490: Building a Cult Bakery with ALF’s Amadou Ly

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. Everything is about from a start mixing to the days goes to the oven. Every step the way. If you become lazy, you will do an average croissant. It's still called a croissant, but you're not going to do any justice to it. It's very finicky. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel.

0:59Amadou Lee is the baker-owner of Alf Bakery, a destination for delights like mushroom danishes and laminated baguettes located in New York's Chelsea Market. After 18 years of working in restaurants in New York, as a dishwasher, to a pastry chef, to a chocolatier, he apprenticed under Roger Guerrall at the iconic Arcade Bakery. Arcade closed, and now he's making some of the most exciting bread and pastries in the city at ALF, and we talk about it all in this episode.

1:35Amadouli, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming on on your day off of work. I know that it must be pretty precious for a baker on your day off. I had a couple of hours before I get here. So for bakers, it's literally no day off. Yeah. What were you doing work in the bakery this morning still, even though it was closed? Receiving deliveries, doing a couple of work for the next day. So you have to be ready. Yeah. How early do you wake up in the morning? It depends. You know, I try to work around 4.30 a.m. every day. Depends who is at the bakery.

2:12Now I have a couple of strong people. There are days that I wake up literally at six, so I get a little sleep. Sleeping in until 6 a.m. Yes. That's kind of the baker's way, isn't it? Yes. It's kind of a luxury for me as a baker, but because, you know, half is a different bakery, it's a different philosophy. Most bakeries, people come at 2 a.m. We don't, my first baker gets there at 5 a.m., 5.30, 6 a.m. What is it about ALF and the philosophy that lets you have those extra hours in the morning? I, you know, when you let a team of bakers overnight without any supervision, most of the time you have a major co-product, you know, because normally that shift is, we call it the graveyard shift.

3:11You know, you have only workers, not people that really put an input to a product. So the quality might differ. For people that do wholesale, that works for them. I'm a bakery that opens at 9 a.m. Therefore, I'd rather have a fresh product on the shelf that it baked around 7 a.m., 8 a.m. Therefore, you know, my customer will have a fresh product. So there's no reason for me to bake at 2 a.m. for things to shit on the shelf, like most bakery do. So, you know, it affects the products. Yeah. And the timeline is different also. Yes. So I want to talk about Elf, but first I just want to get a little bit of background.

3:56Could you tell me just what drew you to baking in the first place and how long have you been baking? I mean, it's a long story. I come in here to study, but when I came to America, I landed in New York. Funny, I needed pocket money. I started working for restaurants. My first gig in a restaurant was dishwasher at a restaurant called Union Pacific, early 2000 with this chef named Rocco Di Spirito. Great chef, very temperamental, but great chef. He was like the next big chef in America. And I think I learned a lot being a dishwasher, moving as a pastry cook, and I see the dynamic in the restaurant.

4:56I decided to be a chef. So that's how it started. Yeah. And then I, you know, over the years, you know, I grew as a pastry cook, a pastry sous chef, a pastry chef. And I did some chocolate work. And I worked in, you know, cafes, Michelin stars, lately on the Michelin stars. And I didn't like the lifestyle of chefs and the fine dining. And I had an opportunity, I met Roger Arcade, and I was just finishing my work at All Good Things, which is one Michelin star in Tribeca. He was a block away from us. And I stopped there for a breakfast and I loved his work and I loved the space. I loved the smell of the space.

5:47And I had a great croissant. And I couldn't believe it because really, I had a croissant that you say, whoa, this is it. This is a product. And I went home, sent him an email, and he got me a staging with him. And after three months, he offered me a job. That's making bread. I've done bread, but not like I did with him for four and a half years. So he shaped my vision and how you call it, my experience in the bread making. Yeah. It's funny because I had that exact same experience eating a croissant at arcade. And there is something about a really good croissant that it's elusive. It shouldn't be so hard to find because the ingredients are so simple.

6:41but then when you have one that's really good, what do you think makes a really good croissant and sets that kind of work apart? There's different parameters of making a great, simple product that is, like you said, an elusive product because people tend to cut corners. When you start cutting corners in a simple ingredient, things that were supposed to be simple, you're taking maybe 70 % off the product. because it's all about fermentation, about croissant. There's also fat, butter, good butter, fermentation again. So people tend to forget that everything is about from it start mixing to the days goes to the oven.

7:29Every step the way, if you become lazy, you will do an average croissant. It's still called a croissant, but you're not going to do any justice to it. It's very sneaky. Yeah. I want to talk about the laminated baguettes also that were being made at Arcade that you do now at ALF. I had never had one before I had one at Arcade, maybe in 2017 it was. And it's such a surreal experience. I feel like for me, I'd always thought that laminated pastry like a croissant and bread were separate and to have something together was so unusual. Had you had one before? And what is the process of making one? Because they're very rare.

8:10They're kind of hard to find. Yes, you're right. Because laminated baguette, you know, Roger used to do a lot of competitions, bread competition worldwide. I mean, he's a massive bread maker. So during the competition, even in France, you will see them laminated baguette. is one of these pieces that is for a showcase. You know, like a baker will do it, but it's not for production because there's so many steps that bakeries are like, no, we're not going to mess with this because it's like time, it's money. You know, it's like different steps. You're doing a bread and then you go into lamination.

8:52So you're having another step. And most bakers, most bread bakers know only how to do bread like they will do sourdough they will do either they will do a baguette they don't touch the lamination products a guy like Roger that is very rounded he decided why not I'm going to do an extra step I'm going to do a laminated baguette I'm going to bring it back I mean it's been done and here it is it's become a hit but it's a lot of work into it. Yeah. It's interesting also because like most people don't even, I think, know that they exist, at least here in America. Bread bakers don't have to make them because nobody even knows to ask for them.

9:39But now maybe some people are upset because you are making everybody want them and they're still a hard thing to find in places. It's true. It's funny because at the bakery, I have bakers from Europe, from France. I have this guy walks in, he's a baker. from, I think he was from Bordeaux. He was in his family. He looks at the product. He came back. He looks at the product again. And he goes, he pointed at the laminated baguette. He goes, what is this? And I'm like, laminated baguette. He calls his wife. He goes like, I never heard of laminated baguette. I've been in a bakery for 20 years. And I'm like, here's a piece.

10:17Try a laminated baguette. And he blew his mind. And he goes like, but how come I never seen this in France? And I explained to him what I explained to you. That is this product that is done during competitions. You know, on the Viennois there is a section where people, you do croissant, you do a laminated baguette, you do laminated brioche, whatever lamination you want to do. You do nice scoring. and he goes, huh, you really wake up, I woke up from this because this is like a product that even though it's from France, I never seen it. And for him it was shocking until he tested it and he left, he was like, you really gave me an output going back home and trying to do this.

11:04And he goes like, yeah, I understand, it's a lot of steps. But it's a good product, it's doable, It's just like time consuming and no room for error because it's too much thing going on. Yeah. So this is one of the products that you have kind of regularly at ALF. Can you tell me a little bit more about like what was the vision behind ALF when you opened the bakery and what kinds of other things can people find there? I mean, working with Roger and closing Arcade was for us, for all the bakers that were there with him at the beginning was kind of shocking. And after we closed the bakery, I was offered to run the bakery at Arcade.

11:52But I refused. I declined because the French people I know, that's an old friend of mine. and I wanted to do Alfa somewhere, Arcade Bakery somewhere else because I knew this was the bakery that is, I think, the world needs. There's a few bakeries like Arcade. It's a craft bakery. It's about the product and it's also about the craft. Craft is very important. For Roger to pass on the knowledge to me to be able to do it, to leave a legacy, and for me to be able to train somebody else to do another micro bakery, another, but a core driven is about the craft. It's about the craft of making croissant.

12:41That's a craft. It's a craft of making baguette. You know, simple thing, baguette, but there's a way to make a good baguette. So that was the idea for me saying, okay, I declined the job and I was in a search what I'm going to do next until I found my partner, Matt. We talked about it for a year. The pandemic hits and, you know, there was a wait time. And for me, it was like bringing back Arcade because people need more of those bakeries. That's the vision of Alf. You know, I have all the ideas, but for me, this need to come back. Yeah. It's interesting to me because one of the most magical parts about Arcade to me was that it was in an office building and that you didn't even really know it was there.

13:32And the people in the neighborhood who worked in the offices around there or who lived around there knew to come and it was kind of this secret. And now you're in Chelsea Market, which to me is like kind of the opposite of that in some ways. Like it's very touristy. Yes, there are offices around there, but I don't think like a lot of New Yorkers necessarily go to Chelsea Market in the same kind of way. True. Does that resonate with you? Do you feel like there is still like a community of people that can come to the bakery, even though it's in this very different setting? True. I mean, you know, it's a, that's what, you know, Alfie is a window for me to showcase the products.

14:12So we happen to be in Chelsea market, but, you know, looking at the sales and looking at the people that are coming back, it's become a split, you know, a split. My customers, my core customers are neighbors, people that live in Chelsea or on Chelsea. They come every day picking up a baguette, which I see over and over and over. At the end of the day, now we have all these logistles that we can see the sales. is always 45 % people that came back or sometimes it would be 55 % regulars to 35 % of tourists. So it's a good thing to see that people are coming back because that's the idea for me. I want to do a neighborhood bakery.

15:06Yes, the tourists, how many times a tourist will come back? Maybe zero chances they're gonna come back. But it's also good for Chelsea market. People will, you know, tourists will come in and they look at the product. They're like, you know, it's kind of funny. Every time they're like, oh, this is a European bakery. They get this shocking thing on their face. They're like, we never knew this was here. I mean, it's, I'm like, oh, we just knew. And I think we give it time for the name to be maybe 70 % of people that are in the neighborhood coming back. So we'll see the process where it's going to take us.

15:47Yeah. And also, I think it's nice, even what you said before about this French baker coming into the bakery and getting to encounter something new. That is the benefit of Chelsea Market being a tourist destination, is you're able to be an ambassador for your own style of baking for New York and what we have to offer in that kind of way as well. It is. I mean, those examples comes all the time. Like I have dance that comes in from Denmark. They'll come in and they see the product. They'll see the bakery. They enjoy the product. And they start following me on Instagram and we start exchanging ideas.

16:27It's like random people that are bakers and they appreciate what we do. But we're still in Chelsea Market. A lot of locals don't want to come there. a lot. You know, some of my customers, they are like, if you weren't here, I wouldn't come here. Yeah. It's kind of funny. Yeah. Like. That's how I feel. But I mean, I will, I will go anywhere for a really good baguette at the same time, you know, and I think that is the value of that as well. I want to talk a little bit about seasonality at the bakery. Do you introduce like different one-off offerings and where do you kind of find inspiration for the different array of things that are in the bakery?

17:04Well, I'm a big fan of Green Market. I've been going to Green Market maybe 18 years now. I know Union Square, I know most of the farmers. And before I did bread, I was a pastry chef that worked in a farm to table restaurants. So I'm very rounded about seasonality. So I try to pick up fruits, vegetables that are in seasons to include it in my danishes. So that's not really a big problem for us at ALF. And, you know, once in a while I was throwing a special out of nowhere because I found this product out and it's good. Yeah, I think the danishes are such a fun vehicle. I really like savory pastry and I feel like it's becoming more popular in the city, but it still is not the same as sweet.

17:59And when I went to Alf, I had the feeling that you like savory pastry also just because of like the mushroom Danish that I got to have, which is so delicious. Thank you. Thank you. Do you feel like savory pastry is becoming more popular here in New York over the past years? Yeah, I've seen a lot of bakers now doing it. But, you know, sometimes if you, you know, being a baker, there's also about a good baker will know savory dishes, right? Everything have, you know, I'm offering now the leek danish and bechamel. Where'd that come from? So you're eating a leek bechamel. It reminds you the French soup, like a vichichuise.

18:43So you have to have a background about, it's not just the idea of making a savory danish for the sake of it. For me, the core thing is about classicism. So when you're having a leek danish, you're like, wait a minute. This tastes like vicious was. That's the idea behind it, but done in a croissant shell. But everything had to be, I don't know how to phrase it, had to have a classic background, had to have a foundation for it to be very good. But it's good now to see bakers are coming to do a lot of more savouries because it's not only the sweets. Yeah. It's just, it's a bigger toolbox or like a bigger paint box to work with.

19:32You talk a little bit about classicism and how you like to be grounded in that. And obviously you have a really impressive and long career in restaurants here in New York that you're drawing from. Do you find inspiration from like old cookbooks or like other kinds of technique as well? Yeah. I mean, old cookbooks, you know, I collect a lot of old cookbooks and I think they are here for a reason. and they're expensive, but they helped me a lot to, they gave me an idea. They don't give you the recipes, right? Those books mostly are about the photography or the philosophy of a chef, right? Like we'll take an example of Michel Bras in France, very good in vegetables, blanching, techniques, sometimes it's not about recipes, it's about inspiration from those cookbooks.

20:30You got them and you're like, oh, wait a minute, this guy is doing this, this, this. I could do this with a croissant or I could do this with an apple or something like that. Yeah. Where are you collecting these old books? I'm so interested. I used to go a lot online. Yeah. I go to Abbey Books in England. I go to random French bookshop in France. When I travel, I always go to an old bookshop. I used to go to the Strand bookshop on, what, 14, 15th Street? Yeah. They have the room, the collectible room. They used to have a lot of those books in there randomly. They used to because you bought them all and now they're all gone.

21:21I did buy a lot of them. But, you know, you find old cookbooks that are out of prints that, you know, when the chef was writing them, they were very inspired, but they didn't make a lot of copies. Maybe they did 10 ,000 copies. And I happen to have some of them. You know, I collect Japanese cookbooks. I like food in general. You know, I'm not only, it's not only about pastries. so I try to have my hands everywhere. Yeah. Have you been to Bonnie Slotnick? Yeah, I used to be one of, when she was in the West Village, I've been there many times. She's a very nice lady. But my cookbooks, the one that I collect are very hard to find.

22:12They're not, you don't see them all the time. Yeah. So I randomly will get inspired by an older chef and start Googling and see the work. So then you have a chance to find a book from them. Or you travel, you know, when I go to Paris, I go to bookshops, try to find those books. Some people will have them. They don't know the values of the book. Like you go to an art shop, randomly they will have a cookbook. They don't know the value and they will price it a fairly good price for you to buy. That must be like a big rush when you find one and you get it on a really good deal. Yeah. I mean, I collect art books as well.

22:55So that's how I get into this. That's why I have, you know, randomly have these crazy cookbooks. Yeah. We talked a little bit earlier about a really good croissant and how those are kind of hard to find. I'm curious when you go to a bakery that's doing laminated pastry, maybe it's in Paris, maybe it's here in New York. Like, is there anything that you order to kind of gauge the quality of the bakery and like what kinds of traits do you look for in a good croissant, for example? It's sad. I mean, it's like, that's another thing, you know. I hadn't been to Paris for five years. The last time I went, we went to this, you know, bakeries.

23:38It's funny because 80 % of the bakeries didn't do the croissant. You know, I was with my wife, right? we'll go, I'll buy a croissant, we'll buy a baguette, we'll buy sandwiches, we'll buy something that we can't even eat because I just want to try. And I remember telling me, you know, Roger does the better croissant than this guy's. And I'm like, yeah, I know. And for me, it's shocking. But I was talking to this woman that used to do an investigative of food. She works for magazines, but nobody knows who she is, right? She'll hang out with chefs or bakers. She'll go to a bakery. Like you come into a bakery, I don't know you.

24:21You're like, hey, Amud, I want a stage. But you are a writer. You're trying to find out something about bakeries, right? You come in for a week or two days a week and writing an article that I don't know, looking how I do the croissant, what kind of butter I use. And then one day you go, the article is out. You're like, hey, most bakeries in New York don't do fresh croissants. Now that woman find out in Paris that people, they call them touriers. Touriers in French means the people that do the lamination. Because they're not really, they're bakers, but that's, in France when you go, that's the only thing they do.

25:05You hire them, they come in, they do all the croissants, all the lamination, they go. They don't shape bread. That's the thing. And do they bake off the croissants or they just shape them and leave? They shape them, they leave. Yeah. That's the thing. Wow. It's like a hitman. Yes. That's what they do. And they don't care. They'll have two jobs, right? That's the only thing they do. But that woman talking about the croissants, the quality of the croissant, what I'm looking for, she was doing this investigative journalism. And she went to college. She's from Paris. She started writing about lamination.

25:39But she realized every bakery she went in Paris, they didn't have a tourier. They had a frozen croissant. You open a bakery, a lot of bakeries, that's what they do. So they will buy a frozen croissant. They defrost, they ferment, and they bake. Because they don't, either they don't have a tourier in the house because they're very expensive. Right? I'm lucky to know all of that. So I don't have to find a tourier for myself because I can just stick that to someone else. and then the tourier if the tourier is not there they will just pretend that it's a house baked yes it's a house baked but it's not house made you know it's very it's very confusing so people are like oh I had a fresh croissant no the guy is not making his croissant the lady was telling me and she was shocking she's a Parisian woman she goes like it was shocking to her that most bakers didn't make the croissant in the house.

26:42And that's where it also affects the quality because a frozen product, even as a tourier, there's a way to tow. Like when you bake a frozen croissant, you have to go through a certain process. If you don't, the product is still in a shock because the yeast is... So you put the yeast into a lethargy situation, right? The yeast was growing, growing, growing. To a certain point, you freeze it. It goes into like a dormant. So in order for you to have a better croissant the next day, pulling it out, you have to tow at least for two and a half hours at the room temp. Because a lot of bakers don't know that.

27:23They never deal with a frozen product. Therefore, you have people that take the frozen product. They'll put it in a proof box. it's not enough because the yeast didn't wake up into this ambient temperature. It's scientific. And it has to go back now to eating all the sugars and going back to like almost a fresh croissant. So you will see the difference big. You know, you will eat, you will taste, but it's not, it's not really a great product. It still looks like a croissant, but it's tricky. Yeah. I love that this is like the French version of investigative journalism is finding out that all of the fruit croissants are frozen.

28:08I feel like as we're talking, I'm thinking a lot about this idea of mentorship and teaching things on to the next generation. The fact that you know how to do lamination and that you learned from Roger. Is that something that you are prioritizing in the bakery at ALF, like teaching these skills on to the next generation? Yeah, I mean, it's a part of it. Because, you know, I can't be at the bakery all the time. You know, I miss traveling. I have to pass on certain knowledge to a team member. That's how you transfer knowledge. You know, that's how I got the knowledge. You know, I tell that to my bakers.

28:45I said to them, listen, I didn't invent all of this. I'm creative. I have a lot of background. You know, I did private events. I did chocolate work. I was a pastry chef for years. So I'm very rounded. You have to take something out of it. I'm teaching them. And I think that's one of the priorities for me. Hopefully I'll find someone that is like me, that want to grow, that want to absorb like a sponge. And then that's transferring the knowledge to somebody else. Because, you know, like, and, you know, I tell them, hey, I didn't invent this. I didn't invent a croissant. I didn't even eliminate it by yet.

29:26I do a good one, but you have to immerse yourself into it to be able to do it. And that would be beautiful for me to see that people can grow and learn and move on. But now we have people, a lot of people don't wanna spend time learning to what I notice, right? They'll come in, they'll learn the basic lamination, But it's not enough. You can learn the basic lamination, but if you're not a problem solver, you're not a good laminator. Because it's going to come up to a day where somebody has made a mistake, you can't fix it. Because you didn't learn how to fix the problem. But you learn the basics, but there is problem fixing.

30:15It's not only about that. My job is to be the guy that fixes the problems most of the time. Well, I think it's great to be thinking about teaching the next generation because I would love to live in a world where there are more laminated baguettes in more places and more people can learn about that. And to close today, I want to play a little rapid fire game with you. So I'll give you a prompt and then you'll tell me the first answer that comes into your head. Your favorite item at ALF right now? Baguette. The most difficult item to perfect at ALF? Au croissant. Your favorite bakery in New York City that is not your bakery?