Episode 20: Dust and Flour with Stephen Goodin

In this episode of Mildly Amusing, James sits down with Stephen Goodin, owner of Dust and Flour, a manufacturing bakery and pizza food truck serving central Kentucky. Stephen shares how his journey began at Harrison-Smith House in 2015 with no plans of working in a kitchen, only to find himself climbing the ladder and discovering a passion for baking. Along the way, he also spent time cooking at Maker's Mark.

Stephen explains how Dust and Flour evolved from making yeast rolls and pies for the holidays into a manufacturing bakery that supplies restaurants, small grocery stores, and other businesses throughout the region. Unlike a traditional bakery, they produce only what is ordered, allowing them to focus on quality while minimizing waste.

The conversation dives into the art and science of baking, from sourdough and milk bread to Texas toast and beyond. Stephen also shares some of his favorite places to eat and offers insight into what makes great bread great.

Food lovers won't want to miss this episode. It's packed with stories, baking knowledge, restaurant recommendations, and enough talk of fresh bread and pizza to leave you hungry. You can find Dust and Flour products at IGA, Loretto Foodland, the Springfield Farmers Market, and various restaurants throughout the area.

🎶 This episode's song is Big Night Theme by Gary DeMichele.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome back everybody. This is James Spraggins, and this is mildly amusing. Um we just finished recording um a guest named Stephen Gooden, and he is the um impresario, the entrepreneur behind Dust and Flour Company. And that is something that I've known about for all of about three days. Um they uh it is a bread making company that uh has a bricks and mortar presence, but that's really just their manufacturing thing. But he has a pizza truck. Uh and I caught up with him uh the other day at um um chicken cock in in in Bargetown and had an amazing uh kind of a sandwich. I forget what he called it, what the Italians call it. Panozzle, something like that. Um with a folded over uh pizza dough stuffed with mortadella and uh uh arugula and fresh mozzarella and parmesan. It was fantastic. Anyway, uh I like people doing uh anything interesting in food and I like entrepreneurs, I like small business, and uh if there's any way I can shine a light on them, I'd like to do it. And so uh gave him my card and shook his hand in Bargetown that day, and by golly, he called me yesterday and said let's let's do something. So uh very uh gracious of him to give us an hour, and I think you're gonna find it interesting. It goes a little deep into the making of bread, uh some of which Amy and I are eating right now because he gifted us a bag of what he calls distillery cookies. Did he say he sells it at Maker's Mark? I think he sells them at Maker's Mark, but it's essentially the grains that go into uh whiskey are what he uses in these cookies. They're very good, and I think you can buy them at Maker's Mark. Uh he also sells at um at Springfield Farmers Market every Saturday. And anyway, he's got a lot going on. You're gonna learn about it. This episode is uh very graciously sponsored by our very good friends Donna Mattingley and Steve Brady. Cannot thank them enough. Um and um uh just want to make sure that you to give them what the kids call a shout-out. Um this has been a very um eventful uh few weeks um locally, the election stuff. You know, we just had the primary, which is all very interesting. And then you have the slate of candidates just yesterday getting solidified at the Marion County Clerk's office for uh the um for the nonpartisan races in November. And I'm not uh telling you what you should do, I'm just saying that after many years of thinking about it, I decided to throw my hat in the ring and I'm running for city council. And um so I mean I'm not gonna belabor it and I'm not gonna bother you with it, but I might bring it up every once in a while just to say, hey, this happened or whatever. Anyway, so it's gonna be an interesting year, and um we'll be talking about it. And um thank you all for listening. I think you're gonna really enjoy this episode brought to you by Steve Brady and Donna Mattingley. This is James Spraggins, and you're listening to something that is mildly amusing. We're back. This is James Spraggins, and this is mildly amusing. My guest today is Stephen Gooden, who I've known for all of three days, maybe. Something like that. Something like that. Um so it doesn't take me much to get in the car and uh but except to hear that, oh, there's a pizza food truck in the area. And um and that's what happened to me this weekend. Somebody sent me some notice, it was actually a political thing, local political thing, and uh that sent me down a little bit of a rabbit hole and I was like, wait a minute, Springfield has got a pizza truck, a food, a bread truck? Uh so Stephen Gooden, this is what you do. You um operate, I guess essentially out of Springfield. Um and you have a company called Dustin Flour. And uh what I had from you, you were serving in Barstown at the chicken cock uh place right on the square, or the circle. Um you were serving various pizzas, but I got the pizza sandwich, and it was like a really, really nice kind of New York thin style by my lights. Pizza dough that you would fold it over and stuffed it with mortadella and arugula and spicy serrano ranch and fresh mozzarella. Am I leave anything out?

SPEAKER_04 4:59

Uh parmesan. Oh, yeah. There's parmesan in there. I think that I think that was about it. Oh, basil oil, rose oil, white pepper.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Rose oil.

SPEAKER_04 5:09

Yeah. Okay. So we import a lot of our olive oil um from Italy. You know, we just want to use the best product that we can, and we have a two different uh style when it comes to it. Like our facaccia, we use actually, you know, Greek olive oil, you know, because the Greeks do olive oil really, really well, obviously. Um and we use that for all of our doughs, but then we have uh a finishing oil, right? Something that never hits any heat, it never hits an oven. Like what you would use for a salad dressing. No, because uh it becomes a little too acrid. Like even if you're just blending it into a salad dressing or making a vinaigrette, you're adding heat to that. And when you add heat to a coal-pressed olive oil, it inherently changes the flavor. That it's gonna be emulsifying of it. Even just the emulsifying of it. And there's always a little bit of a metallic kind of note in olive oil if you use too much. So when I was growing up in kitchens, right, we would always use canola oil or we would use a blended olive oil. Um, just because if you use straight olive oil, it almost like clicks with your tongue a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yeah. Huh. Let's speak you growing up in kitchens. Uh let's get a little bit of your background. You are from this area in general.

SPEAKER_04 6:21

Yeah, so I'm from Lebanon Junction. So we didn't have anything in that town. Uh Lower Colesburg was originally where I came from. So we had a church and that was it. There was nothing else. Right. You know, I remember a lot of my Sundays when I was growing up, my grandmother would take me down to the church because my entire family just ran a concrete company. So we were all in the business together, right? So I would always spend Sundays with my grandmother, and we would go down to the church, and there'd be six, seven, you know, older sixty to seven-year-old women peeling potatoes over a pot. She'd put me on a step stool next to them with a paring knife, and we'd peel potatoes for four hours until I started complaining that my hands hurt. Right. You know. So that I guess was my earliest introduction into cooking. And then when I grew up, I kind of fell into it by complete accident. You know, I made the worst lasagna I think I've ever made or I've ever had the pleasure of tasting in my entire life. And, you know, family being family, they lied to me and told me how delicious it was.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

And that like That's like when people tell the little kids they can sing and they can't sing, and then the world is infested with them.

SPEAKER_04 7:36

Oh, for sure. You know, so I did that thing where that started my entire journey into hospitality. Okay. I went to bartending school, which I'm gonna say this on the air, waste of money. Um don't ever do that. Yeah. And then I actually got a job with Newman and Harrison Miller in 2015 after they moved back from after Newman moved back from Chicago at the Harrison Smith Smith House, which is actually what Chicken Cock is now.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Right. And Newman uh used was was he the first to get Nash uh to get Star Hill Provisions going at Makersmart? Yes.

SPEAKER_04 8:09

So I was part of that opening team with Newman, Harrison, Brian Blanford. Uh we all started. I forgot about Brian Blanford being there. Yeah. He's a local boy. Yeah, he was he's a Lemen and boy. Uh-huh. Um but we all started that culinary program down at Star Hill Provisions. Um, but I had no culinary background whatsoever. So I started as a back server, um, left for a little bit of time, came back, then they needed a dish.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

So that was your first professional restaurant experience. Was it makersmark?

SPEAKER_04 8:37

No, uh it was with a Harrison Smith House. Oh, at Harrison Smith House. Yeah, so Makersmark didn't come into the picture until about two years afterwards. Right, right, right. Yeah, they were doing both for a while, weren't they?

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:47

Um, so I started as a bus boy, I moved to a dishwasher where I would do both jobs, and then I went to a server, I would go down to Makersmark on the weekends, and I would work as a line cook down there, which I was terrible at. Yeah, you know. Um grew into that role, and then went up to being a server, a catering server, um, a prep cook to a sous chef, to an executive chef. And so I was an exec at Scout and Scholar for a couple months, and then left there, went to go run or help manage and run Mr. Tubbs Bar, which was Harrison and Newman's. Which I've not gotten into yet. Yeah, Harrison and Newman and Rachel's um kind of baby. Yeah. I was there for two years, and then in 2024, December of 2024, we got the opportunity to do manufacturing baking because we had done uh holiday sales prior to that.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

What do you mean? You're serving the the the various factories around town, or what are you talking about? Manufacturing baking.

SPEAKER_04 9:47

So manufacturing baking is like we supply um restaurants and then we supply like small grocery stores. Oh, okay. Right. So we don't have a storefront. That's the biggest complaint that I get a lot of times is oh, where when are you open? When are you gonna be open to us? And the short answer is we're not. You know.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Um that's what Dustin Flour is or started out being, or Dustin Flour started out with just being a holiday bake sale.

SPEAKER_04 10:13

Okay. It was like every holiday Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, you know, we essentially started out with yeast rolls and some pies. You know, and then we'd put out a thing two weeks before the holidays. Hey, order from us and we'll take care of your desserts and your bread for the table. Okay. And that started, and we did that for about three years. And then in 2024, we got the opportunity to do manufacturing baking for a local shop called Taste of Barkstown, which isn't there anymore, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Oh, that's too bad. I didn't know it had gone out. Yeah, that was a good place.

SPEAKER_04 10:46

Yeah, they're still looking at doing something, but I think they're leaning more into their tours than they were in the grocery store. Okay. Um, so they gave us our first opportunity, and then it just exploded. I mean, it exploded. I I couldn't have been more, you know, humbled by how fast everything was just selling. I was working at the bar five days a week, and I was baking on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. So Sundays after I would get done at the bar, I would go to the bake shop, I would bake there all night, deliver it Monday morning.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 11:26

And then I would take Monday to basically rest and case up on catch up on chores. Tuesday we go back, do a small order to keep it through the week, open up the bar on Wednesday, open up the bar on Thursday, close it down, and then leave Thursday, go and bake Thursday night to deliver Friday. And I did that for about a year.

unknown 11:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

And you're still you live to tell about it. Um, I know of Mr. Tubbs is a bar, but they also serve some food.

SPEAKER_04 11:53

So Mr. Tubbs primarily does drinks at the highest level that I could possibly think about. Wow. Um and then we started off just doing small plates. You know, we had like basically cafeteria style, but not in like the way that I would assume most people are thinking about, right? We used little cafeteria trays, but it's because they held the right amount of portions for like a mini charcuterie board.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 12:19

Right. So we used to cut our cut broadband ham in house, we would do Benedictine, beer cheese, a trowel box with caramelized onion, uh, horseradish, mayonnaise, house made pickles, and the best saltine crackers we could get.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Right.

SPEAKER_04 12:34

Um, and then we would do pop-ups every so often, you know. If you know Newman um or that kind of group at all, you know he can't really sit still. So when he gets an itchin' to cook something, he's gonna cook something. Right, right. Um so and then people started to know us for our food, and from Harrison Smith House to Makers Mark to Tubbs, they were like, Well, why can't why aren't you guys cooking? What are you doing? We did a meatball sub one day, and it just went without social media, like kind of went viral, right? So people would come in, they would be like, Y'all got that sub again? You got that sub again? You got that sub again? So it just found we did that special for a couple weeks, and then it just found its way onto the menu. So now Jennifer Swope, who's part of the Swope Family Dealership in Elizabeth Town, she would come in, she'd be every Wednesday, they would have a group of people and they'd be like, Well, we're tubbing and subbing. And they would they would come in for a cocktail and they'd come in, they'd get nine meatball subs. You got them hooked. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Like an above board myth dealer.

SPEAKER_04 13:37

Yeah, kind of.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Our our bits on a bun.

SPEAKER_04 13:41

Yeah. I mean, our addictions were a little bit better for you, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

I would say so. Yeah. Definitely would say so. Um wow. Okay. So what time span are we talking about? Like when did you when did you start at Harrison Smith to I started in Harrison Smith at 2015.

SPEAKER_04 13:58

Oh, okay. Um, right whenever they first opened. My first job ever was peeling the stickers off of entree plates. I sat on the back porch on a concrete step and I took the stickers off the plates.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

But all this time when you were like, you know, serving and doing that kind of bus work and stuff, you always had in mind I want to get in that kitchen.

SPEAKER_04 14:17

No, no. No, absolutely not. I when I first started that job, um, it was rough because I had no culinary experience, right? And if you've ever worked in a restaurant or in the hospitality industry, it's not for the weak. It's not for the faint of heart. Right. Um, so I had a lot of days where I would go home and I was living with my mom at the time, that I would go home and I would just look at her and I was like, I hate this job, I want to quit.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:41

And I I just didn't. I kept through it and I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna stay. And he kept offering me new positions, new ways to move up a ladder, and I just kept taking them because if there's anything you know about me, I have a hard time saying no to pretty much anything. So if you offer me something, I'm probably gonna say yes to it. Okay. Um, so I just kept moving up, kept moving up, kept learning, and you know, somehow I fell in love with it. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

Well, I mean, you were getting a good response, sounds like almost from the start. You were getting a good response to what you're doing. That's very I was in the restaurant business. I used to own one here in town. Okay, cool. Uh and it all the all the terrible things you say about it are absolutely correct. And you've had even more success than I did, for sure, I would I would say. Um you're still doing it. But uh, but yeah, that's very it it's just singularly satisfying when you're able to create something like that and people just love it.

SPEAKER_04 15:35

Yeah, it was it was great for us, and I think the last three months for us in Springfield have really, really shown that. Um in the whole manufacturing world of when Dustin Flower has really, really started to gain some traction. We've only been doing this for 15 months, you know, which is which is really wild. I mean, it was me and one other guy, you know, for the first year. And then it got a little because we were both working two jobs basically. So it got a little overwhelming, so I couldn't back out. So he did. Um still love him, very good friend of mine to this day. Yeah. Um and then I just decided, you know, it's time I can't keep doing this anymore, otherwise I'm going to die from lack of sleep and over exhaustion. So I got my own place. It took us three months to get it going. And then, you know, the first month was just catching up on accounts and stuff like that. The second month we got the trailer up and going, which, you know, was cool because we built that all from scratch. So that was really fun.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Um I saw your trailer. It was parked in front of the chicken cock.

SPEAKER_04 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Okay, it had a little pipe coming up, but it didn't look like it had a very heavy-duty pizza oven in it or anything.

SPEAKER_04 16:51

It's not. I mean, we designed the trailer and like we designed our kitchen, we didn't want to invest in a hood, right? Because a hood, I'm working in the industry, you know, a hood, even for that small trailer, would have been $10,000.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

28 years ago, it was a thousand dollars a foot at least.

SPEAKER_04 17:06

Yeah, so I mean it would have been $10,000 to put a hood in that trailer, yeah. Not to mention ventilation systems and all that. So we designed this trailer specifically to not have to do that. It was an old trailer that we got from a gentleman in Lichfield that was his mom's that they just brought up had nothing to do with it. So we gutted it. And the only thing that's in there, that pipe, is the uh the plumbing, um whatever that is, exit valve or whatever that is. Yeah, whatever the exit pipe is. But all that's in that trailer is one five-foot stainless steel table with dual a top and a bottom, dual pizza ovens that are mounted to the table and to the wall, and they're electric. We've got one pizza prep table and then a three-com sink. That's it. I'll be darn.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

It didn't even look that big.

SPEAKER_04 17:56

No, it's not that big. I mean it's a six by twelve trailer. Yeah. I mean, it it's when you get in it, that's an efficient use of space. Yeah, I mean you've only got a a foot, you know, to prep everything. Right. Um, there's two of you in there? Sometimes. Yeah. S most times I kind of run it myself. Um but you know, the overwhelming response we've had with the trailer, we've had to have one person taking orders and one person or me doing all the food, right? Because we brought it to Bargetown last Wednesday, I want to say it was. No, today's Wednesday. Two Wednesdays ago. Yeah. Two Wednesdays ago, we brought it to Bargettown, and I mean it was every bit of as busy as a kitchen would be. I mean, we've got a we've got a three-foot ticket rail in there, and we had the rail completely full of you know, two pizzas, three pizzas, two sandwiches, three sandwiches. I mean, it it was crazy. We did fifty sandwiches and or fifty pizzas and twenty sandwiches in two hours with two of us. Oh my gosh. So I mean we we we book.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Right, right. Um I I've often thought, I mean, the thing that kills a restaurant is the overhead. And I one time read a book about the restaurant business. I can't remember what it was, but it made the point that always stuck with me that the perfect business model for a restaurant is a hot dog stain. Yep. Uh it's one person usually. Um, you don't make anything that's not consumed, very, very low waste, um, and just no overhead. You're out in the sunshine. Yeah, it's very low overhead. I guess the pizza truck is sort of like that too.

SPEAKER_04 19:34

Kind of. I mean, it's more of an extension of what our manufacturing is. So it's a good point that you bring up about overhead and things of that nature because that's why we're a manufacturer. It's why we're not a restaurant, it's why we're not retail. You know, what we have going out is only exactly what we need. Yes. What we need to prep, right? We get our orders 36 hours in advance. We know we come in the next day, we make everything, it goes out the next day. There's absolutely no waste. You know, the only waste that we have are like the trimmings from cinnamons or panel chocolates or croissants, but then those get repurposed into monkey bread. Oh, wow. Okay. So there yeah, so there is no waste. And then, like with our pizza dough, if our pizza dough overferments from an event or something like that, it's not dead. You bring it back, you take it out on, you know, you hold it correctly, whether that's in freeze or whatever it is, and you take it out the next day and it makes those sandwiches. Right. It's perfect to make those, and they're called Panozzo's P-A-N-O-U-Z-O, I think is what they're actually called. They're an Italian sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 20:38

Um is that what I ate? Yeah. That's what that's what you ate, yeah. So it's that thing of taking Neapolitan style pizza dough with lower uh Italy, right? Fold it over with a ton of olive oil so it doesn't stick, open it up, you've got this charred outside to it, nice and crunchy, but then the inside is like this soft, fluffy air.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:58

Right? And like a classic Italian one would be like pesto, prosciutto, and arugula with birata. Okay. Right? It's like the ultimate high and the high low of an Italian because you can just walk around with it and it's just a sandwich. Right. But it's the sandwich that everybody wants to eat because you don't want to commit to a whole pizza.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Did you cook it in the oven flat and then stuff it? You stuff it and then stick it in the oven?

SPEAKER_04 21:20

No, no. So it's just like it is. You stretch out the pizza dough and then you coat the whole thing in olive oil, you fold it over on itself, and you throw that in the oven.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 21:29

And it cooks like that, so the bottom gets nice and charred. You've got all those leopard spots on the top. You bring it back out.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Leopard spots. I like that.

SPEAKER_04 21:35

Yeah, you bring it back out, you open it while it's still hot, all your condiments go inside of it, you fold it back over.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

So that's how the inside stays soft because it's it kind of steams in there.

SPEAKER_04 21:45

Yeah, it steams in there, and then you've got that olive oil, so it never hits direct heat, right? It's baked.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah. That's brilliant. It's brilliant. They've probably been doing that for two thousand years. Oh, I'm sure they've been doing it for centuries.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

I don't know when they initially started it. But you know, with Our pop-ups with the truck, I always like to do two to three pizza options and then a sandwich. And I just woke up, you know, one morning it was for an oil pros thing, and I was like, you know what? Why don't I just make the pizza dough with the sandwich? I know it works. I've seen it. I've watched it happen. I was like, why can't I do it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

And then I just did it. That's great. Um You don't just make pizza. You okay, tell me about you make regular bread, you make French bread and Italian bread and whatever Tuscan, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 22:33

So we've kind of got like our core products, right? So the one thing that I've always kind of been angry about in Kentucky is that we have a hot brown, right? Yep. The best thing for a hot brown is Texas toast. You can't find good Texas toast anywhere. Yeah. I don't care where you look, you can't find it. It doesn't exist for whatever reason. So that kind of lit a fire under my ass. Pardon, pardon my French. I don't know if I can pass on here. But it lit a fire under me. So when I did that, I set out to make a high-end, high-value Texas toast.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:12

And I went through it. I started one. I kept going on it. I kept getting feedback. Originally it started out as like an Amish bread, and then it kind of ended up as a brioche. And then we ended up, you know, now we've got our core product, which is a this is going to sound odd, but it's an ode to Bouchon Bakery, which is Thomas Keller's franchise group, right? Um he does his pullman loaf with cream cheese. I said, I didn't want to put cream cheese in it. So, but I also didn't want to put dairy in it, right? So mine is a mix between a chocupan, which is Japanese milkbread.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

I was just gonna bring up Japanese milk bread. I only just recently learned about that.

SPEAKER_04 23:51

Yeah, so ours is like a it's a hybrid, right? So we take the Tanzong method that the Japanese use, which is mi uh cooking your flour and water. Flour and water. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

I just watched them do this on America's Desk It's in London. Yeah, before years ago.

SPEAKER_04 24:03

So it creates a paste, right? Yes. And when you do that, you extend the shelf life of the bread, but it also makes it fluffier. So like you can take one of our loaves and scrunch it up and it'll bounce back. Oh my gosh. It's like an accordion. Okay. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Uh but so ours uses that, and then we use yogurt. Okay. Yeah, we use whole fat six percent yogurt from uh Snowville up in Ohio, you know, just because we want to try and use as local as we can, but they're the best like whole milk that I can get right now at a reasonable price. Yeah. Um, so we do that, and then you know, I mean, right now we're pushing out eight to ten cases of those.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

And what you're saying that you're describing your version of Texas toast, right? Okay. Because the irony is sort of like, well, good bread's got to be really chewy and crunchy on the outside, but you can't make a decent sandwich out of that. No, you can't really.

SPEAKER_04 24:58

And like most home kitchens don't have the knifewear to be able to cut a true, true sourdough, if you really want to be honest about it, right? I love my sourdough's like dark. Most people, they take it to golden brown. I don't think it's charred enough personally. Okay. I like it to get really dark, really have that right on the point of acrid. Right? I really love that flavor a lot. Um, but most people in homes don't have a bread knife to be able to cut through that stuff. Yeah. And if you try and slice it all yourself, you're gonna kill your knives instantly. Right. And bread slicers aren't made to do that. Like the electric bread slicers where most convention places have, they're not made to cut hard loaf breads like that. That's why all sourdough is sold on cut because nobody's ready to do those kinds of things. Did you ever eat at National Provisions in Lexington?

SPEAKER_01 25:48

It's on National Avenue. Yes. That guy used to do the bread like you did, and I thought, why is he burning his bread? Now it tasted good, but it was so dark. Yeah when I first saw it, I was like, did he really mean to do that? But I obviously he did.

SPEAKER_04 26:01

Yeah. I mean, when I make baguettes or sourdough, I intentionally make mine dark. It's like kind of just my way of going about it. Like if you eat one of my pizzas, right, you'll notice my crust is intentionally dark. It's not supposed to be light. It's supposed to be almost crackerish, right? Whenever you hold up a slice, it doesn't flop.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:23

Right. It holds all those toppings correctly.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

So I kind of started out young, interested in cooking, and and and sort of like you, there were just women around me, my mother, uh, other you know, friends of the family, they were all good cooks, and I always loved to eat. And to this day I don't understand how people don't cook because if the if you love to eat, I can't I would hate to just always have to depend on somebody else to feed me, you know. So I was always keen on learning how they did it, and they'd let me watch them. But one thing that for a long, long, long time just evaded me was the ability to make bread. Um I would I don't know how many loaves, like globs of dough, I would just say, fuck it. Now throw it in the trash can and say, I'll never make bread again. But the thing that got me to no the the first time I was ever to successfully make it was the Mark Bittman No Need Bread, the Jim Leahy or Fayhey. Yeah, Jim Leahy's Jim Leahy, yeah, the guy from from New York. And I was like, well, this kind of takes all that out of it. I just didn't know how to handle the dough. I think that was it. I was like, I'm screwing this whole damn thing up. Um But uh did you did you have a no-need phase or because that was probably 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_04 27:35

Oh, I remember I when I first did pizza dough, that was my first pizza recipe. I remember looking at it and we just tried it like that. Um I never really had a no-need phase. I never really had a phase about anything, right? My brain is so ADHD, you know. I don't know if that's true or not. I've never been diagnosed with it, but whatever, that's what my wife says I am. We'll we'll we'll stipulate it. So we'll we'll go with it, right? Uh my whole thing is like I go down a rabbit hole. I find one thing that I obsess over for days, weeks, months, months, months, months, months until I absolutely perfect it. And then I'll probably never make it again. And then I move on to the next thing and I obsess over that thing.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

But you're banking that in that information, that experience. Yes, and then you move on to like Japanese milk bread.

SPEAKER_04 28:26

Yeah, something like that, and now I've nailed milkbread, so then I moved on to croissants, you know. I've done my first good batch of croissants, right? Um, which is fun. But the thing that I think I'm kind of stepping into recently is finding my own little niche, which is like I think people can't make bread because they overcomplicate it.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Yes, and that's that's what I've learned.

SPEAKER_04 28:54

Yeah, I was like, people are like people are scared of sourdough, right? Which is this odd trend that's come in recently because people value time more than they value ingredients. Um but everybody's always so scared to kill your sourdough starter. And I'm like, you have to really, really try to kill that thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 29:16

I mean, like I've left it on a counter before for seven days, unfed. Really? And brought it back to like the next day and then baked bread with it.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Is your kitchen air conditioned?

SPEAKER_04 29:27

Uh I mean it's like 67 degrees or something like that because my wife keeps it freezing. Yeah, my wife keeps it freezing. That's a meat locker. Yeah, okay. It's cold. Uh but I mean, like, people are so scared if they miss one or two feedings that your sourdough is just gonna die, and it was like, it's not gonna die.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

I kind of confess I'm I'm I haven't tried sourdough for 25 years, probably, but I was just like, I I'm not that kind of cook where I can just do the same thing every day.

SPEAKER_04 29:52

I I agree.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

And I I don't know. But maybe I could have maybe there was more more give there than uh than I gave it credit for.

SPEAKER_04 29:59

I mean, that's kind of why we do catering and we do the truck and stuff like that, is because I'm kind of the same way where I don't like to do the same thing every day.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:08

So I have to keep something there to occupy my brain, otherwise I go start crazy. Right. And then I go down rabbit holes of my next best project, and then other people have to tell me stop.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Right.

SPEAKER_04 30:19

You know, you're you're getting a little obsessive right now.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

You need to back it back down, do what we do first, and then how long have you how long have you maintained the starter that you've got now?

SPEAKER_04 30:28

Oh, let's see. I started Cynthia like Cynthia. Yeah, she originally got called Cynthia. Uh-huh. My wife said it was stupid, so now we call now we call our now we call her Seymour. So now we have a big sign in our bakery that just says, feed me Seymour. Right, right. So at the end of our prep list every day, uh it just says, Did you feed Seymour?

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Mm-hmm. Gotcha. Gotcha. Um the bread, not that anybody cares, but the bread that I do now, this was how I kind of got off of the no-need. Here, the book is still here on the shelves at Marion County Library where we sit right now. You know a guy named Ken Forkish?

SPEAKER_04 31:15

Heard the name.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Okay, well, it's his bread, and he does a version, it just depends on how much yeast you put in. This is not I'm sure he does a a sourdough, but I was doing just the yeast uh version. Uh and it's the kind where you um autalize your yeast by pouring the warm water, uh, about 100 degree, 95 degree water, pour it over there for a few minutes, pour it over your yeast for about five minutes, combine them all, and you do this thing, you don't need it, but you get in there like I use a big bowl, and you go in there and you pinch it between your thumb and forefinger a few times, and then you do this folding thing. You turn it, fold it, turn it, fold it. Yeah. And then you do that, and then you let it sit for 30, do it aga do the uh folding again. So it's not a lot I mean it's it's not labor intensive, it's it's very easy, uh you know. Uh and then you you know, you do that maybe three times, the folding thing, and then just let it sit as long as you need to. And uh and my kids love it, my wife loves it.

SPEAKER_04 32:14

It's very faccia. Is it? It's a very facasha way of doing things.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Well, that's in the book too.

SPEAKER_04 32:20

Yeah. I mean so the way we do our facasha, right, and the process that you're referring to, whenever you activate your yeast with water, it's just activating, it's making sure your yeast isn't dead. Now the autolyce, what in the I could be mistaken on this, I don't know everything, but from what I understand with baking, when you auto-olyce something, it's developing gluten structure, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:42

That's my understanding too.

SPEAKER_04 32:43

Yeah, so you take flour and water and you combine them, and then you let it rest for 30 minutes, hour, two hours.

SPEAKER_02 32:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:50

And then you add all the rest of your ingredients to it, and because it's sat there and it's absorbed all of the flour, it creates a stronger uh gluten network inside the bread.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

To me, it it just means the water's getting in the flour. So I mean I but I have heard that that's you're developing that good. But I do the autolizing for like 10 minutes as long as I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 33:10

I mean, I think any amount of time is still an autolize.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Okay, okay. And it's like I said, it's very forgiving and everybody likes it. And when I come up with fresh bread, they think I'm God or something. Right. Most people. It's the only time anybody thinks I'm God. And they probably don't really. But um, yeah, so that's kind of my method now, and I love it. And it makes two loaves. Right. And we'll either eat them all all at once, or I'll gift one, or I'll throw one in the freezer. Yeah. And so we've all so we've always got bread. And they and the people in my house let me know when it's time for me to make some damn bread. I love it. Yeah, I do too. That's great. I do too. Um so I want to get back to this Japanese milk bread. That is kind of like what we all grew up on is sandwich bread, right?

SPEAKER_04 33:56

No.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

No?

SPEAKER_04 33:57

No. I mean what we all grew up on. So one of the things you have to understand is when you buy sandwich bread that's not housemade, it's from the store, right? Yes. Most times, because of all the preserves and stuff, it leans closer to a cake than it does a bread. Right? That's why it's always so uniform, it's always cooked in those square pans, it never really has that loaf kind of look to it. Like whenever you make your own bread, it always has that. It's that peak. That's kind of arc at the top. Yeah, and most store bread almost never has that, right? Um so now our traditional white bread, when we think of it in an American, would be something that's been fed on sugar that has been activated by yeast, it's walt, it's water. Um, if you're lucky, it's got some butter in it just to give it a little bit of fat. Um but it's a very, very plain Jane, simple simplistic thing. Now, what Japanese milk bread does completely different is one they adapt the Tang Zong method. And then the other thing is they almost use no water in it. All of their hydration is completely, you know, milk, right? And then they use a combination of milk and eggs and butter to make this dough. So it's a very rich almost. I didn't know it had eggs in it. Yeah. Most times it does. Now, depending on the recipe that people use, they can opt out of it. But most times, from my understanding, it has eggs in it. Um, so it's this very rich, almost like brioche type situation. And it's always cooked in a pullman loaf. So a pullman loaf is what they normally pen that has that top on it, right? Yeah. So traditional Japanese milkbread, they'll take it, they'll divide it into three different dough balls, and then they'll take a rolling pin and they'll roll out all of the air outside of the dough or inside of the dough, right? They make it very, very concise. And then they'll roll that up into tight little balls. They'll do that three times and put them in that pullman pan. And they'll let them rise until it about hits the top, and then you bake it, and it makes this perfectly square little thing. And the cool thing about a Japanese shokupan is you can take that bread and you can if you don't want the whole thing, you can literally rip it into thirds, and it comes off in these three little balls basically, because without it cooling, it's like pull apart bread. Right? It's all just sitting right there.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Okay. Okay, I don't think of bread when I think of going to a Japanese restaurant. What are the Japanese doing with this bread?

SPEAKER_04 36:23

Oh, I mean, X Alex sandwiches, you know, I mean the Japanese are uh super interesting with all of their bread because they take every cuisine from everywhere in the world and they just master it. And they make it there, yeah. And they just master it, and they do the interesting best part of it. So, like Japanese show coupon, right? They definitely do like the XS sandwich, and my biggest thing that I immediately think of is a 7-Eleven. Right? When you think about Japan, you think about cuisine in 7-Eleven, whether you want to or not, you think about a 7-Eleven gas station.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 36:59

Like every time, because they've got those vending machines, they've got the ramen machines right there, you've got sushi that's all on little belts and things, right? Little rice balls. You think of you grab and go like convenience store food. I wish. Yeah, right? I wish we had that. I wish we did too. But I mean, like, yeah, for better or worse, that's where my brain immediately goes. And then, of course, it goes to ramen and udon and sobo noodles and all kinds of things like that, but that's a whole different topic. I could go down a dangerous rabbit hole and we don't have time for that.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Right. You mentioned egg salad. I'm sure you've eaten at the bar at Willet. Oh, yeah. Okay, to me, that's as good as anything in the state of Kentucky. I and we're so blessed that it's 20 minutes away from here. I think what those guys are doing is fantastic. And we never go without one of our dishes. This is like a, for those of you who don't know, it's it's at Willett Distillery in Bargetown, kind of across up on the hill across from Heaven Hill. And um they have got this fabulous restaurant. I cannot remember the chef's name, but he's been there. John. John, he's been there from the get-go, I think.

SPEAKER_04 38:05

Yep, John Sleesman's been there.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

I actually have to go to Willet after this. Is that right? That is right, yeah. Well ask him if his ears were burning.

SPEAKER_04 38:12

Well, I'll uh let you know a little fun fact. The egg salad you're talking about, we supply the bread for him.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

I was just gonna say that. Oh my god, because I was like, I don't know what they're doing different, essentially. I mean, it tastes like just egg salad, but there's something about what they're doing. Are they grating egg yolk on top of it?

SPEAKER_04 38:29

They used to. At the very, very beginning, they used to do a seven-day cured egg yolk and they used to do it on top. Now, because of, you know, I think HACCP violations, or not violations, but HACCF requirements and stuff like that, they've just chose to go away from that.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

You can't cure your egg yolks for seven days anymore.

SPEAKER_04 38:46

Well, health department regulations say anything over seven days need to get thrown out, whether it's cured or not. Okay. So they're kind of sticklers. Could they go to six day? I mean, I don't know. Look, man, there's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

I understand they don't want the hassle.

SPEAKER_04 38:59

There's a lot of things that restaurants are kind of I ain't gonna say it on the way with.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, I do. Yeah, you do. You feel the vibe. I do feel the vibe, yes. Yeah. Um I I d yeah, anyway, I I was just gonna ask you, it's like, where are they getting that bread? Because it's perfectly done, it's perfectly presented. And even though you got all that egg yolk grating all over yourself when you're eating it. Oh, it's gorgeous. It's it's I can't I mean that we're talking about an egg salad sandwich. It's amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:27

But no, I mean, will it's one of my top three restaurants in the state?

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Oh absolutely. Oh, easily. Yeah. Wouldn't even say wouldn't even A few years ago, my wife and I were down on one of our many trips to New Orleans, and we went in this restaurant that we like. And we ordered, and then I went to the restroom after we ordered, and I passed by this couple who were obviously waiting they were having a cocktail, they were waiting for the to be seated. And the guy had on a t-shirt, the bar at Willet, and I said, That is the best restaurant in the state of Kentucky. He says, Well, I like it, but he says, I think my restaurant is the best restaurant in the state of Kentucky. I said, Well, what what's your restaurant? And this guy was the owner of North of Bourbon in Louisville, which I've been to a couple times, and it is very good.

SPEAKER_04 40:09

With um Oh uh Wex and Lawrence Lawrence Wex. Okay. I don't know. Yeah, he's the uh he was the chef there. Uh he might still be.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

I don't know if I was talking to the chef or the or the owner or the both. I don't I don't know if it was a husband and wife.

SPEAKER_04 40:23

Was it uh taller, dark-skinned gentleman? No, no. Um Then it definitely wasn't the chef.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

Okay. Okay. And it turns out it's called North of Bourbon, obviously the bourbon whiskey tie-in. But his wife, I think, is from New Orleans, and that's why they were down there eating at this restaurant. Yeah, because they're very Cajun influenced. Absolutely, absolutely. It's a neat place, too. You sit in these banquettes that are actually like half massive whiskey barrels or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:49

Yeah, no, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Yeah, it's really cool. Tell me about what are some of your other favorite restaurants around here that you like to go to when you go to each.

SPEAKER_04 40:56

I got tons of them. If I'm looking for a high-class meal, right, then there can't be a conversation without Barvetti. Um, they just opened up a new bistro called uh M Peppers, which I haven't had the opportunity to go to yet.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

Okay, I heard about that.

SPEAKER_04 41:10

Yeah, I mean, it's the same restaurant group, and anything that they do in that place, I mean, I could talk about it forever. Uh-huh. Um Meach Mech. There's a conversation. Yeah, I mean, Mech Meach has got to be in the conversation. And they just opened Mill Iron where they do uh they partnered with a butcher that used to be at Red Hawk. And yeah, they cook all or they cut all their meat in house, which is phenomenal. Um new place, if you haven't heard about it, is Michlin in Kentucky. Um Redas. Spell that. R-E-T-T-A. So the interesting thing about Redas, it is a dessert shop. Okay. So Ben, um, who've I had the pleasure of talking to and meet a few times, uh, he's the chef and owner of Redas, but he was from, and he might kill me for saying this, might be from upstate New York, and then he came down to Kentucky and he worked in some Michelin star restaurants, and he always thought that, you know, why should the entrees in the breakfast and the main courses always get all the love? All the love. He's like, right, you want to go to dinner and you want to just have dessert, so why not bring a Michelin level dessert place to somewhere without the Michelin level price tag? Okay. Right? But I mean, he's doing some stuff that's just worlds out there, and it's amazing. Okay. Yeah, he he's just great, dude. Um, so that's Louisville. If you want to talk about Lexington, right? I'm always into Latino scene. So, like, you gotta talk about um oh, what's it's in Versailles? Uh Tacaria Bercera. Okay. In Versailles, you know, they make their own treasone house, um, which is amazing. And then you gotta go to Ramirez off of Alexandria in Lexington.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

They have that's right off of Verseilles Road, right? Yep, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:03

And they make their own uh tortillas, and they've got a whole bunch of moss in the back, and I think they supply a lot of like the trucks and stuff with fresh farm tortillas, and then right across from Ramirez is a Mexican bakery. Seen that. Yeah, that's always super cool. Um I had a ramen shop that was in that when I was in Lexington not too long ago that was just killer, and I it's supposed to be like an old school one, but let me see. I got my old buddy, I had him send me a list. Standing room only in lessing in Lexington is just cool. There's no chairs, which is why it's called standing room only. Gotcha. The dude is just like a Japanese master. He's got a lot of curated, uh fermentated uh bites, and then sometimes, if you're lucky, he'll have fish that he'll grab from the Louisville airport and bring it down and only have it for the weekend. Super cool. Right.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

That reminds me that uh a UPS I heard some time ago has got this massive oyster tank at the lot at the airport in Louisville. Yeah. Because it's so centrally located. You got to keep the water moving, you gotta keep it at a certain temperature or something.

SPEAKER_04 44:15

Well, oddly enough, that a lot of people would know about Kentucky is probably one of the best places to get seafood because all seafood travels through Louisville, right? So we have arguably some of the fresh seafood out away from the coast. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

But if you're going to Louisville to get it, I can't go to UPS. Where do you get it? I to be honest, I don't know. Okay. I mean it's so it's going through here. It's going through. I mean I'm going to go to the house. 5% of it to stay.

SPEAKER_04 44:37

Um so the place in Lexington, Tachibana.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

Oh yeah. I've I I've eaten there a couple times. That was the first place I ever had sushi. Oh my God. It's great. I love that place. And a lot of people don't know about it. I know. I didn't know about it.

SPEAKER_04 44:50

Yeah. It's kind of hidden. Yeah, but it was great. I mean, it was phenomenal. I eat way too much food like I normally do. I'm with you. I'm with you. Yes. But my buddy, he hates going out with me because um, one, I I pay for us because, you know, tax breaks and shit. There you go. Um, but then two, it's because I order everything on the menu. Yes. And he's just like, Why are you doing this? I was like, because I want to eat. I took him to a uh a sushi place and we walked in, he sat down, and they were known for their amakase. So I sit down, I talked to the lady, and I'm like, hey, do you guys have a makase here? She's like, Yeah, yeah. Like, how much do you want to do for it? I was like, I don't know, let's do like 300 bucks. And she goes, Okay, okay. So she goes back and she starts talking to the chef. My buddy just looks over me and he was like, What the hell did you just do? I was like, Why don't you just calm down and enjoy the meal? So she brings out like a bento box that's probably, you know, 10 by 30, right? It's got 16 different bites of sushi in it, two pieces each for one for me and him. That's perfect. Blows his mind. Yeah. And then of course, right before we leave, you know, like any normal cook does, I just look at her and I was like, hey, is there anything that we have to eat before we leave? I was like, this is his first homakue. I was like, is there anything we have to do? And she's like, well, the chef's got this A5 Japanese wagyu back there. I was like, cool, we'll take two.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

How do you like your sushi? Do you like it in a roll?

SPEAKER_04 46:13

Do you like it uh Oh, I'm always Shoshimi or Negri. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I'm always one of those two. Right. Like perfect sushi rice. Like my mouth's salivating. I just I'm a fiend for rice, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

A couple more things interesting about Louisville are uh this Cuban influence. Like in the last 20 years, all of a sudden we've got all these, and the new one that's in Nulu.

SPEAKER_04 46:38

Yeah, that's right next to Vedi.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

Yeah, yeah. The Great Big Place, it's in this old land.

SPEAKER_04 46:42

It starts with like an H or something like that. Oh, it's something like that. Yeah, like like Cuba, Cuba. I don't I but yes, I know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Right, right. It's uh we've been there a couple times here lately.

SPEAKER_04 46:52

It's really I've heard their mojitos are really good.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Uh I enjoyed mine.

SPEAKER_04 46:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

Yeah, yeah, very much. Um and uh I haven't been there in a long time, but I used to say that I thought the best restaurant around was 610 Magnolia. Yeah, Edley. Uh I could never I would always have to like ask for a gift certificate for Christmas so I could afford there because I don't get the tax write-off. Right. But um um but I always thought that place was fantastic. I have no idea if it's still good.

SPEAKER_04 47:18

I you know what? I can't say anything about it because I haven't ate at 610 ever. Um I have known quite a few people that have worked there, um, but I've never had the opportunity to ever eat there. Right. Um, but yeah, it's always cool and stuff like that. But Louisville is just so diverse because you can go to so many different places in the city and you can get any kind of food. Right. Right? Like Vietnam Kitchen. It's it's the same. I mean, you can't you can't talk about Louisville without talking about VK. Totally agree. Right. And then it's got such a good, good and up-and-coming bar scene too.

SPEAKER_01 47:52

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04 47:52

Oh my god, like there's so many people are doing some really good things in Louisville.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

So my wife and I stumbled into Bar Vetty, which you mentioned, um, this has been a few months ago. We were staying the night in Louisville for some reason, and we went in there just looking for a cup of coffee.

SPEAKER_03 48:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

And then we immediately were like, well, I mean, I couldn't tell, because it's in the on the first floor of just some sort of nondescript hotel.

SPEAKER_04 48:13

It's like an AC hotel or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

Yeah, something like that, which, you know, nothing wrong with it. But yeah, but it was I just walked in, I was like, wait a minute, this is a little nicer than I was thinking. Uh, and of course they were doing the bar service with you know mimosas and bloody marys and stuff. But and then later I found out that, like, no, you go there for dinner, and it it's super good.

SPEAKER_04 48:31

I gotta say, their brunch though. Yeah, their brunch is solid. Real solid. Like Barvetti, I was able to stage with them for a while, and I worked with uh Andy McCabe, who's the chef there. Um, they're the reason that I started doing Facasha.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

Really?

SPEAKER_04 48:47

Uh-huh. Their Fakasha was like just phenomenal, and they're the ones that got me on doing Facasha. They're actually the ones where I learned how to stretch pizza dough.

SPEAKER_01 48:56

Well, you're doing that quite well. Um I I don't I have not achieved that level of stretching. I I try to make my own pizza and it's it's edible, it's very good, but it's not yours.

SPEAKER_04 49:07

It's all about the dough, man. It really is.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

Like pizza like letting it rest long enough or the flour or what?

SPEAKER_04 49:13

It's um if you want really, really good pizza dough, get really good flour. Right? Good flour makes more of a difference than are you getting it from Italy? I'm not right now because we're not like a pizza shop. Okay. Right? We're known for pizza, but we make really good pizza with what we have. Okay. Um, but if you want to get like a good thing in uh Kentucky, you know, King Arthur bread flour does well. Yeah. You know, I mean it's solid for it. But I mean, it's just again, people overthink it. Like my pizza dough is literally four ingredients.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 49:46

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 49:47

That's the name of that book, that Ken Forkas book.

SPEAKER_04 49:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Fra flour, salt, whatever. I actually just picked it up out there. That's the book that I where I learned the. I literally just picked it up.

SPEAKER_03 49:56

I had it in my hand while when you texted me.

SPEAKER_01 49:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 50:00

All right. Yeah. But I mean, it's and the biggest thing that a lot of people I think a lot of people skip is your preferment. Mm-hmm. Right? And the that's the thing that makes people like before you've mixed it all together, or what do you mean? So, like a preferment in the bread world is you normally either have like what you call a poolish or like a big yeah or something like that. Sourdough is technically kind of a thing of a preferment. But it's like make part of your yeast, your flour, and your water ahead of time. Okay. Let it create that gluten structure, right? Let it sit overnight, let it sit for four to eight hours, and then throw it in with your dough. And then temperature control of your dough is another big thing. Right? Like, I use all ice water in my pizza doughs.

SPEAKER_02 50:41

Really?

SPEAKER_04 50:41

Yeah. Like my pizza dough, I don't think ever gets above like 42 degrees Fahrenheit. So how long are you how long are you letting your dough rise? Oh, I mean, it rises for 24 hours overnight and then like an hour before I use it.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

So if you're using like for 100 grams of flour, you're using like a quarter if you're use well, are you using yeast? Yeah. Okay. So you're using like a quarter or less teaspoon of yeast for that, right? Uh I couldn't even tell you what a teaspoon is anymore.

SPEAKER_04 51:16

I got away from measuring. Well, from American metrics. Okay. Right? I use the metric system for all that everything we have in our bakeries in grams. I gotcha. So like our recipe, right, is 1,300 grams of bread flour. It's two grams of yeast, it's 750 grams of ice water. And what is it? 30 grams? No, I think it's twenty grams of salt. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

I weigh mine out too. And it yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:49

Yeah, I mean that's what it is. And then our preferment, right, is like 220 grams of bread flour to 200 grams of water with I don't even measure it. I just put a little bit of yeast between my fingers and just you know, and that's it. That's how I measure that yeast for that preferment. Right. Um and then it rises for six hours, it goes in the dough. We portion it out, and it goes immediately into the fridge and it sits there until the event.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

And that's the only leavening in the total batch, is what you have. So when he did he was showing like a a um a pinch. Yeah, like a fingerprint. In the baking world, we can call it a scant. Okay. I would say if you're measuring in American style, I would say that's about an eighth of a teaspoon.

SPEAKER_04 52:33

I mean, I don't even think you I don't even think it's that much. Wow. I would literally just say like if you're going to like salt something, right? Uh act like that yeast is your salt right then. Okay. Like just take it between your fingers and just do a little bit of a pinch, like rub it between your fingers, and that's all the yeast you need for that preferment. You don't need much.

SPEAKER_01 52:51

And and you're maintaining this at you, what did you say, 40 something degrees?

SPEAKER_04 52:56

The final dough, yes. The final dough. The preferment goes rests at like 75 degrees for it to be able to rise properly.

unknown 53:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 53:04

And then once it goes into the final dough, all the ice water brings the temperature back down to freezing, right? We mix the dough, it rises back up to about 38 to 30, 39 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Uh-huh. And then it goes straight onto a table, we divide it out, roll it up, put it in a box, and it goes into our cooler at 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay. And then I leave it alone until the event.

SPEAKER_01 53:29

We're going to find out how many people who listen to this podcast give a shit about bread because that's really all we've talked about. But you know what I wanted to say though? One restaurant you did not mention was Lehes Redcastle.

SPEAKER_03 53:41

And I'm I didn't, we didn't get into we didn't get into Hodginville, man. I was like, if we're going to talk about Hodginville, we're going to talk about Lehay's.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

I don't know that you need to go any further than Le Hayes, personally. I I think Le Hayes is wonderful. I've got these friends we drive over a few times a year just to, you know, just to go have lunch, and we just love it.

SPEAKER_04 54:05

Hey man, I gotta say, if you're in Barge Town, though, and you're looking for a Smashburger, you gotta throw a Scout and Scholar in the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 54:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 54:11

You have to.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Well, I have had it and it is excellent. You're right. Yeah, exactly right.

SPEAKER_04 54:15

Well, because you know, Newman and Jeremy. Um so Newman took over the culinary program at Scout and Scholar, and Jeremy Brown is his chef there. And they based their uh they based the Smash Burger off a leah's. I love it. So it's like it's about as close to a leyhead's as you get. Now you can't get a seasoned griddle 80 years with the old woman with a hunched back making your making your smash burger, Rayleigh.

SPEAKER_03 54:40

That's part of the experience. But you know, we we try they try our best.

SPEAKER_01 54:43

You know, we found out she was only like in her late 60s. We thought she's 200 years old. Look, whenever you And I don't mean to insult anybody, she was a wonderful person and may still be a wonderful person. I don't know. But we found out later and they said, Oh, she's 69. It's like, are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_04 54:59

Look, all I'm saying is kitchen back's a real thing. All right. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 55:04

Kitchen back's a real thing. That's right. That burger's not gonna smash itself. No. Um so tell us, give us a little bit about your schedule if people want to alleviate their mouth watering and uh come see you.

SPEAKER_04 55:17

Where are you gonna where are people gonna be able to have some of your I mean for us for the best way to do it is just to find our wholesale accounts, right? Like we just started being in IGA in Springfield, which is great. Um we've got the Bourbon City Trade Kitchen down in Barstown has a lot of our stuff. They have our pound cakes a lot.

SPEAKER_01 55:37

Um What level are you selling at IGA? I mean they're whatever.

SPEAKER_04 55:40

I mean, they they change up. Like right now, we've got our uh campfire cookies in there, our sourdough bread, our famous yeast rolls, which you know, shameless plug, they got enough butter in them to kill a cow. There you go. Uh we're doing monkey bread in there. We're doing our cracked rye dark molasses uh Pullman loaf this week, which I'm really excited about that they're gonna try. Um our soft malted German style pretzels are going in there. Oh my gosh. Um I think that's what they got in there.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

Do you hit like a standalone, like an island in the middle of the deli or something where you're selling it?

SPEAKER_04 56:18

It's right, it's right there as soon as you go to check out. There's a little rack. Okay. And it just says like either local bakery or dust and flour or something on it. Okay. Yeah. But then if you ever want to try our products like out in the real world where it should be, um Maker's Mark Distillery, right? They just now started getting our pizza dough. So if you have a pizza down in Maker's Mark, that's us. Um if you get their chicken sandwich or the Texas toasts, that's us. Um if you get their Wagyu burger with the beef that they raise on it, that potato bun, that's us. Um Willet Restaurant, you know, their X Al Sandwich. Excellent sandwich. That's us. Um, Scout and Scholar, if you have their hot brown, that Texas Toast, that's us. Um, we're gonna be providing pretzels for them here pretty soon, too. So if you go into Scout and Scholar and you get, I don't know how they're gonna market it, so we'll see. But if you ask for one of the dust and flour pretzels, they'll give you one of our big housemade pretzels. Um Dees Beans Coffee Shop, if you want something that's a little bit, you know, more grab and go, like our banana bread, okay, uh cinnamons, Oreo cheesecake bites, uh all kinds of stuff. Oh my god. And then yeah, I think I already said Laura Foodland.

SPEAKER_01 57:28

No, I don't I didn't I didn't hear you say that. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:32

Look, she's got my like she's got my back. Uh but yeah. So we got we got all kinds of places, you know. Okay. We're we're we're busier than I thought. And then if you want to find out where our food truck is or where our papa's uh are, you just gotta we don't have a set schedule. You follow us on social media, and if I'm not terrible about it, I'll tell you where we are. Gotcha trying to get better. Like we'll be at IGA on look for dust and flower.

SPEAKER_01 57:58

I know I know you have a Facebook page.

SPEAKER_04 57:59

Yeah, Facebook and Instagram. You can find Dust and Flower Co. Um, but like we'll be at IGA on the 20th.

SPEAKER_01 58:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 58:06

Um we'll be in Long Branch Liquors, I think, on the 9th.

SPEAKER_01 58:09

I love that you're at Long Branch Liquors. I love that.

SPEAKER_04 58:11

Dude, I love that. Why not? Why not? Why not, right? I'm I'm not one to shy away from business. That's exactly you know, and then like our caterings and stuff. You know, if you ever want to have like some kind of fancy dinner party, you know, obviously if you're in Lebanon, you can reach out to Gwen Arts first. Yes. But uh, if you can't get her, keep me in a close second.

SPEAKER_01 58:30

Okay, okay. So you do I don't know where you're getting time to do that. Um I don't sleep. You just don't sleep. Okay. All right. You can ask Gwen, she'll vouch for that. Gotcha. Um, well, listen, I can't think of anything else. Uh this is I've thoroughly enjoyed this. Um, as always, these things, the hour goes by like this. Right. This one in particular. So uh thank you so much for your time. Um I hope to see you again soon, and I hope to be become one of your friends that you go and spend $300 at the sushi restaurant with. It'll be nice. It'll be nice. But thanks for having me and we really appreciate it. Absolutely, absolutely. Um, do you think you'll be bringing your truck to Lebanon anytime soon? I know you talk to Tom Sparks, my friend. Oh, that reminds me, I do need to talk to him. You need to call him back. I need to call him back, yeah. So, yeah, maybe. He runs the um American Legion gambling hall. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:25

All I'm saying is gambling and pizza go hand in hand. I would think so. All right. Like that does well.

SPEAKER_01 59:30

Some would say it's a sure bet. Um Steven, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this and hope to have you back sometime. And uh I'll be looking for your food truck again. Yeah, thanks. All right.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

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