Ask Yourself "What If?" with Milk Bar Founder Christina Tosi

0:00This episode is brought to you by True Classic. The way they became our sponsor is because I loved their t-shirts. And so we just called them up and asked them if they wanted to work together. And they said yes. So check out their clothes at trueclassic.com. What's funny about this is I always have this in my pantry. Always. Space ice cream. Always. There's always a space ice cream in my pantry. I love you so much for that. This is 100 % going, like, over my dead body, is this not going to your pasta's cookie? I don't know how that will bake. Me neither, but we're going to find out. But hey, what if?

0:38What if? So a bazillion years ago, I went for dinner in New York City at a place called Sambar, which was a David Chang restaurant. And in the back, they had a little thing called Milk Bar, which was basically the dessert place for the restaurant. Well, I fell in love with one of the desserts called Cereal Milk Ice Cream. And yes, it is the most nostalgic ice cream you could ever eat. It tastes exactly like the milk from the cereal bowl from when we were kids, that sweet milk that we would drink. Little did I know that the founder and owner of Milk Bar would later become one of my closest, closest friends, Christina Tosi.

1:12Christina Tosi has gone on to have wild success. We can all buy Milk Bar products in our local supermarkets. You can see her on Netflix and her TV show. She's got multiple cookbooks out. But best of all, Christina is the most wonderful baker because she bakes with love. It is her love language. Because Christina was in my hometown this week, we thought we would do something different. We would do an experiment. And if there's one thing Christina and I both love, it's the unknown. So this is a live cooking show that Christina and I did. So if you're listening to this on audio, you will hear some clinking and clanking because we are actually in the kitchen.

1:50We are actually baking. If you'd like to see us bake, go to YouTube. The whole episode is there. or we will do our best to explain everything we're doing. We did something we've never done. It could succeed. It could fail. You'll let us know. But no matter what, I know one thing will happen. You will learn how to make a compost cookie and you will learn how to make the tastiest beer bread of your life. This is a bit of optimism. This is a thrill for me personally because you were my first guest on a bit of optimism during lockdown. You and I have done this, I think, two or three more times. But I thought you were in LA.

2:26How much fun would it be that we actually bake together? You and I have never... That's not true. We have baked together. I was like, every time I come over, well, it's less about baking and more Simon has an idea that involves food. No, no, no. It's about introversion. It's about introversion. That's right. Because I went to a dinner party at your house and there were lots of people who were all outside being entertained by your front of house husband. And you disappeared into the kitchen. You're a happy place so you don't have to talk to people. turns out I was very close behind you and we ended up experimenting and we invented new breads we also made new new ice creams we did a it was an ice cream loaf that's like a club that's what bake club is it's like come in bake with us learn something new we're gonna set you up for success and you're the genius because it's putting the things together in your home that will bring you delight that you can share yeah I've never talked to you about baking because I'm either doing it with you or we talk about other things I've actually never talked to you about baking and now we're going to talk about baking what was your like where was your entry into baking like was it an escape to like because you didn't want to play outside with the other kids that you like i'm like i'm just gonna be over here baking like what where did like why baking baking why not baseball yeah i love to be outdoors and i love sports but baking so my mom was a working mom she's an accountant so january through april every year my grandmas my aunts would watch us basically and in my family the matriarchs bake that's just what you do in your free time ohio and virginia and then my mom would ship me off to ohio to live with my grandma on her farm every summer so that we didn't we didn't become city kids when we moved to virginia city kids um and i loved it because uh it was time with them but really i loved it because i like cookie dough.

4:18Only I started eating too much of my grandma's cookie dough. And she started doing the math and being like, this is not adding up. This should equal this many cookies, demand planning in her head. And she realized I was the culprit. And she basically was like, no more baking with me because you keep eating the cookie dough. You're spoiling your dinner, all the grandma things. It was like survival of the fittest moment. And I wasn't allowed to turn on the oven, but I loved cookie dough. So I would at a very young age, make these concoctions of like, I don't know, flour, sugar, things that I remembered putting in.

4:50And it was trial and error, right? Like, if you don't put in enough sugar, it's not really cookie dough. I'd put a raw egg in and be like, ooh, this is good. You put too much salt in, not enough baking soda, et cetera. Then I got to the age where I could turn on the oven, and so these concoctions would actually start baking. And I learned how to bake, self-taught as a home baker. And then I moved to New York City because I was like, I want to do this for a living. And then you went to fancy culinary school. became a fancy baker, worked in fancy restaurants. Yeah, because I'm intense. I like the competitive, the inner competitive spirit.

5:23I'm going to do it the highest of my games. So here's the thing that I find amazing, which is most kids who discover baking, it's science. It's following the formula, and their first recipes are memorized, you know, or you read them. But you, you didn't have that. So from the get-go, it was trial and error. From the get-go, you had to learn, like, one egg tastes good, three eggs taste bad. And that's how I learned. That's how I think. And things crumble or things stay together. So you're… Baking was never precious for me, right? That's what it is. Most people, why do they bake? Because they like the control of it, the science, the security behind it.

5:57It's hard, but it's accurate. Yeah. What I love about baking is the opposite of that reason. The thing, because I've seen… Having baked with you before and having experimented with you before, the thing that I love that you do that no one… I've never seen anybody else do, which is usually somebody makes a thing, right? And even if they experiment, it'll either work at one work and they'll say, ah, next time I'll add this to it. You will have four things going on simultaneously. It's like a conveyor belt. This one's got a little more of this. This one's got a little more of that. This one has less.

6:25And you are. You're treating it like A, B, C, D and see which one comes out. And that's what we did when we made the beer bread. A hundred percent. I remember because I went and bought the beer. How many bottles of beer did you buy? We went through a lot of bottles of beer on the wall. and we probably tried I remember we tried a raspberry beer, we tried a chocolate beer we tried a stout, we tried like a fancy beer, we tried a not fancy beer and we did the same recipe with all these beers until we discovered one we liked and so for me baking I liked all of them to be fair, for me baking and the approach to life is always walking around with this sense of what if what if what if the raspberry one's really good what if the chocolate what if what if i put pretzels and chocolate together and swirl them and what if i put cookie dough sweetened condensed milk ritz crackers and bugles yeah that sounds great in the oven there they are but there they are i'm looking at them and you never know and the beauty is a bugle on a cookie the beauty is you don't know and i i love that part of baking you only know what you know and i go into it then i'm not disappointed because that's the other bit of trial and error being a great chef a great baker you have to be so good at disappointment but you know even with all your training you know things that go together and things that shouldn't go together so how often are you actually disappointed so often because i want to defy the odds for me like milk bar was built on we're gonna have a bakery and we're not gonna have vanilla ice cream and we're not gonna cover cakes on the sides and we're not gonna make normal cookies that you would find at a bakery and we're going to make pie, but it's not apple pie.

8:07So you get cereal milk ice cream and you get milk bar pie that's dense and gooey and fudgy. We pull it out when it is still dense and gooey, right? Because who knows? And who's to say? Who gets to make the rules? Where did you come up with the name Milk Bar to name your company? Okay. It's kind of two parts. One. Milk and bar. Those are the two parts. But I'm funny. No. Close. No. My idea for Milk Bar originally, and still is, like my North Star was a modern-day take on Dairy Queen with a bakery case. Like I knew I wanted cookies, cakes, and pies, but for me it was all about a soft-serve ice cream machine.

8:48And this was before soft-serve was anything beyond what you'd find at Dairy Queen or like a roadside custard stand. Chocolate vanilla, monsieur. Yeah, so like Dairy Queen Milk Bar, you can see that, right? And then I started Milk Bar originally in the back of a Momofuku restaurant because I was helping Dave build all the Momofuku restaurants, and the naming convention that we always had was something bar, right? Noodle bar, sambar, milk bar. So part of it's like the origin story, and then the other part is like the nostalgic origin story. So milk was really your homage to Dairy Queen, and bar is because you were forced into it.

9:19Not forced into it. That was just how I thought. No, no, but you said all of the things were sambar, noodle bar. But it wasn't like it must be this. I just thought that's a beautiful way to pay homage. So you liked it? You liked it? Okay. It's good. I mean, it's worked for us. What if I said no? It's like, that's part of it, you know? So how much has baking influenced you as a person in life, your relationships, your friendships, your marriage, your mom-ness, or the other way around? How much does outside life come into your kitchen? It has gone through waves in my baking career. Here's what I know about baking.

9:52even after all that I said I thought I knew why I love to bake and it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized that I actually love to bake not just because I love to eat dessert I thought that was really the motivating factor and not just because I love the creative outlet of it but I do my best talking through dessert so dessert is my relationship to the world the community I'm an introvert the reason I like to hide in the kitchen is because I want to bake you I want you to feel known and seen in love by your not too sweet chocolate cake right like i that's how i say i got you i'm here for you i love you i'm sorry you had a shitty day happy birthday like anything in between um it's your love language it is it is that's why i bake and it gives me the never love it gives me the never-ending capability to fall back in love with anything a simple ingredient it, feeling good about a day, being a human in the world, like it is my bit of optimism.

10:51I think what I want, I think what I, what's important, what I want to get across is that too many of us think baking is follow the recipe. And it's not like cooking. Cooking, you can experiment more. In baking, you can't, there's less room for experimentation because if you change the variables, the science changes, the chemistry changes, and it doesn't work. and this idea that getting comfortable with failure and that baking is a is an education for getting comfortable with failure like it doesn't taste good so throw it out and make it again like so what just what did you learn from it when you fail from anything in life what did you learn right use that there's always good in something and for me if you're not failing you're not taking risks you're not growing right what have you learned today i didn't learn anything because I crushed it.

11:39How do you define failure? Because nobody wants to fail. Things not turning out the way that I thought they would. And guess what? That's fine. If not, that's great. That's flexibility. So how has this mentality towards your cakes impacted you as an entrepreneur? Because Milk Bar is your company. Yes. You founded it. Yes. It's had its ups and downs like any other company. You have all the same issues as every other company. It's human in the world. Right? Believe it or not. So I'm very curious because, you know, for me, I can look at myself. I know as an entrepreneur and a business owner, like I know what elements of my personality come and show up, for better and sometimes worse, but I know how they show up in work.

12:22Because I'm an artist and I have an artist sensibility. And I love seeing things. I love my senses. I love hearing things. I love tasting things. I just love all of that. I know how that shows up at work. Yes. You know, I love the experimentation. I love the messiness. I love the chaos because for me, creativity is the skill of finding order in chaos. Right? The skill of finding order in chaos. Creativity is finding order in chaos. And sometimes that chaos is thrust upon you, market conditions. And sometimes I have to inject chaos in order to get some creativity. Yeah, so what I find in my, for me, for work, it gets stale.

12:59And sometimes I don't realize things are stale until I realize I'm bored. And when I'm bored, I realize it's because there's no, And so sometimes I inject creativity. I inject chaos in order to produce a creative output. And by the way, not just mine, everybody's. This is a very, can I tell you, this is a very chef mentality. Really? Some of the greatest chefs that I worked for were most drawn to chaos. Some might call it drama. But in a way that was like, if it doesn't exist, we're not alive. We don't feel alive. The spirit of getting something done, the Herculean effort of it. And the sparks that come from that don't exist.

13:36I think the difference, at least from TV shows that I've watched about chefs, which probably is a terrible way to make this conclusion, but I don't want to be the hero. I don't want to inject chaos and then be like, and I put it right. It's not like that. I want to inject chaos and be like, all right, everybody, we have a mess. I don't know what to do, even if I made it. What are you going to do? And I love watching people and pushing people to find creative solutions to the mess that sometimes I make. So what is it about as a baker and the way you bake and the style in which you bake that you can make a one-to-one correlation to you as an entrepreneur and a business owner?

14:19The way you make decisions, the way you lead people, any of it, any of it. This is a human business. And if humanity is not a part of what we do, we have failed. And anything is possible. But what about being a baker has influenced you as an entrepreneur? Like me as an artist, I can see it. I can see where it comes in as an entrepreneur. So what about you as a baker, how you bake, the way you're approaching baking, you can see. You know nothing. Like ask yourself what if and give it a try. It's that sense of possibility. That is like how did we build a bakery that is locations all over the place, a care package business across the country, product in the out, like all kinds of crazy stuff.

14:59It's because we didn't follow roadmap and we were just like, what if? But to your point of the creating chaos, if we're not asking ourselves what if with this anything is possible mentality, and by the way, when you're building business, right? We're 17 years in right now. It would be smart to keep just doing what we're doing. Sell the icons, sell the classics. Don't iterate, like play it safe, keep it simple, right? Go with your greatest hits. Right? But you still have to sing respect if you're a Laritha Franklin. 100%. You still have cereal milk ice cream in the machine. But if that's all we're doing, the spirit and the heartbeat of who we are, we don't feel like ourselves.

15:37We love to do that. And you have to be able to nail your classics every time. But if we're not experimenting and trying and falling flat on our faces and finding these moments, we're suffocating ourselves. Let's bake. I want to learn. So you've made something not with me, but I've been in the room when you're making them, which is a compost cookie. And I knew that we were gonna make these because I was told, I was given one instruction, which is bring stuff from around my kitchen. Just bring stuff. I have no idea if any of this stuff is bakeable. You don't know what I brought. I have no clue what you brought.

16:09But I brought stuff from around my kitchen. So I think every baked good, like it's not about us when we make baked goods. It's about what the baked good does for the person that's eating it. Not too sweet. So the compost cookie is a chocolate chip cookie. when you don't have enough chocolate chips to make a chocolate chip cookie. That was the origin? It's butterscotch chips. It's pretzels. It's potato chips. It's ground coffee. It's graham cracker crumbs. It's whatever. It's anything and everything. I used to make it on this island off the coast of New Hampshire. A bad storm would come in. I had to bake for 600 people breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

16:41And it was basically the like, ooh, we're not getting any fresh. So I just go into the pantry and grab stuff. And it became this beloved cookie because people would guess every time. So this is my bespoke cookie. This is your bespoke compost cookie. I also just think it's fascinating what people keep in their pantries. It says everything. It's the food that fuels them. It's the food that fuels your creative engines. I didn't bring kimchi, and it's always in my fridge. That's okay. But you want to know what? I would have gone the distance with you. But I think the food that people keep at home is the most brilliant insight into them.

17:15And I think your taste buds are fascinating. And they're different than mine. Well, hopefully this will fascinate you. This hopefully is a fascinating thing. Let's see. We're trying something a little different. Instead of a traditional host red ad, I invited Ryan Bartlett, the founder of our sponsor, True Classic, to sit down for a conversation. And it turns out there's a lot more that we can learn from him beyond just how great his t-shirts are. And his t-shirts really are great. We call this an ad with authenticity. I was obsessed with reading the reviews about what people were saying about the product.

17:50and there was a magical moment very early on. It was in the first couple months. This lady hit us up and was like, hey, I just wanted to let you guys know, my husband, because of your product, he walks out of the house with an air of confidence now that he's never had, like ever in his life. I spent$49 on a three-pack and somehow that has translated to confidence in him. I can't tell you how transformational it's been. He doesn't feel subconscious about how he looks anymore. He's actually proud of himself. So thank you so much for developing this thoughtful product. It has quite literally changed our lives.

18:27And I read that and it just, it hit me. And I was like, we're not selling t-shirts. We're selling confidence. And like all great companies, what you're doing for your customer, you're doing for your employees. You're building a culture where people feel confident because they have the opportunity to experiment, be their true selves and build a career with you. So one of my favorite things in the world, I brought what I have left. Oh. Yeah. Lapsang sushong tea. Okay, so we got tea. So we got tea. Some really fancy tea. My brother-in-law makes the best granola in the world. His name's Brad, and so we call it Branola.

19:02Okay. I brought our favorite almonds. Oh my god. I introduced you to these almonds, which are almonds from Afghanistan of all things, but they're the tastiest almonds in the world. I had those in the pantry. I have a half-eaten bag of kettle corn pop chips. I love kettle corn everything. I'm getting some play here. I brought a bag of my Optimism coffee. Oh, this stuff. That's the magic. Okay, I'm going to loop these into categories. I think somebody stayed at my house and left these in my pantry, and I don't know what they are. They're wheat puffs. Some sort of wheat puff, something around it.

19:42I don't know what it is. Okay. There are things in here that I always, believe it or not, this will tell you something. You say what's in my pantry tells you about something about who I am. What else do you got? I have a chocolate drawer. I know about the chocolate drawer. So I just grab a lot of bars in the chocolate drawer, everything from crap to really high-end stuff. This is going to be the most primo tacos cookie we've ever seen. Because I'm an Englishman, I always add English chocolate. I love you that you have a dark Kit Kat. I have dark chocolate Kit Kat. I have Maltesers. I have Cadbury's White Buttons.

20:13Now this will tell you the most, this will tell you the biggest thing about me. And this is, what's funny about this is I always have this in my pantry. Always. Space ice cream. Always. There's always a space ice cream in my pantry. I love you so much for that. This is a hundred percent going, like, over my dead body is this not going to your compost I don't know how that will bake. Me neither, but we're gonna find out. But hey, what if? What if it works? That really is compost. What if? What if? What if? Okay, great. We've got it. By the way, you talk about what if. This entire, you and I doing a cooking show.

20:54Oh, that's a what if. Is an experiment. This could be an absolute disaster or failure. I'll tell you what, I had a great time. No. Okay, so first things first, which one do you want to choose? Do you want to do the brunola? Brunola. We got you, Brad. Okay, so we're going to granola, maltesers, chocolate, space ice cream, pop thingies, and then... Almonds. Simon Phylls. Okay, I'm going to start chopping some stuff up. In the meantime, you're going to do 101. When you're making a cookie, you've got to start with fat and sugar, and you paddle them together. So I've got unsalted butter, sugar, light brown sugar, and some granulated sugar.

21:33We have to say we did not pre-bake the cookies because I literally just showed up with the ingredients. Couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. So what was the other thing I had to add to this? Just those three. We're going to start there. Okay, so butter and sugar cream together. So it's nice and smooth. You got it. Like 101. It's all about a homogenous mixture. It's all about scraping down the sides of the bowl to get it going. I'm very excited for this. Right now it's very crumbly. Just keep it going. Just keep it going. It'll come together. You can, we'll do this. Ready? Yeah. Really get in there.

22:06You're turning up the... Yeah! Oh, we're making dough. We're making dough. All right. Now she's looking. When I was a kid, I used to like dipping my finger in the butter and then dipping it in the sugar. And then eating it off my finger. This is... Honestly, baking with children and watching them interact with ingredients is one of my favorite things. No, I just mean you did it as a kid. Because you looked at it with this... Kid. Kid. Kid in air quotes. With this childlike sensibility. Yes. You ready for this? What's that? See this? No. This is glucose. It is a significantly less sweet inverted sugar compared to corn syrup.

22:45But we put glucose in all of our cookies at Milk Bar because it guarantees you're going to get a nice dense fudgy centered cookie. And because there's water activity in it, it guarantees that your cookie stays nice and moist and fudgy for multiple days. Did I ever tell you that I think that the Great British Baking Show is the greatest television on television? Did I ever tell you that? Because... Second to your show only. Second to your show only. Because it champions the spirit, the true altruistic spirit of a baker. To me it's the way life should be, which is we can compete against... It's a show with winners and losers.

23:26Somebody will be declared a winner. Every day somebody's thrown off the show. It has losers and yet even though it's a competition they help each other and that to me is the spirit of what life should be We can compete against each other and help each other simultaneously. They're not mutually exclusive Also, you can just compete against yourself like that too We don't need a loser to have a winner. No, but the fact is it is a competition in that case Oh, so that's the ice cream sandwich that space ice cream sandwich. I will admit I prefer the Neapolitan I'm kind of into this. It's gonna give us a cookies and cream moment.

23:55Yeah, yeah Yeah. Got a real fun little situation happening. And then, do you feel like you have a nice homogenous mixture? It feels pretty homogenous. It feels nice. You don't have any specks of - There's a lot of homogeneity going on here. Okay, great. You gotta put all the dry ingredients together before you - Oh, I fucked it up. No, you're fine. But I will tell you when it makes a difference, and that will. You didn't mess it up, but - Shit. Also, this is fun. Thank goodness this is your kitchen and not mine. and flour just went everywhere. It happens. Can I tell you even to this day? I'm spilling, I'm mixing, I'm dropping an egg.

24:36It all happens. It happens. You know what, let's just leave the mess. Mess is good. Mess means we're living, man. Apparently, in Chinese food, if you leave a mess, it means you enjoyed your meal. Highest compliment. So I am - Okay, whoa, whoa. So we want a tender, we want the cookie to be on this spectrum, which means as we add the flour, we want to mix it as little as possible, because the more we mix it, the closer it gets on the spectrum to bready. Oh, got it. Which is okay. So let's scrape this down, and now we're going to put our mixings in. You want to taste some dough? Yeah. It's a good base.

25:15That's good. And I didn't screw it up too badly. You didn't. For me, this is why I got kicked out of the kitchen. Why? This moment. Because you would stick your finger in it? Because once I have one bite of cookie dough, I have to like take two grown-up steps away from it now. Wait, wait, this is very tasty. Very tasty. And I can taste the, I can taste this brown sugar. It's so good. Yeah, I like brown sugar. All right, so we're gonna add some goodies. Okay. It's as much or as little as you want. Well, does it all just get thrown in? Yeah, and we're gonna let the heft of the paddle break some of these bigger pieces down.

25:51What I love in a compost cookie. We're putting in my leftover kettle corn pop chips. It's going to be good. Those are tasty. Okay, this is the most exciting one of all. That's just going to be huge and chunky, though. No, no, no. It'll break down. What do you think? There's a piece in there. Oh, do you need it? No, just eat it. So we have now put in the, now we put in the ice cream sandwich, the, sorry, the space ice cream sandwich. We're putting in some granola, homemade family granola. I think this one's gonna be the reason you really like it. I think so too. Then lots of dark chocolate, very fancy dark chocolate.

26:2785%. Bunch of Maltesers. This is a fun one because you're never this untidy about how you think about anything. You're absolutely got me wrong. Well, you're intentional. Everybody thinks I'm neat and organized. No, no, no, I know you're not neat and organized. It's the biggest surprise everybody has of me, which is I'm messy. I, but look at this. That smells good. But you're like, this isn't how one should bake. You think baking is a certain way, and I'm like, no, no, no. It's more free - Let's make a mess. This is true. This is true. This is free-form baking. You're like that in these other places, and that's where your brilliance comes out.