how much, like, I have anxiety when handling it in the same way that maybe, you know, chefs feel when they're handling proteins.

Just having that respect for how important they are not only translates into our product, but it also overall encourages a more proactive and helpful thinking about our entire local food system.

(gentle music) Hi, my name is Nora Allen.

I'm the Executive Head Baker at Mel The Bakery in Chinatown, New York.

(gentle music) Grains and legumes being part of a farmer's crop rotation strengthen their top soil.

If you don't care about grains, if you want me to stop talking about grains, just consider that if you care about any farm fresh produce, you get zucchini, strawberries, cherries, what have you.

Grains play an important role in making those happen and making that farm more resilient to make them happen in the future.

Well, it's 9:15.

We're at the... So when I get in at 4:00, I load the oven, check the starters, feed the starter 'cause we actually have two mix cycles.

The countries that I'm mixing now will all get our second starter, and then I'll feed the starter again once I mix them.

It's a clean flavor, like I don't like an overly sour sourdough 'cause I wanna taste the flour and I want to taste what's going on.

And it was really sour, sour, sour sourdoughs to me are really distracting.

(upbeat music) Mel's a neighborhood bakery, like really focused on being just a small spot that you can rely on for a really thoughtful product.

Almost all of our stuff comes from New York state, from our dairy to our flours, our grains, constantly evolving to be more and more actively part of this local and regional food system that, you know, we're working hard to make stronger.

This is our dough for our country and our focaccia.

The whole point is taste what's going on.

So... (gentle music) When I use, like, a lot of one flour in something, I have to, like, really like it.

And the Small Valley, like, we use that and Farmer Ground Half White in our croissants and then a little bit of rye.

So there's like a lot of depth in there.

So here at Mel we have both a croissant and a bread program, all sourdough.

It's very seasonal.

Rye is unusual to put in croissants because it's structurally a complicated grain.

We add just enough so that you see the bran, and you see it in the croissant, but you also just get like that richness of flavor.

But I always just found it so bizarre from a very young age working in food that we neglect flour in that way because especially for things like bread where you have three ingredients and you wanna build a flavor, why would you not build flavor in your flour?

(gentle music) So these actually are a touch under proofed I'm being hypercritical, that's why they're so small.

Some of these look better than others, but they're... shaped too tight.

(gentle music) I think our menu is exciting because everything from croissants to our breads contain a percentage of fresh milled flours.

And some, like, our rugbrød are 100% fresh milled inhouse.

Like right now we're running a ramp croissant with poppy seeds and gouda cheese, or like a gouda.

We always have our einkorn poppy seeded miche.

And we 99% of the time have our spelt baguette.

So this is our red fife.

I mean it's called a hard wheat that's hard, it's typically synonymous with, like, the protein content.

Whereas this is einkorn, which is like an ancient grain and you can see it's like longer and softer.

It has a lot of flavor.

Every pastry almost gets topped with some extra little touch that's just like an extra piece of love.

We put a lot of olives in our bread.

We wanna make sure every loaf has more olives than, you know, what to do with it.

Everyone who works here, we all try to make sure that it's end point is a special place, you know.

These are the spelt baguettes.

These are easier to eat.

Sometimes people like them a little more.

It's all about accessibility.

Sometimes when you are really passionate about local food and food systems, it can be really alienating of a lot of people and customers And I wanted people to feel a part of it, like coming here and ordering something simple like our banana bread, which is over 50% fresh milk barley and talking about it and calling it barley banana bread and having people talk about, oh yeah, I had a great barley banana bread.

So this is our country loaf.

Our hydration on this one is around 95% soft crumb.

It's our number one wholesale bread and it's probably our most popular retail bread.

Having people ask more questions about what is spelt, what is barley, what is, you know, what is einkorn?

Just having people begin to ask those questions creates this curiosity, and that curiosity can lead to a demand.

And the more that people seek out these grains from our local food system, the more incentive there is for farmers to delegate more acreage to them.

(gentle upbeat music) People are always like, your bread tastes like it's almost seasoned.

And I'm like, It's seasoned with grains, like.

(gentle music) I think just a marvel of bread and why it's always been a part of our society and our civilization is it's a transformational food.

(gentle music) That line between refined and rustic, it's like a hard line to walk in the same way.

And I feel like that's kind of in the spirit of Mel, I would say.

I care about doing what I do and standing behind what I do.

And I will never extend beyond that.

(gentle music) (music) (upbeat music) - Kelly: I literally tell everyone that, like, this is my dream job.

(gentle music) I never thought anyone would give me a chance at, like, developing my own program.

And I just wanna show people how good something can be and, like, pastry, you know.

I'm up at 5:00 AM.

And I'm a morning person.

I'm ready to go.

Happy bread makes me happy.

I guess it basically comes from my personality, you know, and I'm very meticulous, I'm very organized and that, you know, reflects a lot more in pastry.

And plus, like, I would honestly rather eat a slice of cake and ice cream for dinner than anything else.

So that's how it goes.

(gentle music) So I don't know, what draws me to pastry, I guess is, you know, you have to eat food, right?

You have to have a meat and veg or whatever and like, people don't have to have pastry.

- [Kelly whispers] The jammers.

I mean, I do, I eat chocolate every day.

(laughs) But I don't know, it's something special, it's a treat.

And I just, I like making people happy.

Hi, my name is Kelly Mencin.

I am the Pastry Chef and Baker at Rolo's in Ridgewood, Queens.

Get a lot of stair work in here.

It definitely helps that I have my own space.

Also I've been doing this for I don't know how many months now, so I have such a routine down.

This is like a big day.

(gentle upbeat music) So these get trayed up.

(upbeat music) I think our pastry and bread program is so unique because there's so much you can get under one roof, ice creams and bread and plated desserts and, you know, and pastries.

[bread sound hitting tray] It's a little bit of everything, and it keeps me on my toes and really engaged.

All right.

Nice and bubbly.

So we're gonna flip and then all that sugar is gonna go to the top.

Big reveal.

The smell that this makes in the kitchen is just, it reminds me of Cinnabon.

We say that the food is simple but executed perfectly.

Almost all the recipes that, you know, that I've built from scratch here have gone through a major trial and error.

So there it is.

We're gonna preheat and bake the jammers.

(upbeat music) So these are a biscuit dough, but with just a ton of butter in them.

And then they're folded four times.

They're basically treated almost like a croissant.

So you get all these layers.

So you'll see once they bake, that's why they're like so flaky and light.

We try and pair things down to the bare minimum, like if there is, you know, fluff or like extras, it has a purpose.

(timer buzzing) So these baked hot and fast.

Creme fraiche, heavy cream, and a little bit of sugar.

This is what goes on top of the jammers.

(upbeat music) The creme fraiche is nice and tart, so it's not too sweet.

The jammers, that's gonna be their new name.

(upbeat music) I don't know, my brain never turns off when it comes to pastry.

It's things that I'm craving.

Just something that, you know, hints at familiar, but it's also like a bit of a surprise.

Yeah, brownies and cookies, we do sell all day.

The brownie is my beloved item.

It's cakey, but also chewy and fudgy.

And so far I've only heard the good feedback.

(gentle music) Most of our bread is pretty high hydration, which makes it a nice open crumb and not too dense.

It's like a 48-hour fermentation for this dough.

We have focaccia usually out by 9:30 in the mornings.

We do two bakes of that a day.

It's a sourdough focaccia and the toppings change, but we always have our tomato, we call it tomato pie.

And it's, you know, a simple tomato sauce with garlic and oregano and pepper.

We use jersey, fresh tomatoes, lots of sauce.

And then we have our grape and olive with rosemary, which is like deliciously salty and sweet.

Grapes may seem, I don't know, a bit surprising on focaccia, but it's actually pretty classic So fresh rosemary, lots of olive oil.

It also helps the rosemary not to burn.

I mean, we are making 20 focaccia a day, like pretty major production for a small restaurant.

So this is stracciatella.

It's lightly seasoned, so we're gonna finish it with a little bit of more Maldon and some pepper.

That's ready to go.

We're just trying to make what we want to eat and then put that in front of people and hope that they like it as much as we do.

So nice and crunchy.

Happy.

That's a happy focaccia.

(upbeat music) All right, we're going upstairs.

People can see at least I think, you know, I think it really shows that I love my job.

I love what I do.

The happier that you are and the staff are, I think it for sure shows in the food.

(upbeat music) - Liza: The craft of baking is progressing with women at the forefront of its evolution.

I invite you to get out to your local bakeries and explore these new ideas in the pastry case.

That's all for this episode of "food.

curated."

I'm Liza de Guia.

Be sure to connect with us on social media and eat more stories.

I'll see you next week.

(gentle music) Funding for food.

curated.

is made possible by.

Stele is a globally curated collection of artisanal and independent perfumes.

Hand-picked olfactory experiences that tell a story.

Available online and at two New York locations.

For more info, we're at Stele (dot) nyc.

Support for food.

curated.

comes from CMD Psych.

Bringing a holistic approach to child wellness and women's mental health care.

Helping patients find balance and harmony in their lives.

For more info, head to CMD Psych (dot) com Additional Funding provided by.

Craving more about the stories behind the craft.

Dive deeper into the makers we care about.

On our social pages, and at foodcurated dot com.

[music] [music] [music]