467: Zoë François Bakes It All

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0:31these recipes that my grandmother wrote down for me were from my great great great grandmother who had a bakery in kiev what i also didn't realize is that me asking my grandmother to write them down was the very first time they'd ever been written down because they were all told verbally. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Zoe Francois is a professional pastry chef, recipe consultant, cookbook author, food photographer, and baking instructor, and the host of Zoe Bakes on Magnolia Network. Man, she is busy. I recently spoke with her live at Rizzoli Bookstore in New York City to talk about the subject of her latest book, Cookies.

1:18Her new book is Zoe Bakes Cookies, and it's honestly one of my favorite books in this category in many, many years. We get into so many great tips for baking the perfect chocolate chip cookie, snickerdoodle, peanut butter cookie, and other Midwestern favorites. Man, I love how Zoe focuses on the Midwest. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:49Okay. Hi, everyone. Thanks for waiting. Welcome to Rizzoli Bookstore. We're very glad to have you here tonight. It's our first event of the fall season. And we're here to celebrate Zoe Bakes Cookies by Zoe Francois, the lovely pastry chef and TV host and author of the award-winning Zoe Bakes Cakes. We're very lucky to have her here visiting New York tonight. And she's joined by matt radbard the author most recently of the cookbook korea town and he's the founding editor of taste as well um and we're recording this live for the this is taste podcast as part of our ongoing series with them so very lucky to have them both here yes come on up welcome thanks for being here uh they're going to be in conversation together for about 40 minutes or so with some time for your questions after and let's give them both a very warm welcome matt and zoe thanks for Thank you, Christine.

2:39Lovely crowd. Sold out. And we have Julia Tershin here in conversation with Eliza Barbernell in October. So we'll be posting that on Taste. We're recording this live for our podcast, This Is Taste. You can always download it on all the places you get podcasts. And thank you, Clayton, for recording it. We have our gentleman in the front. Hello. Welcome to your release day. How are you feeling? Today's the day. I love that when it's release day. How are you feeling? It's amazing and surreal. I mean, you spend three years working on something and then all of a sudden it's alive and in people's hands.

3:11And it's crazy to see you holding it. It's wonderful. I love it. Well, it's really a terrific book. And we're going to go over lots of the recipes and techniques, why the cookie was your point of interest. But first, you landed in New York. I'd like to get a sense of where have you been going out while here? Restaurant-wise, this isn't your hometown, but I'm sure you have some spots. Oh, yeah. Well, so far I've been to Best Szechuan. Oh, yeah. Which was amazing. I'm going to check out a new bakery. It's not even actually open, but it's going to open soon. It's called Honey by Miro. And he was the pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern.

3:53And I'm very excited about that. My cousin just opened a new restaurant. Vaudour? La Vaudour. La Vaudour. La Vaudour. Yeah. So those are the two places. Oh, and also Bar Contra. Yeah, great. You hit Eater, you hit Grub Street, you got all the spots. So let me ask you, when you go to a town and you visit for either producing your television show or just doing tour, like how do you organize the bakeries that you're going to go to? I feel like you're often probably pulled into a lot of directions. Yeah. Okay, so first of all, I pull Instagram. Yeah. And I ask everybody for their recommendations. If I'm going into a city, I don't know that well or at least get opinions.

4:40And then my son, Charlie, who's here, makes me an Excel spreadsheet. And then my friend, Stephen, is my navigator. And he takes the spreadsheet and we have a map and we hit. But I think when I did the cake book, we hit 43 slices of cake in three days. Amazing. In what city? Here. In New York. In New York. And then we did the same thing with cookies. Let's go top three in New York cake slices. Can we just do that right now? I didn't prep you for that. No, you didn't prep me for that. I didn't. Or just one. But that was a long time ago. So I don't, that was like pre-pandemic. So I don't know if they would still.

5:22Pandemic, right. Yeah. Yeah. I this was that was like a little bit of like a funny question, but you are so serious and I respect that. So when you're doing 43 cakes in a city and you're researching a book or when you were researching this book. So how are you gaining this knowledge? How are you how are you going to the bakeries? Walking. That's how I can eat 43 slices of cake is because we are literally walking 43 miles to get them. I love that. Yeah. So you have a lot of opportunities after your last book before this one to start going down this route of single topic. And I believe your career will end up going in this direction for future books.

6:03But why, Zoe, focus on the cookie for this book when you could have gone in other directions? I actually thought cookies would be the first one. Oh, OK. Yeah, because I started my career doing cookies. And so I thought that would be the first one. Um, but Jane, my agent, and I discussed that there were so many cookie books coming out that year, um, that we postponed that and went for cakes, which is my, was my other obsession at the time. So I always I knew that this would be like a series of books, single subject series, so I could like deep dive into each one. I'm really, really glad that Cookies was sort of put on hold and came out now because it's a book that I hadn't visualized when I first was thinking of Cookies.

6:57This book became so much more than what I anticipated. So it was a real journey and it wouldn't have been ready back then. I mean, there are even more cookie books now than there were four years ago. And still it's here and it's exceptional. And it's a book that offers cookie cat, the Academy in the front of the section in the front of the book. And then a lot of recipes that show innovation. I guess when you're looking at your spreadsheet or whiteboard and you're saying, I'm going to write a cookie book in 2024. like, what are you trying to articulate for this category that has been published extensively?

7:37Yeah, that's so, okay. So first of all, I thought that I knew exactly what this book was going to be. I started a cookie company when I was in college. I was taking a business class and we had to write a fictitious business plan. And my business plan was a cookie company. And it was like, of the era of, you know, Famous Amos and David's Cookies and Mrs. Fields. And so I wrote it based on that. And then after I wrote it, I decided it looked like a whole lot more fun than sitting in school. So I dropped out of school and I started the company. I did go back. I did graduate. But so that was my beginning.

8:22And so I thought that it would be sort of the cookies that I've baked in my career. And then it took a turn and I realized that not only were they the cookies that I baked in my career and through restaurants and all of that, but it was also family recipes. And those took a hold of me in a way that I didn't see coming and sort of took over the book. and it became way more of almost memoir told through cookie recipes. And I ended up learning things about my family and myself that I had no idea until I was doing the research for this book. What's one thing that you learned through the process that maybe upon reflection was like a big reveal?

9:15I would say there's a chapter in the book about Bubby Berkowitz recipes. And I had asked my grandmother, Sarah Berkowitz, for a couple of recipes. This was like 10 years ago. And when I was doing this book, she had passed away. So I called my mom and I was talking to her about these recipes and asked her if she had any memories of them. And I ended up hearing stories that I hadn't ever heard of before. These recipes that my grandmother wrote down for me were from my great, great, great grandmother who had a bakery in Kiev, baked to bring joy because that's what bakers do, but also to survive. They were doing this in order to survive and live and then to eventually raise enough money to move to America.

10:13What I also didn't realize is that me asking my grandmother to write them down was the very first time they'd ever been written down because they were all told and passed down verbally. None of these women until my grandmother could read or write. And so they would teach the next generation, skipping my mother. She won't mind because everybody knows she can't bake. I've written about it extensively. Is it like a little, it's a thing? It's a thing. But it turns out to be great because I send her all the recipes. She tests them. And if she can make them, then I know everybody can do it. But that was one.

10:58I think that story changed the book for me. And it just became, you know, there's recipes and stories about growing up in the commune. And I mean, I ate really bleak things on that commune. There's a lot of carob? It was a lot of, oh, the carob. And I'm still in therapy over it. And my dad and I have discussed it at length. But there were, you know, but now that I'm an adult, I really kind of appreciate some of those recipes. But I wanted to make them delicious. Yeah. Well, you have a helpful chapter. Yeah. They call them helpful cookies. Yeah, exactly. But it was because of the commune that that chapter became a thing.

11:45So each chapter is a part of my life. It sort of tells the story of that era of my life. Let's go back briefly for the listeners of the show and those who don't know. You were hustling cookies out of a cart in Vermont. Yes. And that was like the beginning of your professional baking career. But it was cookies where you got your start. And it was during the moment, as you mentioned, Famous Amos and Mrs. Fields and many other brands. What was that like, like coming to the revelation that people would buy your cookies? It was pretty remarkable since I didn't know what I was doing. And oftentimes they were edible, but barely.

12:27So I think I looked, I think I was trying really hard and people recognize that. And I learned a lot. I also worked at a little breakfast place and had sort of like learned a little bit about working in a kitchen. But I also bought my first KitchenAid mixer. I think within the first week of having it, I threw a solid block pound of butter into it, frozen. Don't do this. This is a cautionary tale. The engine. And stripped the gears. Yeah, the gears mess. Just done. Gone. Hobart was down the street and they rebuilt it for me. I learned so much from doing that. One thing, and you'll see it in this book, is I talk a lot about how to get your cookies to be consistent.

13:20Because when I was doing that cookie cart, they were never consistent. You'd come, one day they'd be this big, the next day they were, you know, saucers. Yeah. Well, we're going to get into Cookie Academy a little bit. that have like specific questions I think would be revealing to some of the tips. But one, I'd love to hear about the portion spoon for cooking as a verb. I feel like some folks maybe don't have portion spoons, but if you watch your videos or watch a television show, it's kind of essential. Explain why the portion spoon actually can help you. I have an entire drawer system of scoops, the portion scoops.

13:57This is something that you learn immediately in culinary school or working in a restaurant environment is one, it just makes life easier to scoop things out of a portion scoop, but also consistency. So, and I have them in every size, but when you're baking cookies and you put a tray of cookies into the oven and some are the size of a quarter and some are, you know, the size of a baseball, they're going to bake differently. So using a portion scoop, obviously you're going to have all the same size and they just bake more evenly. How do you know which one to use? That's the biggest problem too, because like sometimes they get too small.

14:41I mean, that's really the challenge. And then a perfectly round cookie too. I mean, all these questions. Okay. Every single recipe tells you exactly which scoop to use, but sometimes you don't want that size so there is the baking academy where I talk about it but you know if you use the size that I recommend for the recipe it'll work as I say but you know I want people to also feel free to do what they want to do with it so if they want a smaller cookie use a smaller scoop, but then you have to bake it for less amount of time. But I talk about that in the book. Yeah, it's great how concise you make these tips.

15:27And of course, there's QR codes and you can find yourself baking through your videos as well. Now, audience, please be thinking about questions for Zoe about baking cookies or baking anything or really anything. We're going to take them at the end of the conversation. I want to ask you about freezing and chilling dough before baking. As a novice baker, I always mess this up. I feel like my dough is too cold. My dough is not cold. I don't think ahead of time. So is there a tip that we can take away about thinking about the freezing and chilling of dough? And what exactly does that do? Okay. It depends on the cookie.

16:04Yeah. So some cookies, you want to bake them cold. If you chill the dough, Like if you make a chocolate chip cookie and you bake it right away, the butter is soft. Everything is room temperature. It's going to spread more. If you chill it first, it's not going to spread as much. If you chill it for an hour, it'll set up a little bit. If you chill it for a couple of days, not only will it set up more, but everything sort of marries together. Like the ingredients absorb together and they just become more harmonious. and they taste different. They behave differently. They get chewier sometimes. So chilling can really change a cookie substantially.

16:55For the better, mostly. And for the better, yeah. I mean, I'm not, I'm trying to think of a time, like I do have like a super crispy chocolate chip cookie in the book. And that's one of the places where I say bake it right away because you want it to spread. You want it to caramelize. You want it to, you know, get lacy and crinkly. I mean, there's lots of charts and you have a progression from like chewy to crispy. And there's real science obviously behind it. And I guess for those who maybe don't think of themselves as math and science folks, but want to actually dive in, can you reassure us that we can make cookies like you?

17:40Because there's a little bit of a hurdle. Okay. So first of all, I put a baking academy in all of my books and I put it in its own little section because I just did a YouTube live yesterday and my mom watched it and she called me and she's like, you are such a nerd. And I'm like, I am and I love it. And I love to geek out on these things. And so I put it in one place because I want people to have the information. I want them to be able to deep dive in some of this stuff. And also it's like if you have your grandmother's recipe and she's called for a walnut-sized piece of butter and a handful of flour, it's like, what do you do with that?

18:23Buy that digital scale. Yeah, it's like, so I want people to be able to take this Baking Academy and, you know, be able to move through my book, but also be able to learn something about some of the other recipes they've been struggling with. or you can just leave it alone. You do not ever have to look at that chapter. If you want it, it's there. And I always refer to it in the recipe, but I didn't want to weigh each recipe down with a lot of like geeking out for people who just want to bake a cookie. So it's there for you if you want it. And it's there for you if you want to ignore it. Great.

19:05Just great. I think that's very smart to keep the writing extremely crisp, pun intended, while you have your academy at the beginning. Okay, let's talk about chocolate chip cookies for one second. So we know chocolate chip cookies are a matter of preference, right? But with that said, if you were to isolate one element of the chocolate chip cookie for all home bakers to focus more on, what would that one element be? Okay, there's a couple of things just generally about recipes. And this is really true for most baking, if not all baking, is pay attention to the temperature. So if a recipe calls for room temperature eggs or butter or anything else, they need to be room temperature.

19:52Because when you're creaming something together and you're using room temperature butter, it's like magic. It just sort of happens and it's quick. If you're trying to do that with like solid butter, you're struggling with it and it's never going to sort of emulsify as cleanly. Is that like an hour at room temperature? Yeah, it's like an hour, but it also depends. Like, do you live in Savannah or do you live in Minneapolis? It's like so. And I also give lots and lots of tips on how to warm butter because sometimes you want cookies in an emergency or like you haven't prepared for it. And it's like, I need these.

20:35And so I have some tips on how to get things to room temperature, the eggs, the butter, all of that. So we have butter as one. What's another element for the chocolate chip cookie that we should really focus on? I would say chocolate. Okay. Because it's the star of the whole situation. I am not here to suggest that you use one type of chocolate. I have my favorites. They're in the book. Whatever your favorite is, is great. But just remember that that's the star of it. I have to say, though, that there is a new trend of chocolate free chocolate chip cookies. Oh. Awkward pause. Awkward pause. I don't know.

21:25What do you think? I think they need a new name. Yeah. But I do know that some people like more chocolate and less chocolate. Chips or chunks? What works best? Okay, so I do like chunks. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the chips oftentimes have fat and additives to them to prevent them from losing that chip shape. Agree. And like when we're standing in our fancy bakery and paying like$5.75 for a chocolate chip cookie, they're usually chunks, I would say. Yes. And chunks are just sexier. Yeah. Like when you do, and I teach you how to get that like perfect chocolate pool that you see on Instagram all the time.

22:10There is a trick to that. Yeah. But the chunk will get you there. Few more questions. Okay. I want to win my office cookie competition. And literally at Penguin Random House where I work, Gina also works there. We have one every December. This is going to be online forever. So people will be listening to it while they're preparing. How do we do that with your book? Is there a recipe that is so unexpected or maybe so easy that we need to go to it to win that competition? Yeah. Okay. There is – okay. This is going to be a very weird one, but it's – they're the Super Bowl Bars. Oh, it sounds amazing.

22:52Say that 10 times fast. And my recipe tester said, I don't even know what this is or what I am eating, but I can't stop. They're just like layers of things and they have pretzels and potato chips and they're so weird and they're so good. So what's the weird? I mean, I'm hearing pretzels. I'm hearing bar. Yeah, it's just sort of like all the Super Bowl snacks in. Oh, I get it now. In one place. So you don't have to like get up from the couch. And are they easy to make? Yes, they're easy to make. As far as they're easy to make. Bless you for putting a Midwestern chapter in the book. I'm from West Michigan myself.

23:38Oh, you are? So hell yeah. And let's talk about that. Midwestern baking, I think, gets shit on quite a bit by fancy coastal people. Right? I think it's assumed that it's like mostly lemon bars. Yeah, there's a lot of lemon bars. I mean, but we as Midwesterners, I think kind of own like home baking in many ways. I know there'll be debates. You can offer the comment up later. So tell us about Midwestern baking. OK, well, there's a couple of things. I was very surprised when I moved there. The just intense, intense baking culture that goes on there. You have to, first of all, understand that Minneapolis is a milling city.

24:21It is literally a city built on flour. And so it is the entire culture is built around things to do with flour. But it's also has the culture of Scandinavian immigrants and German immigrants, and they all have a super rich baking culture that has all touched down in that one place. And it's the home of Betty Crocker. Right. And so when I was doing this book, and I have all of my grandmother's recipes. This is my father's mom. And I would celebrate Christmas at her house, and I have her recipe box. And I was, you know, I would go to her house during the holidays, coming from the commune, not being allowed to eat sugar, and going there.

25:19And she would make like 12 different cookies. It turned out most of those cookies from her recipe box are from Betty Crocker. So I had to spend time. Tweak them. I had to tweak a lot of them. Yeah. They also have, you know, this was back in the 60s and 70s. They also have gossip written on them, trash talk, all of her notes. Just the tea from the day. I mean, these are like some juicy recipe parts. She was a piece of work. I love the, also like the bake sale in Midwestern schools and churches. Churches, yeah. It's such a thing that, obviously it's everywhere, but it's big in the Midwest. Yeah.

26:06I did a few episodes of my show in church basements and, you know, these lefza parties where people would bring bowls that were hundreds of years old. that their family had been mixing dough and cookies and lefse in. And it's intense. It's just an intense place. And there are lemon bars, but there are so many other things. Yeah, I love that we are thinking beyond the lemon bar for Midwestern making. Thank you for sharing and thank you for giving it its flowers. A few more. Be thinking about your questions. is there a cookie that we should as homemakers just not tackle and just leave it for the pros there's gotta be one that's like only for the semi-pros no no no i i disagree with that i think that there are some that you probably won't nail the first time you go for it but i think that I think people get hung up on success of a recipe and put too much pressure on themselves.

27:17And a lot of what I've learned over the years and just in general is mostly comes from when I fail and fail hard. And so I feel like people need to give themselves room to try a project that might be a little bit of a stretch. For you, what is a cookie that is a little bit of a stretch? Well, I would say macarons tend to be, you know, maybe it's almost like a feeling that you get when you're mixing the dough, when you have that macronage that happens in the bowl. This is all in the book, so you can read that. What that means is stir. It's just fancy stirring. um but yeah so i mean there are things about that recipe um that can be a little bit um what about laminated doughs and croissants do you do you mess with those a little bit yeah there's a a quick puff pastry in the book because uh there i have a rugelach recipe in there and there's two different doughs because depending on where you're from, some people do a cream cheese dough and some people do a laminated dough.

28:38A laminated dough is just, it's basically a dough that has layers of butter so that you get the flakiness. And so it's more of a pastry. But in certain cultures, that's what rugula is made with yeah so great and it's so great you could i like the cream cheese one too yeah the cream cheese one is the only one i've attempted doing like your own lamination at home super easy yeah it's easier to do that i think rugula is a great great call you obviously love doing television like you really it shows and i i mean really like it's a lot of work obviously and not all glamour tell us about what's what are you looking to do with your career on television I feel like this, I mean, really, you have so much to do.

29:24Shows, travel. What do you want to do? I would love to do more of them. And there's, you know, so far my show has been based in Minnesota. There's hundreds more stories to tell there, but there's lots of shows and lots of bakeries and lots of things to be done in Paris, too. Yeah, right. Right. So I would love to travel and do these things because, you know, we've been talking a little bit about the different culture of baking and that plays a role in the book as well. like the different parts of my childhood and my family and my DNA. But I learned a lot from just reading about other things and trying other recipes and discovering the world through recipes.

30:20And I would love to actually go out and do that. So let's go Bourdain for a second. We've got Paris' number one, episode one, season one, in episode one. So we've got four more episodes, five more. Where else are we going on your show? Yeah.