Our Holiday Baking Q&A Spectacular!

Episode Transcript

Jessica: This season is brought to you by Plugra Premium European Style Butter made using a slow churn process. Look for Plugra wherever fine butters are sold.  

Molly: I mean, if you're melting down, so is the butter. So give it 15 minutes in the refrigerator and come back. Everyone will be happy. 

David: From King Arthur Baking Company, this is Things Bakers Know. I'm David Tamarkin King Arthur's editorial director.  

Jessica: And I'm Jessica Battilana, staff editor at King Arthur Baking. You know, David, in some ways, it's all been leading up to this moment.  

David: Wow. What is it?  

Jessica: It's holiday baking season.  

David: Yes. It's the most wonderful time of the year. 

Jessica: I think, for a lot of bakers, and also consumers of baked goods, like it really is the best time of the year. I mean, I definitely know people who start preparing their Thanksgiving menu, like in September, who start thinking about, and when I'm talking about people, I'm talking about myself. I started thinking about cookies, you know, mostly, mostly in advance. 

David: Honestly, I assumed you started thinking about Thanksgiving in July.   

Jessica: I’m always thinking about think, I'm certainly always thinking about holiday cookies and things. 

David: So you're thinking about Thanksgiving, December 1st. You're like, what am I gonna do next year?  

Jessica: Yeah, we're already behind. 

David: Yeah. Yeah. I, I aspire to that level of organization, but part of what makes this time of year so fun is that there's so much to bake. There's Thanksgiving pies. Of course. We just did a whole episode on those. There's also Thanksgiving rolls, which is new to me. I mean. I was never a roll person until a few years ago, and now you can't stop me. 

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Of course, there's holiday cookie season, and special showstoppers like Buche de Noel. We have a great recipe for that on that website. And croquembuoche for the real overachievers like you, Jessica, we all know your croquembouche story.  

Jessica: I, yeah, my third degree burns.  

David: So is croquembouche a yearly thing for you? Was that your favorite holiday bake?  

Jessica: You know, it's not a yearly thing, but it has been a number of years since I've made it, so I think I might do it again. Again, this year it's coming back. I don't know. You know, I throw this holiday cookie party, so I devote a lot of baking energy to that. 

So that's sort of why we're here today. 'Cause we have so many listener questions that relate to holiday baking in all of its ways, shapes and forms. So we're gonna knock out a lot of them with the help of a lot of guest stars today. We're, we're phoning a friend basically for the next 35 minutes. 

Yeah. Which is great. What's, what are your baking traditions? I know you're, you celebrate Hanukkah, you also celebrate Christmas.  

David: Yes, I celebrate Christmas with, with my husband's family. I don't do a lot of baking over there 'cause I'm, I'm at their house. Yeah. Um, I used to make a buche de Noel every year. 

Oh. I used to host a Christmas orphans dinner when I lived in Chicago. My boyfriend at the time was a Coptic Christian, and so Coptic Christmas was a few days after December 25th. Usually, um, I, I wasn't celebrating Christmas, so we had that night free and we would invite anybody who didn't have a place to go. 

So whether they didn't celebrate Christmas, or they did celebrate Christmas and they didn't have a place to go that year, they would come to our house and we would just do it up. We would do prime rib. Oh yeah. Prime rib with crispy potatoes. Um, and I would always, always do it buche de Noel. 

Jessica: Amazing. That sounds so good.  

David: Which is one of my favorite things, and I haven't done that in a long time. But I would love to do that again this year. But I also bake for Hanukkah. I love doing sufganiyot for Hanukkah, uh, which are just jelly donuts. You know, another name for jelly donuts. Um, I love the crispy potato latke focaccia that Sarah Jampel our colleague, uh, developed a few years ago. 

That's a great Hanukkah bake. So yeah. Or just make a challah.   

Jessica: You know, yeah, nothing wrong with a challah. Yeah. And I also, we have a great, um, olive oil cake on the site, which I think is a really like, it's not flashy, but it is so delicious. Mm-hmm. And you can, you know, put some ganache on top of that or just serve it with powdered sugar. 

And that, I think is a really very elegant bake that could take you all the way through the holiday season. Um, we have 1 million, exactly 1 million listener questions about holiday baking,  

David: Which is great.  

Jessica: Yeah, it's great. And we are gonna talk about five of 'em. No, and  

David: We chose one. 

Jessica: We chose the king of all questions. No, we, um, we selected the questions that we thought would resonate with the most listeners, and then we decided to farm this out to our colleagues because we, you know, we're, we are recording today from King Arthur headquarters. 

We have all these talented colleagues in the house with us, which is thrilling. And you know, frankly, I felt like I could use a break. Like here we are at the end of the season. We have talked a lot, we've answered a lot of questions. So this is an all Q&A episode. Yep. There will be no true Jess-opinion, although find them throughout. 

David: Any kind. 

Jessica: But we are just gonna tee up all these listener questions and have our colleagues help us answer them. So we got a lot. So let's get to it.  

David: Let's get started. 

Jessica: Molly Marzalek-Kelly is our senior recipe developer. She has developed quite a few of our recipe of the years in addition to dozens and dozens and dozens of other brilliant recipes, and so we wanted to bring her on to answer a few of our listener questions. Thanks, Molly, for joining us.  

Molly: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.  

David: And this is Molly's debut on the podcast. This is incredible. So long overdue.  

Jessica: We have three questions for you, so I want to get right to them. So let's go to the first one.  

Caller: I'm wondering how you keep cookies fresh if you're trying to mail them. I have family all the way across the country and I wanna send them a dozen cookies here and there. But I just wanna make sure that they come fresh to that person without spending a crazy arm and a leg on shipping. What's the best way to preserve those cookies?  

David: Great question. Yes, it is a great question and I feel like it's a great question for you because you and the rest of the test kitchen just developed, uh, a set of cookies for the holidays. 

Molly: It really depends on the cookie quite honestly. But one of the new recipes that I recently worked on is Gingerbread Biscotti, which is my go-to cookie pick for cookies. You want cookies that are great candidates for shipping in the mail. They're always dunk able. I'm a dunker of biscotti and they're sturdy and they're easy to pack in a way that you could line them all up together, wrap them tightly, and they will arrive perfectly. 

David: Those gingerbread biscotti are killer. Yeah, killer. They're so good.  

Jessica: Well, we, and we've been talking about how many times, you know, the gesture is very nice. Sure. And yet you receive like a bag of, a Ziploc bag of crumbs.  

Molly: Well, I mean, I like to call that cookie confetti, and if that's what you get in the mail, I mean, I don't hate that. You put it on ice cream. But I'm thinking the type of cookie really makes a difference. Biscottis are yeses. Anything dense is a yes to ship. Anything lighter and more fragile, you're just not setting anyone up for success. Yeah, like the meringues deliver those in person. If it's like a more tender soft sugar cookie, then that's gonna be in route to confetti, I think. 

Jessise: Okay. Gingerbread biscotti is what everyone's gonna ship this year. We're all in agreement.  

David: Yeah. But Molly, we all know that somebody out there is going to ignore that advice and they're gonna wanna send a bunch of sugar cookies and some biscotti in the same package. For those people, what tips do you have for them? 

Molly: Packaging is important, so I normally go like the tissue paper route. Mm-hmm. Or paper towel, like that's something someone could reuse on the other end. Tea towels are great to put in there too. That helps keep things in place. And another tip I have for, if your cookie is on the more fragile side, bake them, freeze them, then package them. 

So it's like they get a little fine depending upon their final destination. Right. Okay. Problem solved. Let's go to our next question.  

Caller: How early in advance can we make cookies, cakes, and other holiday treats? I usually make gingerbread cookies at the beginning of November and freeze them until Christmastime. Is that too early?  

David: This is another good question. I noticed in the test kitchen, like probably all test kitchens and maybe even your home kitchen, I don't know, every little thing is dated. Right? You know, it's got that piece of tape on it, what it is, and when it was made.  

Molly: The freezer is my best friend at work in the test kitchen and at home. 

I bought a little like freestanding chest freezer a couple of years ago because just the regular refrigerator freezer wasn't cutting it. So I know. The beginning of November is not too early to make your cookies.  

Jessica: No, I mean, you can make them in July. Okay. Maybe not in July, but. I think anything that you can do to make your holiday baking easier, you should do it. 

And the freezer is a great tool for that. And let's be honest, you know, there is a season for everything and there's something nice, I mean, we've been talking about how things get pushed earlier and earlier. We talked about that in the fall baking episode of the podcast. Like, let everything have its own time. 

And do you freeze dough or do you freeze baked cookies or both?  

Molly: I normally freeze dough. Um, you can do either. It's just been, I've adapted the system of freeze the dough.  

David: In what state do you freeze the dough in?  

Molly: I like to portion and then freeze. Yeah, I think that's smart. That's easier to put in a freezer. 

Like if you put a, like a, you know, a rectangle of sugar cookie dough, but then you have to thaw that and then portion it, and then probably chill it again because it's gotten too warm when you've been portioning. So I like to portion then freeze, then bake. Yeah.  

Jessica: This is an important through line of this episode, both just like, you know, the pause points in a recipe and also like getting the dough as close to the state that you want it before you put it in the freezer. It's just gonna save you time.  

Molly: So like drop cookies can be scooped into balls and you can freeze the balls. You can, I made, you can freeze baked cookies as well, but I love freshly baked cookie and I just feel like you can't freshly bake, then freeze, then thaw and still mimic that freshly baked. So that's more like to freeze dough.  

David: Yeah, that makes sense. Also, just how immensely satisfying is it when you can just turn on your oven and just take out all this portion dough from your freezer and just bake off like 200 cookies.  

Jessica: I mean, I do this no matter this season. I always have cookie balls in my freezer and then people come over for dinner and I'll bake whatever, like eight or 10 cookies. Mm-hmm. And they're like fresh from the oven.  

And people are always like very impressed by that. And it's not like, but it feels like a party trick. A secret flex, I think. And then also you can do it on weeknights when you just want like one or two cookies. Um, should we listen to our last question?  

Caller: Hey Bakers, what's the best way to have success with a cookie press? I find either the dough is too soft, or it's too hard and the cookie press gets broken. Thanks so much and happy baking.  

David: Okay, so first question is, what is a cookie press?  

Molly: I think there are a couple interpretations of cookie press. I think of spritz cookies. That's a big press when you load the dough into that plunger. And then also in terms of cookie presses, there’s stamps, I think of cookie stamps. 

Sure, like as a way you can either do drop cookies and then stamp them on top, so the stamp spreads it and then imprints the design. I also think the best way to have success, whether or not it's a press or a stamp, is just dough, overall dough consistency and temperature. It is a real sweet spot between too hot and too cold. 

If it's too hot, it's sticking to everything, your bench, your fingertips, the press, the stamp. If it's too cold, it's cracking, and that's equally as frustrating. Honestly, I really think it's just a matter of practice, first of all, to then really learn what the ideal dough temperature is and just to keep things well floured. That includes hands, bench, whatever cutting mechanism you're using and start with a good recipe because they're tested time with them again.  

Jessica: Yeah, that is sound advice. That is sound advice. Yeah, and I think, you know, we forget about, we were talking about the freezer, as you know, baker's best friend, but I also think the fridge too. 

So if you, are say like me, making your gingerbread tiles and oing through the meltdown process, emotional meltdown process.  

Molly: Like, I mean, if you're melting down, so was the butter in the dough. Yeah. So give it 15 minutes in the refrigerator and come back. Everyone will be happy.  

Jessica: I mean, there's no better advice than that for holiday bakers no matter what. 

Whether you're making, you know, spritz cookies, buche de noel, anything. Sound advice. But Molly, we do have one more question for you, which is, what is the one recipe that you're gonna bake for the holidays? Like the one thing that you can't imagine the holidays without.  

Molly: Great question. Um, so many things, honestly. 

Um, my family's tradition isn't one baked good necessarily. It's just something homemade. Mm-hmm. So the last couple years we've been leading heavy into cake. Um, my family likes a cake for the holidays, like a three layer cake.  

David: A layer cake? Because I think of you as queen of coffee cakes. But this is a, a layer cake, frosting situation. 

Molly: Um, you know, we've been, I've been leaning layer key. Sometimes a roll cake. This year, I think I'll, I, I do think it will be a variety of cookies, just so everyone can kind of pick, look at their leisure.  

Jessica: Um, thank you so much. I hope you'll come back and join us again for another episode.  

Molly: Thank you.  

David: Our guest is Melanie Wanders, longtime educator here at King Arthur, co-author of The Big Book of Bread and one of the fabulous bakers in our R and D test kitchen. Melanie, welcome to Things Bakers Know.  

Mel: Thank you so much. Happy to be here. 

Jessica: So Mel and I work together very closely on the Big Book of Bread, and I have never met a more rigorous, disciplined, analytic baker. Basically Mel is the opposite of me. So it's good that she's here because, you know, I sort of go with vibes. 

I answer my question with vibes. But I think that Mel has, like, you have some real training that's gonna come to bear here today.  

David: It's gonna help the holiday bakers of America. Uh, let's hear the first question.  

Caller: Why do my thumbprint cookies always come out kind of like cracked or messed up? My other question is about rolling out sugar cookie dough to make like cookie cutouts. I never made them growing up as a kid, so I'm only really making them now as an adult. What's the best way to roll out cookie dough? Like cut out my cookie dough, bake it, decorate it in a way that isn't gonna look like I did it with children? Thank you.  

Mel: Yeah, so thumbprint wise, first thing that comes to mind is the ratio of ingredients. So often you can get too much flour in your recipe if you're not weighing, uh, so if you have too much flour in there, that can make your dough really dry. So as you’re rounding them, they look fine. But when you go to press in with your finger, then it starts to crack. 

So I think that's one thing to think about. Temperature of the dough is another big one. So if your dough is on the colder side, it's more likely to crack. So if it's more room temperature, um, you have a little more leeway of how much you can press. If you're an aggressive presser, that can make it crack a little bit too. 

So you wanna have your zen moment when you're making your cookies. Right. Some tricks that I have used in the past, if you have measuring spoons that are rounded on the bottom, usually the quarter teaspoon or the half teaspoon is about the perfect size to make a little indentation in your cookie, so it makes it kind of a little bit wider so you can get a lot of jam in there. 

Jessica: What's your favorite thumbprint?  

Mel: Oh, I really like apricot jam. So that would probably be mine. Or anything poppy seed.  

Jessica: Um, we should talk about part two of this question though. 

Mel: Yeah. I think my biggest tip for rolling out particularly sugar cookies or gingerbread dough, I think so many recipes have you make the dough and then you put it in a disc and you chill it, and then trying to find the perfect time to take that dough out to roll it. 

It's usually in there too long, and so it's, the dough is too cold, the butter's cold. It cracks, and that's frustrating. Or it's not in long enough and your dough starts to stick. The thing is you don't get a really nice, sharp edge with your cutter. So the technique that I really love is once you've made your dough, I like to flour some parchment paper and then roll out the dough between the parchment, the thickness that you want. So there are a couple ways that you can do that. They have these fun silicone rings that go around your rolling pin that work really well. For those of you that are type A like me and like to have it exactly a quarter inch thick,  

Jessica: They raise the rolling pin just like that much off of the surface of the dough so that it gets perfectly even. 

Mel: Exactly. Okay. Yep. And for people who like to do the Home Depot route, you can find kind of squared off dowels that also work really well. So you can put two pieces, or you know, a dowel on each side of your a parchment paper, and then as you're rolling it, the rolling pin goes over those dowels and it's just that thick. 

So that's a little, that's a little trick from the chocolate days when you're rolling out ganache to have it exactly that thick and have it be nice and flat, top and bottom.  

David: I love that. Yeah.  

Jessica: Makes me, I also like, we should come up with more Home Depot hacks throughout this podcast.  

David: That was my exact thought. I was like Home Depot episode.  

Jessica: I also love to, even if I'm making my dough ahead of time, I will roll it in parchment and then I'll freeze the sheets and dough.  

Mel: Exactly. You can actually freeze whole sheets of dough and just have them ready to go in there. So it's a really great way to get ahead.  

Jessica: Um, we have one more question for Mel. 

Caller: I love a buche de Noel, and I've been making 'em on and off for about 10 or 12 years now. But no matter what I do, I can't get it to roll without cracking. Um, I've tried different recipes. I've tried different types, chocolate, vanilla, different fillings, but no matter what I do, it always gets at least one crack. 

What would you guys say is your advice for keeping my buche de Noel, my roll cake from cracking? 

Jessica: Buche de Noel. It's typically made with a chiffon cake layer that's baked in like an 18 by 13, you know, rimmed baking sheet. And then it gets spread with a filling and rolled up to look like a log. So that's what this caller is talking about. 

They're talking about when they take their chiffon cake and they go to roll it up with fillings. And this is, I think, a problem that a lot of bakers have. You gotta roll it up and it gets an unsightly crack in it.  

Mel: I always say, use your decorations to your advantage. So if you just have one crack, you know, one thing could be that filling it in with a little bit of frosting, I think always helps. 

You're just kind of, you know, filling that crack in and no one knows. Little powdered sugar goes the long way. Strategically placed meringue mushrooms, all the above. I think all those things are helpful. Going back to the recipe itself, I think finding the one that works for you is, you know, kind of key. I find that in cake recipes that use oil in them as opposed to butter tend to be, uh, easier to roll. 

Okay. So they don't crack as much. Just gives you a little more flexibility as you're working with it. And the baking school, the recipe that we use also has oil, and we actually don't roll it up in a sugared towel at all. So that's one thing. I've seen a lot of recipes that are like that, that as soon as it's out of the oven, you transfer it to a warm towel while it's still warm and then it has sugar on it and you roll it up. And I feel like whenever I unroll it, that's when I start to have problems in that, like unrolling and re-rolling. 

Jessica: And a chiffon cake, it's relying entirely on beaten egg whites for its loft, usually.  

Mel: Yep. Sometimes there's a little bit of baking powder in there for extra insurance. Yeah. But it should be light and flexible and kind of bouncy, spongy, which should lead to rolling up easily. The other thing I can think of is not trying to roll too tightly, so I actually use parchment paper to kind of help it along, kind of push it along, which I think is helpful. 

And not overfilling. So overfilling and then trying to roll too tightly is a recipe for disaster.  

David: Those are all great tips. A couple questions for you, Mel. When you roll a buche de noel, is your preference to roll the long way or this short way?  

Mel: It depends. I've done it both ways. I feel like if you're rolling the short way, you have just a log. 

Jessica: Yes.  

Mel: If you roll the long way, I can usually cut off at an angle, one area so that I end up with the branch.  

Jessica: Oh yeah. Branch. Yes.  

Mel: I like the branch. Mm-hmm.  

Jessica: So, such a treat to have you here. We just have one last question, which is, what is the one recipe that you always bake for the holidays? That it wouldn't be the holidays without this thing?  

Mel: My mom's glazed orange rolls.  

David: Ooh orange rolls. Orange rolls are really a thing.  

Mel: Yeah. The filling is literally butter, sugar, and orange zest. And the glaze is orange, fresh orange juice. So she used the zest and then would juice the oranges and be fresh orange juice and or sugar and warm out of the oven. Best holiday morning ever.  

David: Well, I don't know if it's exactly or even up, you know, to your standards, but the test kitchen did just release a recipe for orange rolls, so we will put that in the show notes.  

Jessica: Mel, happy holidays. Thank you so much for coming and hanging out with us. 

This episode is brought to you by our YouTube channel.  

David: Did you know we're on YouTube? Well, we are. We're sharing recipe walkthroughs and plenty of smart tips and techniques. These videos are smart, they're fun, and I always walk away having learned something new.  

Jessica: You'll find our colleague Martin Philip over there leading these amazing bread tutorials. 

We also have a video on how to tell when your pumpkin pie is perfectly baked, which is no laughing matter. And you know if you scroll deep enough, you'll even find me on there showing everyone how to make the ultimate garlic bread.  

David: You did a great job, Jessica. Join Jessica and our colleagues and subscribe to our YouTube channel. 

It's youtube.com/King ArthurBakingCompany.  

With us now is Martin Philip. Martin is of course one of the premier bread bakers in the country, and a longtime King Arthur employee owner. He's the co-author of the Big Book of Bread, as well as the author of his own book Breaking Bread. Martin is also the face of our YouTube channel and has taught several on-demand classes, and he's with us now for the first time. 

Martin, welcome to Things Bakers Know.  

Martin: So excited to be here  

Jessica: Because honestly, there's probably nobody in the company that has more opinions after me than Martin, so it's a shocking 

David: It's a contest. It's a tight contest, for sure. Let's hear some opinions from Martin. Let's hear our first question.  

Caller: Is it possible to get soft, fluffy, ethereal whole grain dinner rolls, think King's Hawaiian, or those big fluffy rolls at that one restaurant that rhymes with Schmexas Schmode House. Every time I make any kind of whole grain rolls, they're always super heavy and dense. No matter what I do, I can't seem to get them to be light and fluffy.  

Martin: How much time do I have? Yeah, so the problem that's happening is that you're not hydrating your dough to a similar or equal consistency to what you would have if you were making an all white roll. 

So if you're making our big batch dinner rolls, for example, and you want to use some whole grain in there, it's okay to make some substitutions. Just make sure that you're adding a little bit extra water because whole grain flour contains the bran, is thirstier than the endosperm, the part of the grain that's making white flour, right? 

So it's thirsty. So add a little extra water. Go from there. If you're still having problems, hit us up on the Baker's Hotline and we'll guide you through what you need.  

Jessica: Wow, that easy? 

Martin: Yeah. Yeah. Just a little bit more water. Make sure that it's a supple dough, right. If you're making anything with whole grains and if you feel like you're kneading a brick or it's resistant, some of those things, rethink your process. 

The next time you come back to it, add a little more water and make sure that it's a supple dough. If you're still having problems, there may be an issue with your temperature controls. Warm the water up, warm the flour up. Make sure that you're doing everything that you can to coddle the dough as best you know as best sort of to the best of your ability. 

Jessica: Now, if you were making, if you, you there were making a whole grain roll, would you do a combination?  

Martin: Yeah. So I mean, if you really wanna have a light roll, I think that the question related to something like a Hawaiian style, I really recommend that you use a blend of white and wheat, or white and rye, for example, use your white flour to produce a higher rising, more open structure and use the whole grain flour for a portion to bring in some flavor and extra nutrition. And so in baker's math percentages, I would say something, I would go 80%, you know, white flour, and then I have 20% whole wheat and work your way up from there. So if the recipe has a hundred grams of total flour, I would make 20 of those whole grain and 80 of them all purpose bread flour. 

Start small, increase slowly. Make your hydration adjustments as you go. Maintaining a nice supple dough.  

Jessica: And then would you, so you could take those big batch dinner rolls and then simply swap 20% of the white flour in there, whole grain, and then maybe up the hydration a little bit.  

Martin: Exactly.  

David: But how would you increase the hydration if you were increasing in that scenario where you are replacing 20% of the flour with whole grain? How much would you adjust the water? 

Martin: I mean, these are things that your hands are gonna tell you, right? So I could make up a number without looking at the recipe, and I would say, you know, maybe start around 10%, increase in the water right around 10%. Maybe add it slowly, see what your hands say, and then make adjustments as necessary. 

And like any good baker, every time that I make something, it's not the last time I'm gonna make that thing. So have your thinking cap on, feel with your hands. Think forward to what you'll change next time, and that's how you become a better baker.  

David: How much does the proof matter? Let's assume that somebody is baking a well-tested whole grain roll. They're getting that results each time. Is it possible that they're just not pushing that final proof enough?  

Martin: Definitely. But before we get to the proof, what I would say is, I would back up to the mix a little bit, because what sets the final rate of proof is actually the mix itself, right? 

And so if we start off with cold water, cold, cold fats, liquids, we slow down the rate of proof. And so it's almost like, you get to that final proof. If you've had a cold mix and you're saying, why isn't this roll rising? Right? I've got a problem. So yes, you have to push that final proof. Look for something that's marshmallowy. 

Look for something where when pressed, that dough will sort of hold the imprint of a thumb or a forefinger or something like that, right? It should be really, really poofy. If you're not there, then I would say wait as best you can. Make sure that they're not drying out during the proof in a, in an environment that, I always use the word coddling, but you need to coddle them. 

You need to take care of the dough. Set yourself on a proper course for fermentation by using warm milk or liquids. Make sure you don't have any ingredients that are dead cold when the recipe says room temperature. Once you get to that final proof, make sure that you protect the dough while it's rising. 

Protect the rolls while they're rising. Don't let 'em dry out. And then, yes, push, push, push. Especially with rolls, because they're not gonna jump that much once they get into the ovens. You wanna take 'em to full size before you bake.  

David: Let's keep this holiday question train rolling.  

Caller: What if you are not really a sweets person, but you still want to participate in holiday sweets traditions, what are some things that look sort of cookie like and or fun finger foods that have more of a savory touch? 

Martin: I mean, there's so many, a cracker, crackers for sure. Obviously, I think there are a lot of obvious things that hopefully they're thinking of, like things that you can make easily at home, like rusks or crackers.  

David: What's a rusk?  

Martin: Think of something like in the Big Book of Bread, right? We've got that gateau voyage, right? That whole grain small loaf, tons of dried fruit in there. I love taking something like that once it's fully cooled and even set up for a day or two and slice it as thinly as possible. Put it on a sheet tray. Toast them, butter ‘em. Little bit of sugar, just a little bit, right? 

You don't need to ice it. A little bit of sugar, and it's a perfect item for something like a charcuterie board or a cheese platter. I love stuff like that.  

Jessica: I'm gonna shout out one of your cookie recipes that's on our site, which are those buckwheat cardamom chocolate chunk cookies. They are a cookie, and they do have sugar in them, but they're very nuanced. They have the buckwheat that brings bitterness. They have the cardamom, they have dark chocolate. They're not knock you over the head sweet.  

Martin: And you can make those, you know, on the website, they're big. It's a pretty big cookie. It's like, my hand's big, but like palm sized and you could certainly make 'em smaller and it would feel a little bit more like cookie box or tray appropriate. 

You know, the one other thing that we didn't talk about was puff pastry, which can be made to a million different shapes, cheese twists, all sorts of things often. Savory feels so holiday to me. Is there another time of the year where you're gonna bust out puff pastry and make a cheese straw or something? I love a cheese straw.   

Jessica: Before we send you on your merry way, I wanna know what you're baking for the holidays.  

Martin: This, when we gather the meal is almost always planned out. And so the slot that I always find myself sort of sliding into is what are we gonna eat in the morning? After, for example, Thanksgiving or the morning after Christmas at my house, and if it's not pie and it's often pie and I like to have pie for breakfast, I will often set something to make in the morning. 

And it's often either bagels, could be English muffins. I always have this like surprise bake that nobody planned for, and I really like that because they kind of don't know what's gonna happen. It sort of sustains the fun, but it doesn't end with the holiday feast and I always make something I feel like no one will ever have made for them again. 

So, like I said, maybe I'll do donuts, maybe I'll do a really good English muffin, something like that. So yeah, bring, keep the intention, keep that sort of love going a little bit. Thanks y'all. 

David: Next up we have Sarah Jampel. She leads our test kitchen here in Norwich, Vermont. She's one of my favorite bakers, the creator of hits, such as the chocolate pumpkin coffee cake, which I made earlier this fall season. The oatmeal date smash cookie that Jessica has talked about on the podcast, creator of so many amazing recipes on kingarthurbaking.com, and she's here to help us answer another question. 

Sarah, welcome to the show.  

Sarah: Glad to be here.  

Jessica: We've got a listener question Sarah is uniquely suited to answer because I know Sarah, you have spent a lot of time working on and thinking about sufganiyot or jelly donuts, and this is a jelly donut question, so let's hear it and then let's get your expert advice. 

Caller: Hello, King Arthur. I have a holiday baking question. I would love your advice for sufganiyot for Hanukkah. Every year I try to make fluffy, delicious donuts filled with jam for my little ones, and the oil is such a headache. Do you have any guidance on how to keep the temperature consistent? How deep does it really need to be in order to fry the donuts effectively? In your experience, do you think there's an ideal size?  

David: An ideal size of sufganiyot? This is a good question because the size of the donut really will dictate how long it takes to cook in the oil. And I will admit I've had trouble with this 'cause I, you know, I get beautiful sufganiyot and I then I open them up and they're raw in the middle. 

They're golden on the outside and in the middle of the raw because the oil temperature wasn't correct. So, Sarah, help this listener. Help me.  

Sarah: Okay. I'm gonna tackle this part first. I think there's some acceptance that frying is annoying at home. I would recommend that you have enough time and you get yourself set up. 

So you need a heavy, deep pot. You need designated oil. I feel like my frying downfall is that I'm like, oh, I'll just use whatever oil I have in the pantry and then I don't have enough. You're going to need I, I think at least a quart of oil. So you wanna buy oil specifically for this purpose. And then — 

Jessica: And you use vegetable oil? 

Sarah: Any neutral oil is fine. Any neutral oil. Okay. People definitely have their preferences, but I think any neutral oil is fine. And then a landing pad for your donuts. So you're going to need to fry your donuts in batches for several reasons. And then you're going to need a place to put them. So you need a large, clear area. 

And I think just the acceptance that this is a project and maybe a thing you do it once a year. And then to the question of whether you actually need a lot of oil to fry the donuts effectively. Unfortunately, the answer is yes. It's a little something called thermal mass, which is, you need a large amount of oil to keep the temperature of the oil consistent. 

The less oil you have, the more fluctuations in temperature you will have, because that oil is going to move up and down in temperature much more easily. So every time you add a piece of food to oil, it's going to lower the temperature. And low temperatures of oil is what makes food greasy because the food is going to absorb too much oil. 

And then you're going to get these like heavy laden sufganiyot. So yes, you do need a couple of inches of oil in your pot to fry effectively. It's not the kind of thing that you can pan fry.  

Jessica: And now the low temperature oil can lead to those leaden and greasy sufganiyot. But you know, David was also talking about the opposite problem, which is if your oil is too hot, then the outside of your donuts can brown more quickly before the inside has had time to set right. 

Sarah: Yes, you need to have the oil in the sweet spot. I think that's typically around 350 degrees. I recommend a deep fry thermometer or an instant read thermometer that you're keeping near you, and monitoring the oil and making sure that the oil comes back to temperature between batches.  

Jessica: Oh, that's important. 

Sarah: Yeah. It is all about the temperature of the oil. If it's too hot or too cold, you're not going to get the effect that you want.  

Jessica: Do you have any guidelines for how many, I suppose it depends on the size of your vessel and the size of your sufganiyot, but like, do you try and give the donuts like some, you know, sort of breathing room around one another? Is that sound advice?  

Sarah: Yes. Obviously they need to be in a single layer, but then also, I don't think they should be too crowded. I would think they need an inch or two on every side to really be able to float and flip with room.  

Jessica: Yeah. Now I wanna just for one second, you mentioned the landing pad. Like when you take your donuts out of the oil, do you put them on a wire rack or do you put them on paper towels, or what's the move to keep 'em from getting soggy after you fry them?  

Sarah: I like a wire rack set on a sheet pan so that the air can keep circulating under them, but then you do need to eat them quickly. Especially after you filled them with jam. It's really a party food, something you would serve to a lot of people and not something that you would keep around for a long time. 

Just because like any fried food, they do not get better with age. I feel like you could apply that to so many things. 

Jessica: I think so too. And when you fill your, so you've got a, you use a pastry bag.  

Sarah: I like a pastry bag with a pointy tip to poke inside. You could poke a hole with a chopstick and then use a plastic bag with a, the end cut the corner cutoff and pipe it in that way. 

But that's why I think sufganiyot can't, or maybe shouldn't be too, too small, just because you wanna make sure that you have that air inside that can accommodate the jam. If every one is kind of small, you'll be filling a ton of donuts, which will take a lot of time. And also I think you might get into a situation where you get kind of like a crusty outside and not much inside to leave room for the jam. 

Jessica: Now I wanna ask 'cause I don't celebrate Hanukkah, although I, so, and latkes are an area of interest for me personally. Is there a correct type of jam?  

Sarah: That's an interesting question. I think of them as being raspberry or strawberry, but haven't done enough research to say why I think that. But I think it's more about the oil, like oil as a significant symbolic food during Hanukkah. 

Less about the jam, but I'm not a hundred percent sure. Oil is significant to Hanukkah because the miracle of Hanukkah is that there was a very small amount of oil that was able to last eight nights. It should have only been enough for a little while.   

Jessica: And now we fry. 

Sarah: And now we use excessive amounts of oil. 

I developed a recipe for sufganiyot on kingarthurbaking.com and I, I think they're amazing. Not to toot my own horn, but very, very, very light and fluffy and it's a no knead dough that chills overnight, which I think makes it easier to work with. There's olive oil in the dough to give you that sort of like savory olive oil flavor that makes them not too, too sweet, but it is, it is a big project. And then we also have a new recipe for a jelly donut cake. So you don't want to fry at all, you could make this cake, which has a layer of jam in the middle, and it gets brushed with olive oil and butter, which gives you that sort of fried flavor. It hits the spot, but is a lot easier. Each one, each little slice has a jelly button. A jelly button. I love it. 

Jessica: I love it too. Do you think that you can only use your sufganiyot oil once or would you like strain and reuse your oil for a second batch?  

Sarah: I would reuse it. I think. Give it a smell. See how funky it is. My rule is like when you're using oil, when you're reusing oil, you wanna go from least flavorful to mostly flavorful, right? So it's fine to do donuts and then fried fish. Not the other way around. You can't go from any other, you can't go fish first. 

David: Sarah, tell us what else you're baking this season. 

Sarah: It's my first time hosting Thanksgiving. I will be making turkey even though I'm a vegetarian, which I'm very excited about. I'm making turkey parts because we're not hosting that many people, which then brings me to my pies. I will be making David Turner, DT’s, pumpkin pecan pie. Because I'm only planning on making two pies. 

This one's great because it combines two of the great Thanksgiving pies into one. My second pie will be an apple pie. So I feel like I can get all the pie bases covered with only two pies, which is nice because I don't think we have enough pie eaters to justify three.  

Jessica: Oh, don't underestimate your guests. 

Sarah: Many of them are under four.  

Jessica: Well, that's fair. What about rolls? You baking rolls? Are you gonna lean out on that? No pressure. 

Sarah: That’s a great question. Am I gonna bake rolls? I really, really, really like our make ahead dinner roll recipe, so I think maybe I'll do that sooner rather than later. So they're parbaked, so I could make them in the next couple of weeks and then freeze them and they only need 10 minutes on Thanksgiving, so maybe I'll do that. 

That seems like a good compromise.  

Jessica: These are your brown and serve dinner rolls that you just developed for the site. This is a real hack for the ages because you take them almost to the point of doneness, let them cool, freeze them, and then finish them, which is good. 'Cause space is often at a premium on Thanksgiving, but you also want a fresh roll. 

Sarah: Yeah, I think you could bake them while the turkey rests. If I know anything about turkey, which is a little bit, I think they're a lot better than rolls that are fully baked and then reheated. Those never really taste as fresh. Mm-hmm. But these, since they're not fully baked, it's almost impossible to tell that they were made ahead. 

Jessica: So great. Happy Thanksgiving to you. Happy Hanukkah. Thank you for coming on Things Bakers Know and we're gonna have you back with more questions in season three for sure.  

Sarah: Thanks for having me. 

Jessica: We had Amber Eisler, our director of baking education on for the first season of the podcast. She was our expert on sourdough bread. But really that's not all that Amber's an expert on. And so it made perfect sense to bring her back to knock out a few more of these listener holiday related baking questions. 

Amber, thank you for taking time out at this busy time of year to answer our questions.  

Amber: It's great to be back, Jessica.  

Jessica: How many students pass the baking school every year?  

Amber: Oh, um, in Vermont about 11,000.  

Jessica: 11,000 questions at minimum that you've asked. I feel like there's some sort of exponential equation, like 11,000 students. 

You know, we could do the five, five questions per hour. There's probably no question that you haven't answered, so hopefully this'll be easy for you. Let's hear our first question.  

Caller: The best way to freeze your baked goods. When reading instructions and making baked goods ahead of time, like cookies, the instructions always say to wrap in saran wrap, and the tighter the better. But they kind of don't explain how to get an air tight seal on saran wrap when you're going to freeze your cookies. So any kind of suggestions and help would be much appreciated on that.  

Jessica: This is an interesting question, Amber, and I think we've been talking a little bit about cookies and freezing, but it sounds like this caller is talking about cookies that have been baked. Not cookie dough. So do you think a baked cookie that you wanna freeze should even be wrapped in saran wrap?  

Amber: I don't think so. I think if we're freezing pre-baked, which is a great option, you can double wrap your cookie dough in saran wrap pretty easily. You can flatten it out so it fits into your freezer. 

But those baked cookies, sounds like you wanna get it in a sturdy container, so they're not going to be crushed. Yeah. But you could then wrap that container or whatever in plastic.  

Jessica: I like that, the sort of belt and suspenders approach. Yeah, I do that. Sometimes I'll put things in a tin and then inside a plastic zip top freezer bag, which I think is nice. 

David: So can I clarify when we're talking about packing cookies into a tin, you are suggesting packing those cookies pretty tightly. Or you wanna find a container where the cookies are snuggly.  

Amber: Right. And then they have this sturdy case around them. Sometimes I might pad with some layers of parchment or wax paper. Depending on how sturdy the cookie is. Mm-hmm. Get that tin nice and full. Wrap it up.  

Jessica: I think you're right though, Amber, just like trying to overwrap a stack of cookies in saran wrap. It's not gonna work. And also like not only will your cookies be exposed to the freezer, it’s a very drying environment. 

You really wanna get it wrapped here, tight. The freezer is a great place to store like meringues 'cause it's so dry in there. But not a great place for cookies that you don't want to turn into like a cracker.  

Amber: My family's not gentle when they're going in the freezer. Oh. They're cramming everything in. They're not gentle. I feel like I need a layer of protection.  

David: Alright, so basically the answer is use the tin and wrap it in plastic.    

Jessica: Let's hear our next question.  

Caller: How do I get my cream puffs to not deflate after I take them out of the oven?  

David: When this happens, you're putting all that work into a cream puff and then it deflates at the very end of the process. That does sound like a bummer.  

Jessica: Yeah. Well, I think it's useful for listeners to know that that same dough that you use, pate a choux, is the dough we can use to make gougeres, which are like savory, cheesy cream puff, which is a great holiday appetizer. Also, you use that same pate a choux to make cream puffs, which you could use to make the croquembouche I was talking about at the top of the show. 

But it is true, I think that pate a choux lies. Do you think that's true?  

Amber: Tell me more.  

Jessica: Well, I always think like you look it in the oven, you know they're puffing beautifully, they look great, they're brown. You take 'em outta the oven. You put 'em on your counter, everything seemed fine. And then you come back five minutes later and they're like, you know, they've deflated like this, caller's talking about.  

Amber: So we're really talking about, it's just hard to tell when they're done. 

Jessica: Yes. That's why, and that's why I say they’re liars because they look done, but in fact, maybe they're not done.  

Amber: We're not just trying to brown the outside, we're trying to dry them out. We want hollow dry shells.  

Jessica: So will you tell the listeners briefly how you make pate a choux? 'Cause it is an interesting dough amongst those. 

Amber: It really is. It's strange. You start by cooking a mixture of butter and a liquid. It could be water, it could be milk, and you melt that on the stove and then you add flour and you cook it for a while and it looks like Play-Doh. It looks like Play-Doh. It kind of smells like Play-Doh. Yeah. And then you let that cool for a minute and then you beat some eggs into it and the eggs are what are going to leaven or make it puff in the oven. 

And also, you know, having that butter, having eggs, it means that you're gonna get some browning quickly in the oven. Yes. And I think that is, you know, that's the problem. How do you know when they're done? Well, you're gonna pick one up. It's gonna feel really light. You can even have a sacrificial one. You wanna cut into it and make sure this is dry.  

Jessica: Now, when you take yours out of the oven, do you do anything to them? 

Amber: Yeah. Some people do poke a little hole to release steam. That's super common. I'm too lazy.  

David: If you bake your cream puffs long enough, you don't have to do that.  

Amber: In theory, you shouldn't have to. 

David: Can we just go back, just before we wrap this up, I wanna go back to the sacrificial cream puff. You say to determine if they're absolutely cooked, slice it in half and look, and you said it should look dry, but I'm worried about that because as someone who doesn't make cream puffs that often, you know, and I think of a cream puff as having a sort of eggy, but kind of an eggy shiny center. 

It doesn't look bone dry. I mean, even when it's perfect. So how will it be obvious as a baker?  

Amber: Yeah, I mean, I think you might have to develop by trying a few and pulling a few out of the oven that are a little bit wet still. But if you see like a lot of shiny webbing on the inside that's saying, oh, I need more time to bake. 

If it looks mostly hollow, still a little bit glossy, but mostly hollow, then you're good.  

David: Great. One last question for you, Amber. What are you baking this holiday season? What is Amber's absolute must bake for the holidays?  

Amber: Okay. So normally it is an apple pie. It's my favorite dessert of all seasons, but in particular holidays. 

David: Is it a double crust or a crumble crust?  

Amber: Double crust. But this year my sister and her family are coming from Colorado to spend Christmas with us, and I am going all out. I'm gonna make the buche de Noel. The newest recipe for Buche de Noel on the King Arthur site. It has an on-demand class to go with it. It's got cookie butter ganache.  And it's a, it's a chocolate cake. It's a chocolate cake. And there's chocolate, like tempered chocolate on the outside. Yes. And you have this really fun like matcha moss. Oh, that's exciting.  

Jessica: It's stunning and I cannot wait to see pictures of it, that's exciting. 

I mean, that's worth flying across the country at the holidays. That's gonna win hearts and minds, for sure. Amber, this is not the last time we're gonna have you on the podcast. You know too much.  

Amber: This has been fun. Thank you guys. Thank you. Happy holidays. 

Jessica: Thank you for tuning in and joining us here on Things Bakers Know. You know, not to get too schmaltzy here before the holidays, but I think — 

David: I love schmaltz. Let's do it.  

Jessica: Having all of these amazing guests with us today just reminds me that King Arthur is such a cool place to work, that it is filled with a real hive mind of master bakers, and I always feel so fortunate too take advantage of their expertise, and I'm really glad we are able to share that expertise with our listeners. Keep those listener questions coming because you got a question? We have somebody here who can answer it. So you can always go to kingarthurbaking.com/podcast, record a question and we will get it answered for you. 

David: Yeah, and you know, I don't think I'm blowing up our spot here, but just so listeners know, when we don't know the answers to the question, we do ask the people that we just brought on today and they tell us, and then we repeat it back to you. Our answers are always coming from expert sources.  

Jessica: It's a lot of fun to talk about holiday baking as ever. 

Thank you for tuning in and joining us here on Things Bakers Know.  

David: Remember to like and subscribe on Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.  

Jessica: And leave us a review while you're there or share this episode with a friend.  

David: And in the meantime, for all your holiday baking, the most important thing, follow the recipe. Things Bakers Know is hosted and executive produced by me, David Tamarkin. 

Jessica: And me, Jessica Battilana  

David: Rossi Anastopoulo is our senior producer. Chad Chenail is our producer. And Marcus Bagala is our engineer. Original music by Megan and Marcus Bagala.  

Jessica: This episode features so many of our amazing colleagues. So many.  

David: We are grateful. 

Things Bakers Know is a King Arthur Baking Company podcast.