[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by Nettle Meadow Farm, Cheese and Spirits Pairing, taking place on Saturday, June 18th at Nettle Meadow Farm. For more information, visit Nettle, Meadow, Cheese and Spirits.com. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, I'm Jimmy Carbone from Beer Sessions Radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Raider Network.org for 1000s more.

[0:31] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network from

[0:38] Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Every Tuesday from roughly 12, roughly 1245, 1250. Have with me today the okay, so 1st of all, got Jackie Molecules, thank goodness, is in the booth. We don't have him for that much longer in the booth because he's going to go out, you know, touring on the road there. How you doing, Jack? I You know who you don't have in the studio today? Two people that we don't have in the studio today that we're supposed to have in the studio are

[1:02] Nastasia de Hammer Lopez. Now, Nastasia, her sister graduated from Yale this week. Congrats. Yeah, congrats. So she was driving back from Connecticut and the hydraulic clutch in the car she borrowed from her buddy. Luke who lives in New York and has a stick shift. It's freaking. really funny you bring that up because I'm looking for somebody with a stick shift because I have to drive stick in Iceland and I don't know how. I can't find anybody with a stick shift in New York. know why? To prove your point. Yeah, right, exactly. It gets you off the when a light turns green, you're always the 1st one to, you know, if you have to vie with another car for position, if you have a stick shipped, even if it's like a VW bug, you will beat any top of the line sports car with the acceleration from 1st to second, boom, you

[1:46] can, you just go very fast. What about when you're stop and go on the FDR? Then you get like hip problems over many years. Yeah, anyway, so what I'm saying is, so it burns out. And so she's not, she's not here right now. I think I think she lost hydraulic pressure. a hydraulic clutch in the car that she was driving. Anyways, but Is she okay? Yeah, yeah, she's fine. she didn't get hit. No, no, she's pulled off the side of the road. What was not working? The accelerated the brake? No, so if you're, so the hydraulic system on the, on the clutch, if you, basically, if there's a leak in the system, it just leaks

[2:17] pressure, and the clutch pedal falls to the floor. Now ordinarily, you can still kind of get moving. She smelled burning, which at 1st she thought was the plate actually burning during driving, but, you know, after further

[2:28] thinking, We think it's probably the burning oil that was leaking out that she was smelling. But a lot of times with a hydraulic clutch when it goes, you can get it to run. You just can't use the clutch, but you can get it to run and go, but she wasn't able to get it to go. But here's the good part. So for those of you that know our section of the country, the east coast, I 95 is the road that runs. It's a flaming sack of crap. There's usually 2 or 3 trucks on fire at any given time. often literally a flaming sack of crap. Yes. So anyway, so for those of you that drive like through Connecticut, along 985 or the merit, I 95 or the merit, there is a town with a sign that I love. It's my anus. And my anus is... Yeah, yeah, it's next to Coscob. So you can do like cornhole myenus chokes constantly. And whenever there's traffic in Mayenas, I never, ever fail to say, heavy traffic through my anus, like every single time, even if it's just my dog in the car with me, I say it every

[3:29] time. So literally her car, she had a breakdown in my anus. Oh, wow. What are the chances? Yeah. That's good. This is going to be the butt of a lot of jokes, that's for sure. Oh, nice, nice. Nice. So instead of Nastasia, we have our fearless leader, Patrick Martin's

[3:50] here. I will be like Nastasia. I will say next to nothing. Wow. And make scary faces. Boom. Now, who we don't have in the studio right now, and I tweeted out twice that he would be here, so hopefully he will arrive. I don't know, Jack, maybe we can try to call him on the telephone and see what's up. We put the search team out. Yeah, put the search team out for it. Now, Jack, you have a connection to Mr. Lahey through a certain babysitting gig? Is that true? tell the people who it is first. We got Jim Lahey supposed to be here right now. Jim Lahey is the guy who started Sullivan Street bakery over

[4:23] 20 years ago now, I think. Yeah, we have no need for Jim today. Well, we'll get to that event. This is like pun central right here going. But the, uh, so the, the point is, is that, um, you know, for those of you that are, you know, my age or so, like, you know, in your 40s, you can remember what New York was like when the bread here pretty much sucked.

[4:44] I mean, there were people who baked good bread, but like in general, the bread game in New York. It was Wonder Bread in the mid 70s. I mean, the 1st guy on the Upper East Side, which is very wealthy neighborhood was Eli Zabar. He had a place called EAT on 80th and Madison, and that was the 1st place that really baked, you know, fresh bread, you know, passed a few loaves at a kind of

[5:04] a cookie store, something like that. But yes, you could not find fresh bread, even in New York City back then. No, I mean, then in the 90s, you had like, I guess, which I guess when he started, right? The 90s? No, well, Eli's was... Jim Sullivan Street. 20, 25 years, I think. Yeah. At the same time, you had like Amy's starting. Remember, Amy's Amy's bread started around the same time on that. was the kind of area, but I don't know if they sold loaves to go. Anyway, Amy's had a wholesale and a retail. Amy's famous bread was the cornmeal one with raisins in it. Oh, yeah, I used to get that on Saturday because I used to live right by her bakery. Anyway, point is that back in the day, nowadays, it used to be when you travel to New York, you're like, hey, it's a great town. bread sucks. You know what I mean? Seriously, like you would say that. You would expect that the bread you got on the table at a restaurant would suck. You would expect that the bread you would get out at a place, even a cheese shop, you'd expect. I mean, don't even start on the cheese shops, you would expect that they would suck, right? It was like Tuscany over here. Well, which is what we're supposed to be talking about today. But so anyway, so Jim Jim Lahey was one of the kind of early people making decent bread here in New York and Sullivan

[6:13] Street. I remember it was a, a Revelation when I had it the 1st time I went there in the, in the 90s, uh, mid mid 90s, I guess, I had their Bianca, the Pizza Bianca, and it was the only thing like what I had had over on my honeymoon in

[6:26] Italy. It was good stuff. Anyway, so very crusty bread, right? For the most part. What, his breads, yeah. Oh, so like the the stuff his signature breads he's known for now are probably like the Polliesi style, the Filoni, which is the huge one and the semi-de-Sesimo, which is the basically Polliesi with sesame seeds all over the outside, which is my personal favorite.

[6:45] So these are the signature breads that you'll see at a lot of restaurants and there's, you know, he, they had a split. So there's another bakery, another couple of bakeries that make his particular style of bread here in New York. He became famous generally among, you know, folks, people,

[6:58] for his no need with a K, not no need to bake

[7:03] bread. Like, there's no necessity to make. needs But no need, uh, no need, which is, you know, my editor actually, Marie Guanashelli did his book also at Norton, and she's the one that came up with the tagline underneath it, no work, no need, no

[7:19] work bread. So it sold more bread books than anyone's ever sold in the past because it was like, Brett, no work. Bread? What? You know what I mean? And so they sold so many of these things. Um, but the, the, the, the, oh, did, did he, did he get here? No. No, no, no. look for him, though. So the, um, anyway, the point being that he kind of uh, championed this, uh, this style, uh, which I don't, you know, I actually don't know where he came up with it, whether it was taught to him or or

[7:45] what. If he ever shows up, we'll ask him. I think he is a self-made man. I think he learned it all myself. Although I'm saying that with no knowledge of the issue whatsoever. I think he's a self-made man. But you have no actual knowledge of the cooking issue. whatsoever. Yeah. So the, so anyways, the point being is a very influential person in the world of

[8:04] bread. In fact, you know, most people I know, so 1st of all, there's 2 things that happen. There's no need thing came at a time when a lot of people, especially pizza people that I, because I don't know as many bread bakers as I

[8:17] knew kind of people who, in the kind of pizza world, they, you know, were shifting to extreme long fermentations and retarding of dough when

[8:25] they're, when they're making it. And, um, Obviously, the longer you let something rise, the less you need to need,

[8:32] right? And so I think that we've all shifted towards this kind

[8:37] of a lot of people have shifted towards these longer time format breads with less needing and less

[8:42] work is the only thing it takes is a little bit of foresight. So why do they do it just for the work issue or for gastronomic reasons? No, no, I mean, look, the thing about the, the no need style, and I wish he was, you know, here to, like, talk about it, he hopefully will be, is the, um, is that if you just let the bread rise for a long time, 2 things happen.

[9:03] One, the longer, like a short ferment means that you have a lot of yeast in it, right? And so this tends to produce a relatively, um, single, simple profile taste, right? Because there's less kind of the yeast is doing less to work on the base product, which is the flour. So the longer you raise, the longer it takes to, to, to, um, ferment, usually the more complex, complex the flavor. The more the flower has the chance to express itself. That's an interesting way. See, this is why Patrick Martin's was the founder of slow food USA because he comes up with these poetic terms like the flower expressing themselves. You know what I mean? It's like, for me, I'm like such a technical head, like, you know, I don't do the, you know, the poetic. That's why we should come on off and give you the poetry of the flower. Slow food. Yeah, well, we play each other off. Remember our sizzle together? We did good. We played... like the old school guy. You're like the new school guy. I got to call her if we want to do that while we wait. Uh, okay. Call her. on the air. Call her, call her, you there? You're on the air. Oh, hey, sorry about that. Um, as a former cook and uh, current restaurant manager, I get a lot of questions about gluten free and

[10:14] gluten friendly. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about, um, how that breaks down under high heat specifically

[10:22] in pizza ovens or deep fryers. You mean how gluten-free, how gluten-free coatings work in frying? Well, so like, if I'm putting items into a deep fryer that are not gluten free, like how does that gluten that comes

[10:39] off, those items break down in the fryer, if at all? Oh I got you. So you're worried about the fact that you use the same fryer for your regular products as you use for your gluten-free

[10:50] stuff. You know what? Oh, the bread's here, by the way. You know what? I've never thought about it. Before, my guess is that it's not a

[11:01] problem, because the gluten, while it's not really water soluble, I also don't think it's oil soluble. I think it's just non-soluble. So I don't think you're going to solubleize the gluten in your in your fat oil. You do get particles. So it all depends on how clear your, you know, your fat is, but I would guess that your main problem is going to be a straight up,

[11:24] uh, straight up contamination. So if you're having straight up contamination product problems,

[11:29] but, you know, assuming in a commercial frying situation, you're frying in a tube fryer that has a cold zone and most of that stuff is sifting down to the bottom of your fryer

[11:38] anyway. So I would say, and considering the fact that that gluten, um, even like straight up celiac,

[11:45] oh, Jim brought my favorite oil. How the hell did you know that was my favorite oil? What is wrong with you? Um, the, uh, any, from DiPolo's, my favorite place on earth. Oh my goodness. To conclude, the good news is you never have to wash your fry. No, no, no, no, no. So my point is, is that most people's responses to gluten is our mediator. In other words, in other words, it's like, it's not that like, it's not that a tiny amount of gluten is going to wipe them out.

[12:09] But that said, I think that if you're worried about it, it's always prudent to add this kind of thing. fried in a fryer that also fries items with gluten. And then your gold. You know what I mean? Like push it back on. In other words, like, I wouldn't be worried that you're actually gonna hurt somebody, but I would also push it back onto the consumer so that you're not trying to hide anything from them. I think that's always the safest way to go. What do you think? Anyone? Yeah, it sounds good. I mean, I didn't, I wasn't too worried about it, but I didn't have a very good answer for people that were going to ask me either. Yeah, I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, look, a lot of people have never cooked before, so they don't really understand how it works. They'd never fried before. So it's true. When you're frying something that, you know, especially if you do any dry fry

[12:54] stuff, uh, that's not a batter, like even a batter, you're throwing stuff off of the batter stuff when

[12:59] it, when it, especially when it 1st goes in, but anyone who's ever fried before knows that there's extra pre-dust on the outside, there's extra

[13:06] stuff, it's usually a lot of fried items aren't a straight liquid batter.

[13:11] And even in a straight liquid batter, let's say you're going tempura on it, right? You're getting all those little blebs of crap that fry off. And I don't know anyone on earth who's ever fried anything that hasn't gotten a piece of the last fry occasionally in their life stuck onto the fry that they have now, right? I mean, come on, let's be honest. But the fact of the matter is, it's a small amount. I think as long as you're, and if you know you're frying something that is gluten free, you can be pretty scrupulous about the skin beforehand. And once this stuff is skimmed. the rest of the stuff falls to the bottom of the cold zone, and you're not going to do the person. I don't think any any harm. Right? All right, anyone? Anyway, so thanks for that. But now we have to talk about the bread. And if you have any no need bread questions. We have what? Well, my God, he comes in, he brings, but now he has to pee. Like this is. All right, so we'll hold off. I'll fill many more bread questions. Before we talk, I'll wash my hands. Okay, okay. Even though he's not an employee of Roberta's, he's not going to wash his hands. What, you say he's not going to wash his hands? He will wash his hands. He's in no urine facility. His bread has no urine in it, which is great. Okay, so no patina urin. This happens to the label. If this is the oil that I'm thinking of. Why is it your favorite? That's because of the breed of olive, of course. It's the favorite. So here's what happens. Every year, it's not oil is an agricultural crop, as we own. It goes up and down and changes. So for a bunch of years, my favorite oil was made by, I forget, the guy's name was, starts with a G. Like, he used to make the oil for Fontana Salsa, which was the supplier in Sicily that made this mix of

[14:55] Nocholara, um, my God, what was the other one? Nochalara. And 2 other olives that they grow in in Sicily. And that was like my favorite oil because I like, I'm heavy on,

[15:09] I like green. I like, like herby grassy green with a lot of bite. typically, not always. But anyway, so like, and so whenever I go to buy a new thing of oil of like finishing oil or eating oil, I'm just like, hey, what do you got that I like?

[15:24] And like this is one of the ones, I think, if it's the one I'm thinking of, this is, um... Where do you shop for your oil? I used to go to Fairway because I always love Steve Jenkins, but I don't think he does anything with Fairway anymore. I'm pretty sure he doesn't. Yeah, I know he doesn't. Yeah, fairway has changed. I mean, did they just file? Yeah, file for bankruptcy, too. For real? Yeah. Well, I thought they were still expanding. But they're not closing somehow as a restructuring, but they did file for bankruptcy. That's good. Um, so it's, um, yeah? It's, uh, I buy it at Apollo's. Listen, if you're ever in New York City, right? And you like Italian products, then you have to go to Depollos on Grand Street and MOD. I mean, they've been there for 8000000 years. Well, like 90. they moved across the street is as far as as they went. And, um, But I was asking, my wife was a cheesemonger, if their European cheeses are the best of their kind, are

[16:22] they there? Because, I mean, some of these old historic places, they don't get the best cheeses that you're

[16:27] producing. gets the best of what they get. In other words, it's like, it's like the best, DePalos will get the best that is legally illegally available. Like Lou and Sal and Marie, who are the, you know, the most of the family that runs along with their wives, the kids and the cousins and Renee, which is another guy there who works

[16:45] there. They have this thing where they don't like to break the law. And so unlike a lot of other cheese folks, they won't, like, on the slide, bring in stuff that's not legal or not. They also like will never lie to you. They'll also never sell you a product that's over the hill. So like the fact of the matter is, and you know what's coming in today? Apollos, I don't know if I'd known you were going, do you know the Marcelino's in today? No it's not. Oh, it's not in? That's what I was going for. Oh, really? the Marcelina. Am I on? I wanted the Marzolino, right? That's what I was going for because I realized that in order to show off this really mediocre example of Tuscan bread. And by mediocre example of Tuscan bread, I mean, it's just like you would get in Tuscany. And so to understand the bread, you have to understand the cuisine that

[17:28] it's that it functions for, that it lives for. So I think that's my approach. Now, on a scale of one to 10, I would rate this for my task, my best testing

[17:41] game, like a four. Wait, so what's your best Tuscan game rate? Like, I would say I'm very... Well, well, I mean, I'm, you know, if I can get a 7 on any loaf of bread. I'm really happy. I'm very contented. An 8 or 9 is, is, you know, sometimes happens,

[18:01] but, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, as we all know in the food business, it's all about consistency, right?

[18:05] And as we all know, good cooks, good bakers all hate themselves. Oh, come on please. No, because you never think you never think... You never think you never think you're perfect. You never you never think you've reached anything perfect. We can always, there's always room for improvement. It's like that last cocktail that you just mixed, that you were, you know, you taste, and you're like, you know, I just could have like put a little bit more vermouth in that, in

[18:30] that, uh, in that, uh, um, give me a vermouth drink, David. A martini. Let me ask you, why can't you duplicate a 9 all the time? Wait, before we get this? Two things. One, people want to know, is the character in trailer park boys named after you? Wait, I'm gonna do one thing real quick. That's the bread being sliced. And two, don't go through your knee. Oh my god. terrible. That would be the 3rd time that's ever happened. in the studio. So the, uh, 0 my god, you know what? Do you remember like in college when those people who'd never sliced bagels before started slicing bagels and they would slice the bagel into their hand and bleed all over everything?

[19:14] Yeah. awesome times. I learned I learned to have incredible respect for meat slices at the age of

[19:21] 15 because I cut my fingertip off. Oh yeah, me too. The only real damage I've done. Yeah. I did a thumb into the meat slicer once. Me too. Slide down. Boom. It's because I was on the cell phone, though. my fault. And never use a knife that's dull. That's the worst. to try to take out an avocado pit. Oh, when you glance off? No, I cut my thumb wide open. because the knife didn't go. blade didn't hit the seed. Right. Bounced off and then took a chunk of my head off. Okay, so let me set this up real quick. So we're at the museum of food and drinks benefit and Mofad. And Patrick and Jim are at the same table. And they were arguing over who was the straight man in the team.

[20:02] And that, which is kind of like an interesting thing. And I said, hey, you know, I love your bread, obviously, I have for a long time, don't you think Tuscan bread sucks? And expecting a yes, because everyone thinks it sucks because it contains no salt. Yeah, it's like nobody, I said, nobody likes Tuscan breads. Tuscan don't like Tuscan bread. The epicenter of... We're dining at tables began. Ground 0 as far as his food historians know, of where the ritual, ritualized meal of everyone sitting around a table was born. Also, the Italian language itself was born out of Tuscany. came out of that place. I forgot. Tantejo, is it? So you guys can't see what I'm looking at, but this looks like a Tuscan loaf, i.e. the crust looks terrible, and the crumb is not nearly as nice as the normal crumb in the Sullivan

[20:55] Street breads. You have to qualify your language. It's the end of the day. Busy is in the eye of the beholder. Yes, it's okay, look it this way. I won't say anything. It is sallow and dry looking. But it's, but it's a mop. It like it sucks sauce up. Well, it's also... consider it this. I mean, this did not ferment. This is an organic wheat from a small mill in Minneapolis called

[21:20] sunrise, flour mill. And I didn't, I'm not used to working with it. It's not like my, I don't work with this flower. I was sent a sample of some wheat for MoFab, which it went into those loaves that we made for the event. Which were delicious. And I miss... And I missed my mark by about 20 minutes to a half an hour in terms of ideal fermentation, which would have

[21:46] made a

[21:50] real big difference in terms of what you see in terms of the crime structure. However, that being said, when you eat bread in Tuscany, and it's made from local grain. And this is also an argument about the aesthetics of bread and our expectations about bread, especially bread made in

[22:07] the local, original grain economy, where the quality of the wheats are not going to be consistent from season to season. And oftentimes, especially with weather like we have today when it occurs in like August or

[22:22] September, during harvest season. Harvest, harvest periods, will most likely lead to wheat that has a lesser quality

[22:33] protein in terms of its ability to ferment because when there's humidity, you end up on dry wheat

[22:40] stalks. You oftentimes end up with like incidental germination. And that germination destroys the quality. It doesn't cut into the percentage of protein in the flour and isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's natural. It's what really occurs when you really farm and you're not springing life is staying your crops to

[23:00] for harvesting to kind of make them more sellable, you

[23:05] know, which is fine. So charmingly inconsistent, you would say. Well, I mean, that's what we'd have to get used to. Well, do you like, do you like, do you ever bake with germinators, sprouted grains? Um, sometimes for, for, like, you know, for my own head, man, you know? Am I allowed to just taste this as is or not? I mean, we should taste it as this. Do I need a spiel to make it taste good? No, no, no, spiel. I don't want to like, oh, this is grown in, like, you know, some, like, farm upstate New York in the, in the Champlain River Valley and da, da, whatever. I mean, I could go off on this whole fucking story, but at the end of it, it's family show. I'm sorry, is it? No more. Yeah, family show. Is it? I have a caller on the line. For gym, actually. Okay, I'm in the wrong place. We have a caller on the air, but before the caller gets on, let me just, I'll give you the taste description. Do I need to put this? Yeah, put it on. Put it on suit, you hear. It's more fermented than most Tuscan loaves I've had. Now, it's got a higher turn. you turn the headphones up on gyms, I think. Turn it down. Oh, turn it down. It's more, it's got more acidity than most of Tuscan loaves that I've had. And true to form, it tastes like it needs some freaking salt in it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, well, there's, I would say I was, just calculated, just calculating. There's about a 3rd

[24:22] of one% of salt. So isn't even a percent of salt, but based on the batch, maybe even a 10th of a percent of salt

[24:33] in the dough. And what's your normal salt percentage? Breads in general that we're used to eating anywhere from a percent and a half to 2.5

[24:42] sometimes. Are you part of that more modern 2.5%? I'm more percent and I'm not a one percenter, but I'm more in the percent and a half. I like to taste the grain. And were you a one% or would you be a Wall Street one% or a motorcycle gang one%? Well, I mean, it's well, here's the thing. It's really not the one%. It's the one tenth. I going to sell. I'm going to sound like Bernie Sanders now. It's the one-tenth of the of the one% that control 48% of the wealth of our

[25:10] nation. And you didn't realize you're going to have Bernie Sanders. good. It was good. Can you also do the? Can you also do the Yardvark from the Aardvark cartoon? There's a there's a call. a color. I don't want to miss a call or you're on the air for Jim. Hi, Jim and Dave, this is Jeffrey in Costa Mesa. Dude, how's it going? Good. How are you? Doing well. So I've been baking a lot of bread and both kind of straight Levon style or whatever term you like to

[25:39] use and then also hybrid using, you know, incorporating some commercial yeast. And I've specifically been interested in trying to manipulate how the starter, the ferment is

[25:50] fed, held, what hydration is kept at. Because there's a lot of, there are a lot of claims out there, let's say, about how that will affect structure, flavor, complexity.

[26:02] And so I, I, I traveled down this, say that again. viscosity is a, there's no, like, fixed thing on viscosity, as I was saying before with regional wheats. If you want to control the outward appearance of the product and your wheat, for example, varies in 13% or quality, which

[26:22] can in turn change the absorption. One of the factors that can change and alter the absorption, which therefore affects the visciolasticity of the dough, i.e. its texture when a very precise amount of liquid has been added to it, I would be more concerned as a bread baker or craft baker, with the apparent viscio elasticity of the dough,

[26:46] than getting caught up with, whoa, I put exactly, you know, 85% hydration, because you might get a great

[26:55] bread out 75% hydration if the wheat is of a different quality. And I think that, you know, and in terms of how you hold a sourdough starter, the thicker and drier, the pre-ferment, the more gradual and slower, the rate of fermentation, the more water, the quick, the, the, the, more uh,

[27:18] ferment. So what are things? Because I tried to start testing variables specifically with that and realize like doing side by side and realize it would just take an eternity to actually nail down the way all of these could potentially affect each

[27:35] other. So I'm wondering if you can speak to specifically how feeding, holding, and the hydration level or the viscosity, like you're saying, of the actual pre-ferment and how that's tended to, how can that affect

[27:49] the specifically the balance of lactic acid? Let's go, let's go this way. If you if you go online, you can buy these really cool pH meters that you can attach to your

[28:04] iPhone and it can upload an app. those work? Do those work? They do. If the caliber might assist him shaking his head, like, no fucking way. You can also buy, there are there are pH meters that you can use to test the pH of

[28:19] the dough. You will find a correlation between a finished dough. You'll find a range or correlation between the pH of the dough, because, you know, what happens, you mix the dough together and the pH will initially dip a little bit, like within the 1st 15 to 20 minutes, and then it will go up, it will arc upward, like, like,

[28:47] say, 6%, I say, like, 6 pH. And then eventually over. You're talking about during the fermentation or during the baking? Yeah, all those. Whenever you add flour and water together and you allow and you have some agent fermenting agent, be it commercial yeast. Or if I was like, Bernie Sanders, if you want a fermentation agent. Sorry. I've been on this whole Bernie Sanders kick lately. You know that he's the only electable. I know I'm getting even more headshakes for my. Not a political show. Oh, shit. Okay. Because the shit won't, negative ads won't stick with him, but they're going to stick with Hillary. We'll go back to, um, uh, uh, go back to

[29:31] primitives. So if you measure the pH. You'll see that there's a really precise correlation between the

[29:37] pH of the dough. The length of time it takes for the dough to 11, for example, under whatever, constant, constant conditions,

[29:45] I mean, if your house temperature, room temperature, whatever is, where you use your home oven with the pilot light on as like an incubator.

[29:53] I don't know to what degree of a bred geek you are, but you sound like pretty much, you know,

[30:00] a bread nerd, severe, because you're obsessed, which is good. We're all there. And then, um, and then you'll see like an end result. You'll see a correlation between the pH and the flavor profile. You see a correlation between the pH and the effect that the acidity has on on the doe's ability to the

[30:22] yeast that exists within the doe's ability to leaven, the

[30:29] bread, because a certain pH is the yeast become inactive, i.e. in the lab, they say

[30:35] 4.4, But in, like practically it's like more like 4 point, when you're

[30:42] like 4.6, at least in New York City bread baking, if you're doing sourdough,

[30:46] you're pretty much, you know, dealing with bread that's pretty sour. There's also another factor, which is the tap water, because tap water varies from pH 6.6 and environments that are extremely acidic. And tap water and municipalities can go, I think, as high as eight. But, but, you know, I know. How buffered are those, won't they, won't the actual biological system or the bread take over the tap water pretty quickly

[31:18] or no? Um, well, I mean, you have to factor in the pH of the flower, the pH of the water, and then the rate of the effect of the ferments on the dough, but at least everything that I've read is that when the pH is 4.4,

[31:33] um, that fermentation stops, even if there's available glucose or materials to ferments. It's the acidity itself, which is why a lot of people who maintain and hold starters

[31:45] at too high of a temperature and create these acid cultures are like, I don't know

[31:50] why. I keep adding the story to the dough, but it like just doesn't do anything. It just kind of gets all kind of slack and they make the bread and it tastes really tart because what's going on is

[32:00] there's no fungal. It's just bacterial. It's like a flora. You know, you just have to, you have to maintain the right flora for the starter. And in terms of to answer your question in a circumlocutious

[32:14] way. peripatetic, right? Um, it's really just about, you know, uh, yeasts and microbes

[32:22] are mutating and

[32:26] they will adapt and and become tolerant to conditions that you

[32:31] establish. The ones that we like, the ones that make bread and wine taste

[32:39] good, are the ones that are kind of in the 55 to 68 degree range.

[32:46] And then once you start getting above 68 degrees Fahrenheit, You're gonna start noticing other types of microbes. It's not to say that you can't maintain a store order for a couple

[32:56] weeks, it's 75 degrees Fahrenheit, but eventually it's going to acidify. And that balance between the symbatic relationship between those classes of sacramises and those classes of lactobacilli will change.

[33:11] Is that cool? Do you find it to be a kind of a one-to-one balance of it? The yeast is more active, the the lack of the cell are less

[33:23] active, and vice versa. Well, I mean, there's the other thing is that, you know, it's, you know, when it's feeding time at the zoo, when it's feeding time at the

[33:32] zoo. You know, a starter with a lower pH that's younger, it will react differently with the finished

[33:42] dough, and even that ratio or proportion of pre-ferment to the finished dough.

[33:48] You know, if I had like a half 500 grams, we're going to talk metric,

[33:55] right? Oh, yeah, yeah. So, like, let's say I had 500 grams of flour, and I added 500 grams of, of,

[34:04] like, pre-ferment, levan, liquid, a stiff kind of dough, like what we call, I call biga.

[34:12] Um, and the pH of that dough was like 4.5, 4.3, whatever.

[34:19] Um, hopefully not 3.7 or

[34:24] lower because then it's so acid that the actual pH of the, there's a very, the window would be too small. But if you add like a large ratio of pre-ferment to finished dough, you could even

[34:38] add, like 300 grams of flour, if the pH of the pre-ferment is on the higher side, like 4.6 and up, you could make a dough where there's actually the largest component would be the

[34:54] pre-ferment, and then you're just adding a little bit of flour. and salt to kind of put it together, and your fermentation time would be reduced to like an hour, an hour and a half,

[35:05] say. Okay. Or like a la Nonid or a la the methods that I prescribe mostly for practical purposes, maybe not so

[35:14] practical after all. But if you use a small percentage, let's say that that curve, that window of

[35:22] fermentation is a lot longer, and there's more chances of manipulating

[35:26] it, we're coaxing it to get the right end result that you want. But Jim, to go back to what you were saying, and I mean, to cut into this, but the lower the amount of starter that you're pitching in,

[35:38] right? The less the initial actual acidity matters, but the still the balance of flora in the starter is going to be different if you start with a really

[35:46] ass. In other words, like, If you put like an acid, if you put a highly acidic starter in a dough that was being maintained at like 75

[35:54] degrees, and it's like just basically a bacterial starter. It's not designed. It won't function to leaven the bread. It will function to cause the

[36:05] flour to become the paste, the dough, the pasta, to become acidic. And that's all it's gonna do. I mean, I've seen bakers in Italy that keep their natural leavening in their big

[36:20] shop, like, you know, like 100 degrees all the time, and it's like just inedible acidic crap. By the way, Jim hates Italian bread in general, right? No, I love, I love, I love. No, that's not true. I love Italian. I love it. Didn't you go to Italy and tell them that they're all garbage? No, it's a... No, I went there and

[36:37] I told them that they have a crisis. Carlo Petrini said the same thing. He said the biggest free fall in terms of Italian quality products with either the fast food culture we live in or

[36:52] modernization is with bread. He said they're in a crisis. He said that in 1998, 2000 already. I said it last year. I'm sorry, I'm eating some Toshkin bread with some broccoli, Rob. He also said the same about cheese, and although he was very much responsible for getting Barolo and Barbaresco up. I mean, literally one vineyard trip at the time. He was like, you should age the grapes longer. You should do all these things, cut off the bad grapes, and not use them in the wine. I mean, Barollo and Barbaresco were pretty mediocre wines in the 70s, 80s. So yeah, Carla was saying it about... I've had some Barolo from that era that was freaking delicious. Well, Nebiolo, great. That whole region of barbaresco and stuff. Yeah, some could be delicious, of course, but. By the way, the meat that you brought here, really barnyardy, huh? Patrick loves it. Patrick loves some barnyard is meat. This is amazing. This is, obviously, from De Paulo's, because I can always tell when something's made in Europe with my wife's cheeses. I like, this is a great American cheese domestic is French. This is domestic? I'm very surprised It's excellent. Well, I mean I'm not anymore. I mean, I was going to bring you some of my piggy. My, my, um, Were you buy a whole pig or something? No, I raised 3 pigs last night. I've been doing it for the last 3 years. What breed? Tamworth? Oh, wow. Oh, you like Tam? Well, tams are good mothers, right? So they're easy. They're easier to raise because they won't like squash their kids and like they can feed themselves. My neighbors and I usually get like 5

[38:25] pinklets. I take 3. And then during the summertime, because I have a house upstate in Sullivan County,

[38:31] I, like anytime we're cooking, every day, usually at the end of the day, I head over to the, the, I don't want to call it a pigsty because they have like a little bit of a yard, but then they've got like 2 acres of

[38:42] woods to forage in. So the animals, you know, go the summer, eating vegetable scraps and whatever critters they find as they're rooting up the

[38:52] earth. It's a great bacon hog, the Tamworth. Yeah, yeah. phenomenal meat. I don't... don't muscle up though, right? Yeah, they're a leaner hog. It's very rare that I actually buy, I buy pork from, from, I mean, I only I only eat my own. Well, that'll explain why we haven't gotten any orders from you in the past. Sorry about that. Listen, before this is over, we should talk about the Tuscan bread. Now, listen, I want you to sell me. Now, do you see what I'm saying about the Tuscan bread's function? is really... a blank canvas. Canvas for the food. I'm not buying it. Here's the thing. You can't eat this, right? You can't eat the Pecorino, and you can't eat the oil without wishing instead that we were eating your like

[39:34] semi-de-ecesima. Like, I'm like, oh, you know what I wish? I wish I just had this. I mean, it's SMR. How do you pronounce it? I was in Chelsea. For me, there's, there's, the, the actor... If you want

[39:46] to me, this is very nostalgic. And I actually kind of, in some ways, like my favorite breakfast is Tuscan bread. Saltless butter. And honey. Is that is that like saying that I also like Twinkies? That's even more. It's moder, too. Is there anything I can get a beer? Yeah, beer that your drinking looks really good. You might need some salt. Yeah. Because they're like keeping all the salty food. We're a full service establishment. But, and, you know, we have we have a PhD here in anthropology in sociology, Costas

[40:18] Gunnis, who's flown it all the way from Crete to share with us his insights and thoughts about this discussion.

[40:24] Hi, so give us give us some thoughts on the on the discussion. From a Cretin perspective. I won't get into this. It's out of my field. I'm enjoying it. This is your chance to bash Italy. Let me ask you this. The bread in Crete, they put salt in it, do they not? Yes, they do. What do you think of this particular? You know how good Jim's bread is? What do you think of this? Interesting. I mean, diplomatic, bland. Bland. Also, the crust doesn't have the same... It doesn't have the same... It's like mushy or stretchy. It's dry. Dry. The way it's asking bread is baked. It's baked with no salt or no salt. It's baked, usually, initially, every bakery that does it, the traditional way, tries to maintain a dry oven for the 1st 3 to 7 minutes of the bake.

[41:29] Where by the dough, in this case, because the dough was underfermented, it kind of rounds out a little bit, lifts off the floor of the oven, forms crust or skin on the dough.

[41:41] The opposite of what you would think, like you're not looking for humidity. And then... How do they how do they do that? Do they use a low load in the oven? They either open up the damper and the door? loading in? Or, you know, the whole, and then it's baked between 380 and 400 degrees, depending upon the bakery for a lot longer than you would normally bake.

[42:00] You end up with this... loaf of bread that actually kind of is kind of semi-stale in a

[42:07] way, to begin with, but it doesn't really stale. Like, I can eat this bread in 3 days and it's textually not that different than it is today. It starts off as 2 day old, but it stays... Yeah, but it doesn't, you know, but the idea, what is staleness? Staleness is a perceptual thing. It's an elasticity of the crust. No, it's I mean, yes, Chewier. Well, there's technical explanations and then there's when you eat it, does it taste like garbage? Well, well, no, that's well, that's subjective when you say that somebody's like garbage. It all relative. I mean, for me, Oscar, there's nothing. I'm not saying this is garbage. I mean, like, one of my favorite snacks would be like, this bread, like, I didn't bring, I

[42:45] wasn't going to bring some garlic in a toaster oven, but I couldn't bring all that stuff with me. But just to do Fetunta. You know, just to do the bread, toasted, rubber garlic, a little bit of olive oil. I go one step further. I like to put vinegar on my bread because I don't like vinegar. So you're saying this is actually baked longer, even though the crust colors are a lot lower than what it would normally

[43:06] be because of the. My daughter doesn't like it when I talk with food in my mouth, but I'm going to go for it. Two minute morning, Dave. All right, come on, two. The bread is baked at a lower temperature, which is why the color of the bread is the way it is. Right, right. If there was a higher quantity of salt or any percentage of salt over, over one%, you would end up with the scarring that takes, I call it salt scoring, where the little alveoli that are along the surface of the

[43:38] dough would kind of become places where the salt will crystallize. So you end up having like, you end up seeing, you have seen like bread that's kind of like kind of like pale and white, but it's like overcooked. Yes. That's like a cold, my name for it is salt scarring. And you see like the little white dots. Like if you see dough that's slow fermented or fermented in refrigerators, which is very popular these days. Oh, you don't

[44:02] like you don't like refrigeration retarding? I just, well, I think it's, I think it's a little retarded. Ha, ha, ha. No. I think it's, I think it's, yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess. What if someone doesn't do it every day and they realize it's rising too fast. they need to slow it down a little bit It's really convenient that we have refrigeration. It's lovely that we have. a big supporter. I'm a big, yes, you're in the beat this. I mean, you wouldn't say they throw it and throw it in the fridge and the next time pitch less in or what? Well, I mean, you know, as a thing of convenience. Yeah, we have refrigeration, but in general, I like I like live baking. I like the element of risk. I like that I have to kind of be kind of connected to the process of the fermentation so that I can control it without necessarily having to

[44:49] employ, like whatever, a battery of refrigerators increase my carbon footprint. Can I ask one last question? Because it was so interesting to HRNN news. Did you say, I'm just wanting to make a quote, if it's possible, that climate

[45:03] change, and El Nino and global warming could perhaps be negatively affecting the quality of artisan bred around the world?

[45:11] Is there a direct correlation? Did I hear you kind of ended that? No. No, because it's too wrong. still makes me think of Chris Farley. I am El niño. No, of course. But I thought you said weather affects the bread. It could lower the quality of local granaries, ingredients. There's a reason why during our colonial period, excuse me one second. Fucking broccoli raw. One minute, Dave. During our colonial period, wheat was grown everywhere. Brooklyn was like the epicenter of wheat agriculture in in, at least in this state. Yeah, one of the great apples in the world came out of there, but now it's Spitenberg? Spitenberg, yeah. So right now, you know, we can grow, we hear, it's just in our expectation about what good bread is. It's like you can't fit square pegs into round holes without kind of losing a little bit of the

[46:00] squareness, a little bit of the roundness of each. And so I think that our idea about what good bread is needs to change. Like, we're still kind of stuck in this dialogue of like, does it have big holes and

[46:12] stuff and like, does it, you know? You know, we didn't get to. pissing me off. Everyone wants to know, where do they go after the no need technique so that they can use your technique, but build up to make different styles of bread. We not going to have time to get into it. I have a new book coming out and it has a whole thing on using natural leavening for no

[46:28] need. I'm doing it with. When it coming out? God knows. I'm doing it with Maria. Yeah. Well, okay, so look after look after that. But, but you know, it is, it is, it is, it is, it will, it will come out. I know that we're like at the final phases of retesting recipes and hopefully by next year. Do you believe in labeling? Do you like to label things in the kitchen? Um, I personally love labeling. Okay, here, here. Take this. This is a limited edition. Thank you, cooking issues, blue tape keychain. Oh, it's so cute. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for coming on cooking. On the way out, is they're playing the theme? What is the most alarming piece of garbage in the bread world today? What's the worst thing that's happening in bread? Mexican bread besides? the way, Jim has taught us. Jim has taught us, it's not bad. It's different. It's not different. it's different Love things for what they are, but... What is what is what Martin's potato rolls? Oh, that they do taste good, but I mean, I'm not like a, I just think bad bread is bad bread. Fast food is fast food. I'm sorry. I don't care what corporation is behind it. Wow. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes

[47:43] store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage radio network as a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.