ON THIS WEEK’S episode, senior test kitchen editors Shilpa Uskokovic and Jesse Szewczyk are back with Bake Club’s latest wonder: Shilpa’s Giant, Gooey Cinnamon Roll. It’s a dessert that’s guaranteed to add some extra holiday cheer, fun, and comfort to your gatherings. It’s not only exciting to eat, but the delightfully sticky, glossy insides manage to stay perfectly gooey days after it’s baked—a triumph Shilpa pulled off during the testing process. And she made it…a lot.
Shilpa takes us through all the trials and tribulations that went into creating this nostalgic recipe. She walks Jesse through her decision to include two specialty ingredients and the importance of each. Shilpa and Jesse also introduce us to a baker they think everyone should know: Patrick Shaw-Kitch of Brooklyn Granary & Mill. He not only bakes but also mills his own grains for his creations, and shares with us how home bakers can also harness freshly milled grains in their own bakes.
Listen now to hear more about what went into this perfectly festive December recipe!
Jesse Szewczyk: I am Jesse Szewczyk.
Shilpa Uskokovic: And I'm Shilpa Uskokovic.
JS: We are both senior test kitchen editors at Bon Appétit.
SU: And this is BA Bake Club.
JS: Bake Club is Bon Appétit's book club, but it's for baking.
SU: We are creating the nerdiest and most wholesome corner of the baking internet.
JS:: Every month we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know.
SU: Then you'll bake, send us any questions you have or pictures of your finished creations.
JS:And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe. But before we get into today's recipe, Shilpa, do you want to tell us a little bit about December's recipe?
SU: It is perhaps the most holiday recipe-
JS: It is.
SU: ... of all holiday recipes. We're going to be making a black forest pavlova. And it's really beautiful and dramatic, and a large format version at that. The recipe is live now on bonappetit.com, and we'll tell you a bit more about it at the end of this episode.
JS: She is very big and beautiful, I can confirm. But today we're going to be talking about this epic mind-blowing delight that is also giant. It is Shilpa's Giant Cinnamon Roll. Shilpa, this is a really fun twist, quite a recipe development process, but first of all, why a gigantic cinnamon roll?
SU: Why not?
JS: Fair enough.
SU: It was so fun. This one I just wanted for pure fun. It turned out there was quite a few techniques that were embedded into the finished results, but I really wanted to do something just silly and fun and festive.
JS: There you go. I love it. Okay, so Shilpa, we're going to cue the music and do you want to walk us through the basic steps of your recipe?
SU: Absolutely. I can do that. Again, as most of my recipes, this is a three-step process where I make a dough, which is very milk bread adjacent, featuring milk powder and tangzhong. And then I make a filling, which has a secret ingredient, which we'll get into. And up until there, it's like a regular cinnamon roll. And where things start to shift a little bit is how I ended up shaping it. Rather than cutting it like a big jelly roll and then slicing it as you would for cinnamon rolls, I ended up doing three individual coils of dough inspired by challah, and I coiled these into a nine inch cake pan, and then you bake it off to make a giant cinnamon roll that is then glazed with kind of a traditional cream cheese glaze.
JS: And just like that, I feel like we were back in the shopping mall in the '90s, the cinnamon scent's coming through. But this recipe didn't start out with you trying to make a giant cinnamon roll.
SU: It did not.
JS: And I went through many, many tests.
SU: I don't know why that question is coming up, but okay.
JS: Listen, I'm not calling... I feel like this just proves it's a good recipe.
SU: Yes, it's very well tested. We'll say that.
JS: How many tests do you think this went through?
SU:: Oh, God. Okay, so Christina, who does our social media, we looked through her camera roll and she had at least 13 variations of this cinnamon roll.
JS: And that is just the one she captured.
SU: Yeah, it was a long process and it actually started out as a sticky bun. Do you remember?
JS: Yeah, I do.
SU: I had made a sticky bun for our former colleague Kendra's birthday last year, and then I made the sticky bun and Jesse made the topping for the sticky bun, and we all loved it so much.
JS: It was beautiful. It was perfect.
SU: Yes.
JS: And then it never was perfect again.
SU: It was so good. We were like, "Oh my God, this has to be the next Bake Club recipe." So we planned for it and every time I made it, it just didn't turn out.
JS: I don't know what we did.
SU: But anyway, I did four variations of the sticky bun theme trying to get it to work, and I was having a lot of trouble with the amount of dough in the pan and the nuts sort of sogging out and the caramel not being evenly cooked because it was this oversized thing and the heat was sort of trapped in there. And then when I did get into it and sort of nail it, I think we were all more excited about the concept of a cinnamon bun anyway, because they were beautiful spirals on top, which in the sticky bun variation were lost when I inverted it. And that's how the cinnamon roll idea came to fruition. And from there, once we decided this direction that then there were two other discoveries, one of which I'm really excited and proud about, and I'm sure we're going to get into it right now.
JS: We will. And I will say both of them are very Shilpa-coded.
SU: They are. They are.
JS: I think if people have listened, they could probably pick one of them. But anyways. Okay. So we're going to talk a bit about the three main components, the dough, the gooey filling, and then the thick icing. But let's start with the dough. So in this recipe, we're starting with the tangzhong.
SU: Yes. We are starting with the tangzhong, which for readers who may not know, it is a cooked flour and water paste. It is a technique that's rooted in Chinese baking and in Japanese baking as well. It's usually for milk bread or any kind of enriched bread. And the purpose of a tangzhong is to add extra water to your dough, but to have the water, which is a liquid behave like a solid. The water adds more moisture, which makes a more tender dough. But if you just straight up add more water or more milk or whatever the liquid component is, if you just increase it, then the dough becomes too wet. So tangzhong is a way of locking in that moisture in a precooked gel. And it's basically a way of converting a liquid into a semi-solid texture, which adds the same amount of moisture, but doesn't disrupt the texture of the dough.
JS: So you're more or less getting the same amount of liquid in your dough, but not thinning out the dough so it's unworkable.
SU: Thank you. Yes.
JS: There we go.
SU: There we go.
JS: Okay, love it.
SU: And the benefit of doing this is one, you get a softer dough. Also, because of the extra moisture, your dough stays fresher and softer for longer. And the second ingredient, this was a lesson to me to just trust my instinct and go with what I knew was going to work.
JS: I saw this all play out. Yes.
SU: He was like, "You donkey."
JS: No, I wasn't.
SU: The ingredient that really sort of unlocked the cinnamon bun and pushed it into a bun that was really worthy of all the trials I went through was milk powder.
JS: This, to me... I would've never thought of this, really. And then when you did it, I was like, "Oh, this is good."
SU: Yeah, you were there. You remember when I-
JS: I was there. I remember.
SU: Yes. And you were like, "Wait, this made such a huge difference."
JS: Made a huge difference.
SU: And the reason I said this was a lesson to me in trusting my instinct is because I've used this in the past because I know how powerful milk powder is. Milk powder is essentially just milk with all of the liquid gone.
JS: Sure.
SU: So when you think about it and you're like, "Oh, what's left?" And it's just milk solids and the proteins.
JS: It's kind of like protein powder.
SU: It is. It's like whey protein.
JS: Yeah. It's like the OG whey protein powder.
SU: Yes. There we go. And why that's really important is those proteins that are left and those milk sugars that are left, which milk powder is a concentrated source of, but the addition of milk powder to a yeasted dough just makes it rise much taller, makes the bread much softer, and it gives it a very tender texture and also increases the bread's shelf life. So incredibly valuable. And in this case, it completely transformed the dough. What was once a very sticky, very hard to work with dough, once I added this milk powder just transformed, silky.
JS: Interesting.
SU: Very nice and easy to work with. And the height difference was insane.
JS: And I can confirm, it sounds like this is inflating what milk powder is doing, but it's not. The dough... It was just a completely different dough.
SU: It was very different.
JS: Yeah.
SU: And let me tell you, I write this in the article saying I have never been more glad that I am a procrastinating over-thinker because it really... I was about to submit this recipe.
JS: I told her to stop.
SU: Yeah.
JS: I was like, "This is hard to watch at this point."
SU: It was attempt 15, and he said, "You got to get your (beep) together. Reel it in."
JS: Yeah. This is like a Shining level breakdown, to be honest.
SU: And then I said, "Jesse, hold on. I think I have an idea." I went back and added the milk powder.
JS: At this point I was just like whatever.
SU: Yes. You really said, "You know what? There's nothing more you can do. Just try it."
JS: She was right. She was right.
SU: So milk powder is something I've used in the past, and really, I should have used it from the beginning, but I'll tell you why I hesitated to use it.
JS: Yeah, why did you?
SU: It's because of my other quote unquote "secret ingredient" in the filling.
JS: Okay.
SU: I was already calling for a specialty ingredient in the filling.
JS: Okay, so let's talk about the filling.
SU: Okay. The filling... Okay. This is where I feel like, "Oh, wow. So smart." Because in the filling, I ended up using... Cue the drum roll. Instant vanilla pudding mix.
JS: A surprise surprise from Shilpa.
SU: I know.
JS: In half her recipes at this point.
SU: This is true.
JS: Yeah.
SU: Anyway, I call for instant vanilla pudding in the filling because in one of those 15 times I made the cinnamon roll, I was realizing that the filling, while tasty, it had a tendency to dry out.
JS: Yeah. As cinnamon rolls do, they're good when they're warm and then they're like, "Okay."
SU: The filling was just there.
JS: Yeah. It's just there.
SU: The texture was... Sometimes it was kind of coarse from the brown sugar because there wasn't enough moisture to hydrate it. I don't know. It just wasn't doing anything for me. And sometimes it was, the spirals... The definition of the filling was very strong, and sometimes it wasn't. And then I thought about my original inspiration, which is Cinnabon.
JS: Which is the-
SU: The iconic.
JS: The platonic idea of a cinnamon roll, the best there is.
SU: Absolutely.
JS: Yes.
SU: And I was wondering how every time you get their cinnamon rolls, the filling is somehow super gooey. Even if it's not fresh out of the oven.
JS: You're right.
SU: Even if it's room temperature or cold, that filling is somehow weirdly shiny and, I'm going to say it, wet.
JS: Yeah, it's pliable.
SU: Yes. So I did some digging and I read some... I looked on the internet and said, "Frozen Cinnabon, blah, blah, blah." Looked at all the labels. And then I realized, "Oh, they're using modified food starch in the filling." And I put two and two together and I said, "Oh, the modified food starch is kind of what's keeping that filling in a Cinnabon so shiny and tacky and pliable, even at room temp. It's keeping that feeling fluid." And then I thought, "Okay, fine." Of course you can go online and buy commercial modified food starch. But I thought, "What is a food starch that is probably available to almost all of us in any grocery store?" And the answer is instant vanilla pudding mix. Because when you flip the box of pudding mix, you will see that one of the ingredients is a modified food starch.
JS: Sure.
SU: And an important caveat here is that it has to be instant because the instant is the one that has the modified.
JS: Because regular is like cornstarch probably or something.
SU: Yes, exactly.
JS: Some starch you need to activate with heat.
SU: Yes. I took a chance with this ingredient including it in this filling knowing full well that there might be a camp of people who might be like, "Oh, you're using a modified food starch, a chemical ingredient. I'm not going to put this in my homemade cinnamon bun." But honestly, it made such a big difference.
JS: It did.
SU: It does.
JS: And it keeps it in place.
SU: Which I think was the important part.
JS: Yes. Because when you make cinnamon rolls, there's a tendency for the feeling to just kind of like... I don't know. Melt its way down.
SU: Yeah.
JS: Yes. This didn't do that.
SU: It didn't. So by including this instant pudding mix, which was a source of modified food starch, it really helped me manipulate the texture where I was so happy with it that it felt like a necessary inclusion.
JS: And how do you actually incorporate the pudding in the filling?
SU: Literally just stir it in with everything else.
JS: Just dry?
SU: Just dry. When I mean everything else is all of the traditional things that you might find in a regular cinnamon roll filling. We still have butter in which this case, I melt it. We still have dark brown sugar, and it is a lot of cinnamon, a little bit of salt. And then I introduced this instant pudding mix, and I also added a little bit of water just to get it activated and to make a goo for lack of a better word.
JS: Sure, sure.
SU: The minute you add it to the cinnamon sugar mixture and you stir it, you can see it right there going to work. And it changes the texture, and you can... It's very easy to spread this filling on it. It's almost like toothpaste once you add the pudding mix on the water and stir.
JS: It's like spreading paint with the palette, kind of.
SU: Yes, the artiste has spoken.
JS: I loved watching this process and learning it because it's so fun to see where other people's minds go.
SU: That's true.
JS: I'm not sure I would ever end up there and that's kind of like the genius of this recipe.
SU: Yeah, that's a good point actually. It's really nice that we get to work across from each other and see the way we each think.
JS: Yeah, because I told you this is good enough. And then you made it 100 times better.
SU: I will say I went... Oh, okay.
JS: No, say it. Say it.
SU: The reason it is where it is because I went home after we concluded in the test kitchen that it was good enough. I went home and I served it to my husband.
JS: Who, let's preface here, Shilpa's husband... She's being coy, is like low-key a famous pastry chef. Award-winning. Owns a bakery with her. He's legit.
SU: Yes. He's qualified.
JS: He's very qualified.
SU: He's not your average husband making comments on your food. I will give him that. So I go home, and then he's like... He took a bite and he looked at me with a lot of love in his eyes and he said, "I think you can do better."
JS: Well, damn.
SU: Yep. And I said, "You know what? You are right. I can do better." And I went back to work, and then I added the milk powder, and then things took off from there. So thanks to Miro, I guess, we have the cinnamon roll.
JS: Miro pushed this to a whole new realm. Okay, so the filling's great, but now rolling your cinnamon roll is a very trust the process situation. It's not the typical way. So how did you come up with making sure we get an even bake on this giant cinnamon roll? What do you call this technique? How do you describe it?
SU: Figuring out how to shape the giant cinnamon roll took me attempt 3 to 12.
JS: It's not like normal. You can't just roll it up.
SU: Yes. So normally when you make a tray of cinnamon rolls, as we always think of them, you would roll the dough out into a rectangle, spread your filling, roll the whole thing up like a jelly roll, and then simply slice it into however many pieces and lay them sliced side up. But I couldn't do that because then what's the point? I wanted the whole thing to look like a spiral cinnamon bun. So at first, I started trying to shape it like a traditional one in that I rolled out the dough into rectangle, spread the filling, cut many strips, and joined the strips end to end, and then rolled it up.
JS: Kind of like a hay bale.
SU: Like a hay... Oh my... Yes. Like a haystack.
JS: Just kind of building a spiral upon itself.
SU: Can you tell he's from the Midwest?
JS: Yeah, I'm from Illinois.
SU: He knows.
JS: I know.
SU: That is such a great example of what I was trying to do. Thank you for that, Jesse.
JS: Of course.
SU: And it worked, but the problem with that was two things. One, it was kind of difficult because the dough was very tender. So by the time I came to the very end of the role, or halfway and beyond to rolling, it became really difficult to handle.
JS: It's kind of messy. Yeah.
SU: Yes. It was messy.
JS: It's a bit unyielding.
SU: It's sort of fell apart and was hard to transfer the whole thing into the pan without making a mess. And also the filling started to leak to the bottom.
JS: Just because there's nothing holding it.
SU: Yes. And there was so much of it. There's so much surface area now exposed of the filling that it all just fell down.
JS: Sure.
SU: So I really thought about this for a long time, and then Chris said, "Oh, what if you make a free form cinnamon roll?"
JS: Oh, I remember this. And Shilpa and I were just like, "Uh-huh."
SU: But then I went home and I couldn't stop thinking about it. At the tasting, I was like, "Chris, that's never going to work. If you put a cinnamon roll free form without a pan, meaning you just put it on a baking sheet unsupported, it would just fall down."
JS: Like a cringle almost.
SU: Yes. But I went home and thought about when he said, free form. And I said, wait a second. What are the other free form sort of enriched breads? And then I thought of challah.
JS: Sure.
SU: When they make braided challah.
JS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SU: And they make a three braid or five braid challah, which is rounded. And I said, "Oh, wait a second." That you get a round bread, like an enriched bread. And it's created by manipulating these individual strips and coils of dough. So I said, "Why don't I try the same thing for the cinnamon bun?" And I tried it, and that was, again, a big breakthrough where I began, as I always did, I rolled the dough out, spread the filling. And then I cut into three strips along the length, and then I rolled each strip.
So now I had these three little snakes of filling and dough with the filling locked inside with none of the filling exposed, and no risk of any of it falling to the bottom. And then I started coiling these individual snakes into my nine-inch cake pan. I just started rolling them like a snail, looping them around each other. Because of the shaping technique... Two things. One, the filling was well encased and didn't run out. And two, the spirals on top were also nicely defined, and they really held their shape upon baking.
JS: Okay. So now that you got the spiral, I feel like Shilpa does her famous Shilpa glaze. I love Shilpa's glazes.
SU: Thank you.
JS: Because I think that they're beautiful and thick enough.
SU: Yes.
JS: That's the issue. And how do you achieve this?
SU: We talk about this a lot.
JS: We talk about it a lot. I talk about glazes often.
SU: Very often because Jesse has the food stylist's eye for beauty so he knows.
JS: Glazes are tough. They're tough.
SU: A glaze needs to be thick enough.
JS: And then when it is thick enough, it's often too sweet.
SU: Exactly. Because the only way to get it thick is to add enough powdered sugar to make it stiff. So that is kind of the problem that I had to solve for in this recipe that I wanted to make a thick glaze that sort of stood tall and proud on top of the cinnamon bun. I didn't want something that just sank into the dough, but I also wanted it not to be overwhelmingly sweet. In some ways, I had the cinnamon roll already helping me out because the bread wasn't overly sweet. Sure, the filling was sweet, but the bread kind of tempered it, and it would be a nice counterpoint to the frosting on top. So I first of all started off with a very modest amount of frosting, and I say in the recipe that you can actually double or triple the frosting if you'd like for a more cinnamon sort of experience. And to get the texture that I wanted without the glaze being overwhelmingly sweet, I start off with a base of my...
JS: Your old friend.
SU: Everyone's old friend at this point. Cream cheese.
JS: Okay. And why do you love cream cheese?
SU: I don't know. I'll say this. I didn't grow up with cream cheese, so I think I was deeply fascinated by cream cheese as an ingredient.
JS: It's interesting.
SU: It's such a fascinating ingredient in the way it's composition. And it's through the years, especially with baking, I found that it's so versatile and really comes through for you.
JS: It does. I actually love it in really tender things like scones and biscuits. It's so nice.
SU: Yeah, because I think it behaves halfway between butter and sour cream.
JS: Yeah. Because it is kind of a liquid. Yeah.
SU: It is a magnificent ingredient. Where is our Philadelphia Cream Cheese sponsorship?
JS: Big cream cheese, if you want to sponsor our Bake Club, our DMs are open.
SU: And the glaze is essentially just cream cheese and powdered sugar that I smoosh together until it's very thick and it builds from there with a little bit of salt and vanilla.
JS: Yeah. And it tames that sweetness too.
SU: Yes.
JS: Yeah. It's like a nice foil.
SU: The tang from the cream cheese really sort of helps. And the fact that it's so thick helps the texture.
JS: I love this glaze and I'm going to use it as a base for, I don't know, a loaf cake or something. Would be so lovely.
SU: Actually, yes.
JS: Yeah.
SU: That would be good.
JS: No, I'm a big fan of your glaze.
SU: Thank you.
We are going to take a quick break.
JS: And when we get back, we'll answer some listener questions all about the enormous cinnamon roll.
SU: Welcome back to BA Bake Club.
JS: Okay. Shilpa, are you ready for some listener questions?
SU: Yes, yes, yes.
JS: Okay. First up is from Kai on Substack. "Hi Shilpa. I'm excited to bake the cinnamon roll. After reading the recipe, I have a few questions. Number one, do I need to cool the tangzhong after it's made with the butter mixed in before adding the remaining ingredients? And two, silly question, but how do you serve the roll? Do you cut it like a slice of cake or peel it and let the dough strip unravel?" That's a great question, actually.
JS: It is a great question. Okay. Let's answer Kai's questions, two first and then one. How do you serve it? Kai, you can cut the bun, giant bun just like a cake. You can use a serrated knife and cut it into wedges and serve it and that's very prim and proper. Or you can do what Jesse and I did on the day of the shoot and simply go to town and tear that roll apart.
JS: Yeah, it's a matter of comfort.
SU: Yes.
JS: Are these new friends are old?
SU: There we go. And as for Kai's first question of whether the tangzhong needs to be cooled before it's added. No, not in this case. I developed this recipe so that you don't have to let the tangzhong cool because you make the tangzhong in a nonstick skillet, and then you add butter straight from the fridge. So the cold butter goes in and it does two things. It melts and as it melts, it brings down the temperature of the tangzhong to about room temp, which you can add safely to your dough without risk of killing your yeast.
JS: Cool. So it all equals out in the end.
SU: All equals out in the end.
JS: Nice. Okay. So we had a couple questions about cutting and rolling up the cinnamon roll, and if you have any doubts, there is a helpful social video where Shilpa shows you what to do. So Nada writes, "Made the cinnamon roll today. It was delicious. The only thing is that there was definitely a loss of the spirals, so it felt a bit more like a cinnamon roll cake than an actual cinnamon roll. I'm not sure if it all leaked to the bottom or if my spirals just weren't defined enough in the pan. I'd love to try the filling again too with individual cinnamon rolls to get those spirals." And there is a photo link here, so we can take a look.
SU: Nada's bun looks amazing. It's very tall, it's super fluffy, and she smears the glaze on so it's really beautiful. I see what Nada means about the lack of definition in the swirls. It seems to me almost like the bun ate up all of the filling, and I looked at the bottom of the pan in the picture, and you can see there's some filling that is stuck to the bottom of the pan, but it doesn't seem like so much to explain why that filling was lost in the center. I ended up responding to Nada, asking a few things. I asked if they used the milk powder because I am thinking that maybe this dough was too wet.
JS: So everything kind of dissolved?
SU: Yeah.
JS: I could see that. Yeah. Kind of steamed away almost. And mingled with the dough to become one.
SU: Yes. And my other question I asked, because in the recipe I write that when you roll up your little snakes of dough and when you place them in your pan, I ask our readers to place it seam side up, which really prevents any of the filling from leaking out. So I'm curious to know if that actually happened or maybe if the seams were placed seam side down, which caused some of the filling to run out. Yeah, my intuition says maybe the dough was a little too wet. And I would be curious if that's because if there was milk powder or no milk powder.
JS: Because milk powder also, I've worked with it. It's really drying. It sucks up a lot of moisture. When you add to dough, it feels different. Yeah. So that checks out to me.
SU: I love that you brought that up because the kind of drying that milk powder is, it's absorbent, but it doesn't dry out like adding extra flour does.
JS: It feels dry on the front end, but it doesn't bake up drying.
SU: Yes, it's tenderizing. So if you're listening, please don't add more flour in case you don't have milk powder. It's not the same thing.
JS: There you go. Okay. And next on substitutions, Roberto writes, "Hey Shilpa, what if I don't have vanilla pudding mix here in my country? How could I sub this?" Thanks.
SU: Okay, Roberto. I would actually not substitute with anything. There is no substitute. It is such a unique ingredient and it's just not substitutable. And what I would recommend in this case is actually just skip that part of the recipe. Don't use the pudding powder and don't use the water that I call for in the filling, but do everything else, like melt the butter, add the brown sugar, the cinnamon, the salt, vanilla, what have you. But simply leave it out if you don't have it.
JS: Easy enough. Okay. And then Christina C. has a question about sugar substitutes. She writes, "I'm going to shop for the cinnamon roll to make it next weekend and had a sugar question. I already have light brown sugar, but the recipe calls for dark. Should I, one, use light instead? Two, add molasses, which I already have to convert it to dark." Okay. She's smart. "Or three, buy dark brown sugar. I'll do whichever you pick. If I should add molasses, is there an official BA approved conversion ratio? Thank you." Okay, damn. Christina C. is a baker.
SU: I was like, "She is a member of the Bake Club."
JS: Yeah. Come to the test kitchen, Christina.
SU: These are all fantastic questions.
JS: These are good question.
SU: Okay, let's go through one at a time. So if you don't have dark brown sugar, should you use light brown instead? Yes, absolutely. You can 100% use light brown sugar. You don't have to run out just for the purpose of dark brown sugar. Should you add molasses to convert that light brown sugar into dark? In this case, I would not because the only real purpose, and the reason I call for dark brown sugar is it adds a little bit of depth to the filling in terms of color. And it sort of provides a deeper contrast. By substituting light brown, which when you make the substitution, you're just doing the same amount by weight.
JS: So weight or volume, same amount.
SU: Yes, it's the same amount. Whether it's light brown sugar or dark brown sugar, just use the same amount by using light brown, you will lose some of that deep color, but it's not detrimental enough that I would force you to go out to the store. If there's one ingredient you should go out to the store for is the milk powder. But don't worry about the light brown sugar.
JS: Shilpa, is there instance where you can't swap light and dark?
SU: Ooh, I think that's a question you should answer better, because I feel like in this case, the brown sugar is not being used as a chemical react-
JS: Flavor.
SU: Yes. It's just for flavor. It is not an agent for chemical leavening or it's not set off by any baking soda or baking powder.
JS: For readers, it's because dark brown sugar, higher molasses, a slightly higher acid content.
SU: Yes.
JS: Yes.
SU: Which if you're making something like a cookie, for instance, Jesse, I'm thinking about your molasses crinkles.
JS: Sure.
SU: Right. But in this case, it's purely for aesthetics so you can totally use light brown sugar. We should say do not substitute organic.
JS: No, no.
SU: I know. Sorry to the organic sugar lobby. Even in this situation where the brown sugar is merely just for flavor and color, I highly do not recommend-
JS: Large crystal structures, typically.
SU: Organic sugar has-
JS: Yes.
SU: Yes. Organic sugar has large crystals, as Jesse says, which sort of interfere with the way they melt and act in-
JS: Might be kind of gritty.
SU: Yes, I agree. So please do not substitute with organic brown sugar of any kind.
JS: There you go.
SU: We are going to take another break.
JS: And when we get back, we'll introduce you to a baker you should know.
Welcome back to BA Bake Club.
SU: It's one of my favorite parts of the show. It's time for us to introduce you to a baker we think you should know.
JS: This guest is really exciting because he's also here to introduce an ingredient that we think you should know. So our guest is the former head baker of Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Casual. And he's the owner of Brooklyn Granary & Mill. Along with baking, he's milling some of the most interesting flour in the area. Patrick Shaw-Kitch, welcome to the BA Bake Club.
Patrick Shaw-Kitch: Hey, thanks for having me.
SU: Patrick, thank you so much for being here. As Jesse mentioned, you come from Blue Hill at Stone Barns in upstate New York, very famed for its local ingredient program. And you just opened Brooklyn Granary & Mill. Jesse and I have had the pleasure of having your whole wheat croissants.
JS: So good. So good.
SU: How long ago did you open?
PSK: We opened the mill in April, and then the bakery opened in June. So very new.
SU: Very new. So tell us a little bit more about what you do at the Brooklyn Granary & Mill, a little bit more about your background.
PSK: Yeah. Throughout my entire career, I've always been interested in ingredients and sourcing and producers from fruit to vegetables to dairy to meat. And that kind of led me to going on this grain journey about 10 or 11 years ago when I was working at BKLYN Larder and Franny's. They had such amazing sourcing, their vegetables, meat, everything except grain. And so I kind of started reaching out to our purveyors, seeing who had local flour, who had local grain. And that led me to working with farmer ground flour, main grains, and opened up my eyes to the different possibilities, flavor combinations, textures that all these fresh-filled, full grain flours brought to bread and pastries.
And then when I went to Blue Hills, when the first time I had access to a mill and is buying grains directly from farmers. And this really just kind of opened up my eyes and was like, "This is what I want to do with my life." And I really wanted to bring this flour and grain and grain farming to New York City where I lived and where my community is. And I feel like there just wasn't access to this quality flour that I was using at Blue Hill. And that's really the main inspiration behind opening Brooklyn Granary & Mill was to be the connector between this amazing organic and regenerative grain farming happening in our region and bakers and chefs and home bakers and cooks in New York City.
SU: I am curious, what is it about grains in particular that you felt so drawn to?
PSK: As a baker, flour is... You use it in everything. And it stopped making sense to me at a certain point that you would put so much effort into sourcing nice vanilla beans or nice chocolate or really beautiful stone fruit, and then just buy this anonymous bag of flour. And once I started incorporating fresh-filled whole grain flour, the difference is really stark. And not just me, but people really respond to it and really can taste the difference. And there's such diversity of grains out there that allows you to be creative as a baker, like, "Maybe I'll add a little bit of rye to this or emmer or einkorn or I'll do more winter wheat than spring wheat." And you can manipulate and change the bread to what you want it to be and how you want to express yourself as a baker and having access to this flour really allows you to do that.
SU: I want to ask you to give us a very fundamental explanation of what fresh-milled flour is, but maybe since we're on the topic of grains, what kind of do you usually make flour out of and are there certain qualities that you're looking for when you decide, "Oh, I can make flour out of this one"?
PSK: Yeah. So the first thing that we do is actually zoom out a little bit further and be like, "Is this a farm that we want to work with that represents our values when it comes to how they treat the soil, how they treat their grains, and is their farm a net benefit for our region?" And so once we find a farm that we like, we'll basically sample all of their grains that they have and we'll mill them into flour and bake with them.
And when we're analyzing them, we have to think about different categories. So does this grain add something to our existing catalog that improves it? So are we missing a really great hard-bred winter wheat? Does this farm have that and can we slot that in? Is their einkorn different than the einkorn that we have now? Does it have more flavor or does it bring a different texture? So we really like to maintain a broad swath of offerings from einkorn to emmer to different types of wheat so that we're really filling all of those baking and cooking categories. And when we meet new farmers, we're trying to see how can we integrate them into our existing catalog.
SU: Could you explain what you mean by freshly milled flour for listeners who may not have encountered such a product? Because as you said, most of us... Flour is just a pantry ingredient for most of us. We take it for granted. It's something on the shelf that we buy, and it's stays for a long time in your pantry. So what do you mean by freshly milled flour and what is the process of getting there?
PSK: For sure. Yeah. So most of the flour that is available in the stores is made on a steel roller mill, which is milling technology that was invented in the mid-1800s. And it became very popular because you can make a lot of flour, but you can make a highly refined flour. So there's three major components of a wheat kernel. There's the bran, the germ, and the endosperm. The bran is the outer coating. The germ is at the very base of the seed, and then the endosperm is the majority of the seed. So a steel roller mill is able to take off of the bran and the germ and produce a flour that is pure endosperm. All of the B vitamins and natural occurring oils are in the germ so you're kind of extracting the flavor and the nutrition and you're trading it for shelf life.
And then the bran is where all of the color and pigment is of the wheat kernel. And that's also where all of the dietary fiber is. And by taking off the bran, you allow the flour to be used in a mechanized industrial bread production way. And so there's all these trade-offs. You lose the flavor. You lose the nutrition. But you get a flour that's highly functional, that can work in a bread machine, can work in an industrial setting. We have a different type of milling technology. It's called a stone mill that's been around for thousands of years. But we have brand new mills made in Vermont by New American Stone Mills. And when we make whole wheat flour, the kernel goes in between the two stones, gets ground up into flour and comes out and that's it. So nothing's taken out. It's not processed in any way. It's literally just the kernel ground up into flour. And so it has all of the bran, all of the germ, and all of the endosperm in there. So you keep all the flavor, the texture, the colors, and the nutrition.
SU: So if you had to compare commercially available whole wheat flour to the one made by at Brooklyn Granary using a stone mill, would that be the biggest difference? The way the grains are ground and also the presence of the germ?
PSK: That would be a big thing, would be that whole wheat flour in the store possibly has the germ still taken out, possibly doesn't. Because the germ, since it's full of natural oils, will go rancid within a year. So when you're buying a whole grain flour from us, you know that it's 100% of the kernel. And then also we have a really big emphasis on freshness. So we don't mill any flour that we don't have ordered already. So we do wholesale flour deliveries, and we don't mill their flour until we receive their order, and we use flour within a week here in our bakery. And so having the flour really freshly milled makes such a huge difference. It's pretty similar to grinding coffee fresh, pressing orange juice fresh. You're really capturing that moment of when it's cracked and you're getting all of the aroma and the vibrancy of the seed.
JS: I want to ask you, because I actually worked at a bakery that milled their own flour. What applications do these use these flours for? And then if people were to try baking at home with this fresh flour, is it like a one-to-one for most recipes, or is there anything they have to tweak or watch out for?
PSK: Yeah, that is a great question. We use 100% whole grain fresh milled flour in every product that we make in the bakery, from croissants to bread to cookies to tarts, pies. And most of the time you do have to adapt your recipes. Some of the times you don't. So for example, a time in which you don't have to adjust your recipe is when making cookies, like chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies. We found that substituting a soft winter wheat or spelt for white flour is a pretty much a one-to-one swap out. Places in which you really have to adjust your recipes are breads and laminated doughs and rich doughs, because basically the whole grain flour is full of soluble and insoluble fiber that can absorb up to five times its weight in water.
And so for example, when we make our 100% whole wheat sourdough loaves, we hydrate it to 103% so the bread itself is more water than it is flour. And so I always recommend people when working with fresh milled flour for the first time, say you're making your sourdough recipe that you always make, and it's say like 100% white flour, I always recommend adding 20% fresh milled flour, upping your hydration by 2 to 5% and seeing how the dough feels. And maybe you want to add more water next time. Maybe you want to add more whole wheat flour. But I think adding a little bit at a time to a recipe that you love and you understand is the best way to start working with it.
JS: That makes sense. I remember the bakery I worked at, people would buy the fresh flour, take it home, and then bake very finicky things and then be upset with us that it maybe didn't work out.
PSK: Yeah. And we also really try and focus on the properties of the flour that we sell and really try and explain what they're good for. So we really try and put an emphasis on the education and the differences of varieties and their impact on their baking qualities.
JS: Totally. And do you have recipes that people can use for your products?
SU: We do have recipes. Yeah. We have some recipes on our website, and we also happily share recipes with anybody who asks us. Our bakery is meant to feel like a workshop, so the bakers are in the same room. They're loose flocks with just sneeze guards. And so it's really meant for it to be an interactive experience for people coming in who are looking for flour to talk to us and start a dialogue between the people coming into the bakery and the bakers and what the flour is good for.
JS: I love that.
SU: Patrick, thank you so much for coming on here. We are really in awe of everything that you're doing. And would you like to tell listeners where people can find you?
PSK: Sure, yeah. We're located in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn at 240 Huntington Street, right underneath the Smith-Ninth Street stop.
SU: And the website is?
PSK: brooklyngranaryandmill.com.
SU: Amazing.
JS: Love it.
SU: We love your stuff. The whole wheat croissants just blew our minds.
JS: It's so good.
SU: Yeah.
PSK: Oh, thank you so much. That's really nice.
SU: So flavorful. Thanks for being on here.
JS: Yeah, thank you.
PSK: Thanks for having me.
SU: That's it for this month's edition of BA Bake Club.
JS: Shilpa, can you tell our bakers about the next Bake Club recipe?
SU: I would love to. It is again, a giant pavlova, this time in a black forest variation. So very dramatic and I think very holiday appropriate.
JS: Very classy, too.
SU: Very classy. She a classy gal.
JS: Okay.
SU: Yeah.
JS: Is there any special equipment or ingredients that bakers should have on hand?
SU: I think for this one, perhaps the only specialty ingredient I would say is frozen cherries for the black forest.
JS: Sweet or tart?
SU: Both ideally. Ideally both. There is a brand called Wyman's, which we love in the test kitchen, which has a bag of frozen cherries with both kinds. It has both sweet and tart.
JS: Oh, nice.
SU: So if you can find the frozen mixed bag of sweet and tart cherries, A-plus for you. But if not, just frozen sweet cherries works perfectly fine.
JS: Great. Well Bake Clubbers, once you bake through the pavlova, send us your pictures and questions. There are so many different ways to get in touch.
SU: You can comment on the recipe, on the Epicurious app or on the Bon Appétit website. You can comment on our Substack chat or email us at bakeclub@bonappetit.com. And if you've made it and loved it, please rate and review the recipe on our site.
JS: We're your hosts, Jesse Szewczyk.
SU: And Shilpa Uskokovic.
JS: Michele O'Brien is our senior producer, and we had some help this month from Emily Elias.
SU: Pran Bandi is our studio engineer.
JS: Research editing by Jaia Clingham-David.
SU: This episode was mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound.
JS: If you like this show, leave us a rating and review and hit that follow button so you never miss an episode.
SU: And if you're not already part of the club, head over to bonappetit.com/bakeclub to find all information you need to join.
JS: Thanks for listening to BA Bake Club, and we'll see you next month.