Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 19 - Andy Kadin

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Andy Kadin is the passionate owner of Bub and Grandma's Bread, who provides the most amazing bread to the most amazing restaurants in the amazing city of Los Angeles. Andy and I first met on my Food Network show and have been pals ever since. Enjoy his amazing story.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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nothing else is Reese's. It's time for breaking bread with Papa. Hey! Don't you know? Hey! It's how we go. Hey! It's time for breaking bread with.

with Papa. Hey, don't you know? Hey, it's also a show. Hey! Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I'm Tom Papa. Very excited today. This is a, this is a great one.

It's a great one. You see this beautiful bread around me? You see this beautiful baguette. You see these beautiful bulls. Oh, my God. All right. So Andy Caden is the owner-creating. of Bub and Grandmas in Los Angeles, if you're eating great bread at great restaurants,

there's a very good chance Andy and his team at Bub and Grandmas made it. I discovered him when I started my little bread journey and started baking and starting to pay attention, this was one of the quick names that came up. And he was so nice. He actually helped me out with a pilot for the Food Network. He let me film at his place at two of his separate bakeries. When I needed him, he would always show up. We also did a live event together.

And I just, it's so funny when you really love doing something, as I do with baking bread, as he does with baking bread, that you actually just have this shorthand and passion and just can talk. It's like talking to comedians. It's like I can talk comedy. Day and night with these people, I can talk bread, day and night with Ames. Andy. Such a successful story. All comes from the heart. It's so great. He's so great. And he's navigating his way through all of this COVID. And actually, despite all of this, is going to be

opening an ultimate sandwich shop, which has been his dream since he started this whole thing. But we'll get to that a little bit later. Get some bread, get some butter. I'm going beer today because it's I've just been reading a lot about monks drinking beer and eating bread so that's where I'm going to go today I hope Andy likes it

I hope you guys like this enjoy Andy Caden so good to see you yeah it's been a bit yes since we were on a stage somewhere down south of San Diego or something yeah the can do festival

or something like Caboo Cizoo Ciboo that was it yeah yeah That was cool. We stood on stage and we showed everybody a lot of bread. Yeah.

And then handed it to them from the stage. And they all started passing it around. Think about that now that we're in a pandemic. The people were literally just taking bread, biting it, passing it around. Not on par with our times. Closer to me. Should we restart? How's that?

Testing. Testing. We good? Cool. Thank you. We haven't seen each other in a bit. Quite some time. Yeah.

A couple of years, two years? Something like that. Yeah, we were at that festival. Yeah. Cabo. The Kazui. Yeah. Something like that.

San Diego. Rock. Food. Rock and two guys. Comedy. Bread from a stage down to a large group of people to eat. Yeah. We were just passing out all your bread to these people.

There was some other food guy before us that was doing like a... Way more. coordinated show overhead camera angles and cooking demos and all that stuff. Yeah, it was like

real food network kind of stuff with fire and stuff when we just rolled up and we're like, I'm like, this is my favorite bread guy. This is his bread.

We'll just stay here and you guys want to ask us some questions? Here's the show. Yeah, ours was good though. I thought it was good. Yeah. People seemed to laugh.

Yeah. They took the bread so they trusted us. Do you have? have that gear that you, I mean, what you've done and are doing is like really baller. I mean, to be supplying all this bread to all of these. Significantly less now, but, uh, yeah, what once was a larger distribution was was pretty nuts. Yeah. Um, and I'll come back to that, but the, the, um, is there like the temptation or do people like approach you? Like, you know, we can, we can, we can make you like a celebrity out of this stuff like we can you know we can do all the time all the time yeah

i mean like and it's my uh takes all of my restraint to not like explain to them why i don't want this life or i don't want to be on the food network or i don't want to be in this like google ad or whatever yeah i try really hard not to do that because it's not doesn't do anything other than like to try and you know soothe my ego right and insult them at the same time insults good people who are just trying to do their jobs? Like, what's the point of that? But I do have a lot of those feelings from my prior career, which was in advertising for 10 years.

Right. No wonder it brewed up a bunch of, you know, anger and, you know, remorse. Yeah. What is the, what's the, what's the biggest thing or like, what's the worst part of that life for you that you feel like you don't have to participate in? I mean, I think that just the whole. whole concept of advertising has skewed so far away from telling people about what the product is and why it's good. It's more like now it just feels exclusively like emotional manipulation and

trying to get people to believe that a Toyota vehicle is like aligned with their lifestyle and who they are as a person and that's just such horseshit. And it's like it's if you're if you need to try and appeal to people's emotional side to sell your car, then your car is probably a piece of garbage. But the problem is, is that it works. And because it works, people will keep doing it because it makes them money. Right. Which is like, you know, everything in the world right now.

It's just like, if it makes me money, it's the right thing to do. Yeah. No, that's not right. Yeah. I mean, don't you remember when we were kids, like a rock band like doing an ad or something was a sellout? Yeah, yeah. And everyone would literally be talking about it at school.

Like, what did they do? Yeah. I mean, that was a big deal. Yeah. Now it's the goal. Yeah. I mean, it's like the natural course. Even for smaller up-and-coming bands,

it's part of their, you know, business plan that they write or something that's part of being a band. It's not about expression anymore or just about, you know, getting what you've got inside out. Yeah. It's about some, like, career path and all this bullshit that basically negates it as art. It's not art anymore. Right, exactly. Yeah. So that seems.

pretty natural that bread baking is kind of the antithesis of that. It's funny because it wasn't intended. No, but it is the thing. I mean, there is such a basic thing to this. Yeah, even though the, I'm sure we'll talk about this, but even though the creation of the bakery was sort of an accident or not intentional because I wanted to open a sandwich out, that was the point of baking in the first place was just to figure out how bread worked. You know, the fact that bread stuck has to mean something. Like, I'm comfortable doing it. I'm comfortable selling, this thing that is pretty pure and pretty old and is stuck around for thousands of years. So there's something to that.

Oh, 100%. It's a catharsis for sure. Yeah. I know I'm bouncing around a lot, but I decided to break out beer today. A lot of times I drink wine when we're here. But I'm reading a book, Pillars the Earth by Ken Follett. It's about building a cathedral and it's all about monks. And in every page, it's bread and beer.

So I'm going to bring it. Andy some beer. That's perfect. I love more handy too. And these are some of your breads which are just amazing. Oh, thanks. So, I mean, the best breads. So, okay, so let's do this proper.

You were born where in New Jersey? Milburn, New Jersey. Well, Timberton, New Jersey. Summit. Okay, cool. Yeah. I have family around there, too. Oh, nice. Yeah. I was Jersey, born in bread. Oh, nice. And bread. And and, uh,

uh, uh, uh, uh, you start advertising on the East Coast or when you were out here? Yeah, New York. I went to college in Maine at Bates College, which is like high school two. It was like 1,400 people.

Right. Which is a mistake. It was an interesting experience. Yeah. I'm glad I had it. It was not traditional. Yeah. But immediately went to the city after that, which was what I was waiting for for all of high

school was to get to the city. And then I'm like, oh, I'm going to go to Maine for four years. Yeah. Because in Jersey, you're always, you're under the shadow of New York. And I hated suburban lifestyle. And like, I just wanted, you know, I lived walking distance to the train station. So all me and my friends would do once we were allowed to go do it. Yeah.

Was to just go into the city and walk around and try and try and get beer. Right. Go to arcade. Yeah, go to McDougal Street and get a fake ID. Go get it taken at a bar around the corner and then go buy another one and then do it again at a different bar. And, you know, once I got to New York, I had no idea what I was going to do. do. I was into music. I was into film. I thought maybe I go to film school or like, you know, writing was also around and I was doing newspaper in college and I just couldn't figure out what

to focus on. Yeah. Which I feel like is a pretty common. And yeah, especially from a small liberal art school. Yeah, yeah. They didn't really guide me in any direction. I was a philosophy major, which didn't help. Yeah. So, so when I got to New York, it was just sort of like a figure it out period. And I spent, I did a lot of different kinds of jobs. You were living in the city at the time? I was living in Brooklyn. I was living in Greenpoint. And this is like 2003 or 2004. Right. So before it was cool. Yeah. Before, when it was still, I could still pay $400 a month for, you know, my own room and an apartment. Amazing. Which was ridiculous. Yeah. It was still pretty cheap at that point. But yeah. Yeah. And I just started, I was bartending. I was working at restaurants. I worked for Marty Markowitz at the Brooklyn Borough Hall.

Like he's basically a Brooklyn Borough president's office and I was doing like photography for them and like weird. They let me put on a battle of the bands there. It's like just I don't know what that job was or what they were paying me for, but I went there every day. And then I got this job working for a guy who in retrospect would be someone who I would really despise now, who basically was doing a 12th. city, like,

like the creativity and advertising kind of speaking tour. And it just was a job. And I was like the assistant. I set up the projector and got his PowerPoint queued up and like high-fived him when he walked down the aisle and all this shit. He would go to like all of the advertising agencies and we went to like a couple different cities around the country. So it was cool.

It was like a cool job that paid me a very small amount of money, but I got to go fly to different cities. Yeah. Very cool. And when that was done, I was like, these guys are like kind of combining all the things that I'm interested in, like, music, film, art, like, writing. So I decided that's what I was going to focus on trying to get a job in as a writer in an advertising agency. Oh, very cool. And then most people go to grad school for that, but I just kind of figured out how to wriggle my way into a place.

It's seductive advertising. It is. Especially if you're creative and need to make money. Yeah. There's like, well, it's got, it's enough cool there that I can go. do it. Yeah, and you're like on set. You get to go to, you know, post houses. You get free lunches, you know, what, like, it's like, what else do you want from a corporate job? Yeah. They've got Einstein quotes painted on the wall so you can be inspired. Right. It's really incredible.

I remember I went and interviewed for a, uh, at an advertising agency when I was still in college. I drove in from New Jersey. And, uh, and I went to ride her down by like Princeton. Sure. And I always say, you know, your school's not that great when it's like, the description is down the road from Princeton. Down next to another school. Yeah, yeah. Adjacent to the more notable name. Yeah.

But it was great. But I went in and I drove all the way up in my little suit and went to an ad agency and sat there and was interviewed by a pretty belligerent guy in his little tiny office. Oh, yeah. And he's in there with his suspenders and he's just kind of like swollen, like being so chubby. And he's kind of being snoddy to me. like, well, what do you want to do? And is you going to be a counter-creative? And I was just like, in the middle of the interview, and part of it's college arrogance,

because I was probably a junior or senior. I was like, why do I? I was nervous going in. And I'm like, why would I be nervous? I don't want to get the job that makes me this guy. Yeah, that's the whole thing. Yeah. That was the whole revelation when I was there was like these guys who were in their early

50s who were like freelancing at the agents in L.A. when I was still working in advertising right when I moved here. And they're these guys who are significantly older and like second divorce and just fucking miserable and making tons of money. And the money means nothing. Nothing. They're just lonely and sad. And every weekend they're at the office and like, for what am I doing this for? Right.

Why am I following this path? This is horrible. Yeah. And it's not art. And it's not any of the things that I thought it was going to be. It was just the same commercial garbage that, you know, I saw on TV. So how many years were you? In 10.

In 10. Yeah. Yeah. It was a hard world to extract my cell phone from once I was in it. Because you're getting paid. And getting paid a lot. Yeah. And like, it was going well.

Yeah. You know, I was a creative director at the end. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, it was like going in the right direction and I would have made a lot more money. And I stuck around. And when I decided that I was going to bail, you know, a lot of people were like, what? Why?

Yeah. And just took a long time to. How did you come to that? that, like, at the end, when you're, like, about to make that decision, was it pretty gut-wrenching? It was literally gut-wrenching because I, you know, I'm an anxious person. It's just part of who I am, but I didn't know that. Like, I didn't know what was happening to me when I was, like, starting to not sleep well and have tightness in my chest and, like, go walk into work and 20 minutes later feel like I can't breathe and I got to go walk around the block. Like, that's what started happening.

Because I just kept ignoring the truth. I kept ignoring that, like, I hate this every moment of every day. I'm embarrassed to be this person. Wow. And I just, like, it became something that I couldn't ignore anymore. Yeah. And then it was really the long, drawn-out question of like, okay, I know I can't do this. Where do I go?

Right. Did you have someone to talk to at that time? Yeah, that was when I first started talking to a therapist. Oh, yeah. Yeah, which was huge. Yeah, it helped. I never thought to consider that. It was never.

Yeah. And honestly, when I was, what, like 20, 25, 26 at that point, I still had the really stupid, closed-minded idea that there had to be something wrong with me to go see a therapist. And that's for people who have problems. And it's like, yeah, every fucking person is full of problems. It's the defining characteristic of humanity. That's right.

Exactly. So that's, that, like, kind of made the decision for me. But getting out was like, you know, I still need to make money to live. Yeah. And I couldn't just be like, I'm opening a restaurant now. Like, that just doesn't work. I didn't have that kind of money to just be like, oh, I have the money to do it. I'm going to do it myself.

Are you baking at this point? I had just so that I quit my full-time job on that job where I needed to walk around the block. Like just a day when I walked in and was like, guys, I can't do this anymore. Did you just surprise yourself? Yes, 100%. Yeah. I knew that it was coming. I just had no plan yet.

But I just, I was like, I can't. I've got some money in my savings who'll get me through the next three months. Yeah. I'm out. See you. Oh, what a day. Yeah. Oh, walking out of that building must have been.

I very clearly remember the relief. Yeah. It was physical. Yeah. Sure. You float out of that office. Yeah. Oh, my God.

But at the same time, you know, we're opening a sandwich shop and some of those people who I'm still really good friends with who I worked with still work there and are happy. And I can't blame them for that either. You know, it's just different for different people. Right. What do you mean you were opening a sandwich shop? Oh, I'm opening a sandwich shop. Oh, you mean now?

Now. Oh, I thought you meant then. No, no. So, I mean, well, that was the goal. Right. In trying to figure out where to go, I was like, okay, the natural, like, pivot from here is to start writing for TV. Right. So I started, and that and, like, short stories and short, like, Jack Handy-esque kind of comedy, New Yorker-y things.

Yeah. And I started doing that. And I got one published in McSweeney's and felt really good about it. And then kind of lost. my interest in doing it anymore. Yeah. But I started writing on it for some sort of smaller TV stuff and funny or die stuff. Right.

And it just kind of felt the same. Like it kind of just felt like... Different office. Yeah, it kind of felt like different office. And it was all kind of going in the same direction. Like it was all things that I really liked were, you know, stuck in a room with 12 people who would change them all the time. Not that they didn't change them for the better often, but it was still just not

satisfying. Yeah. It wasn't coming from me. Yeah, not you. And I wrote a couple scripts and, like, did that kind of stuff and had meetings. Yeah. You know, all of that, which was just rough. As I'm sure you're familiar with it.

Just like those meetings are like you guys were just talking about. Yeah. It's like production is tough. It's hard. Yeah. And, you know, emotionally crushing at times. Yeah. Uncertain and compromising.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And when you're a sensitive person, which a lot of artists and writers are, that could be, you can really... Catastrophic. I'm sure for some. Yeah.

So are you starting to bake yet? Yeah. So as I was doing that and realizing that it wasn't going to be the rescue that I hoped it was where I could just kind of sort of keep doing what I was already doing. Like it's sort of the same system where you sit down and you think up ideas and you write them on paper and you tell people about them. Right. And that wasn't satisfying. So I started freelancing and just like getting gigs where I would lose my life for two weeks.

month on the job and then it was just experimenting. I started writing business plans for like a grocery store that had sandwiches. I saw a building in my neighborhood where I still live. I was like, that's going to be the building. It's going to be there. Meanwhile, it's not for sale and I don't know who owns it. I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah. So as part of like these business plans, I just didn't want to be like, and this is totally countering my 10 years prior. I was like, I just didn't want to come in and be fake. Like I knew that if I had the money and raised it, I could open a restaurant. But why would anybody want to listen to me?

I have never worked anywhere. I have no idea what I'm talking about. So I just started doing as much as I could. I started working in restaurants for free that would take me. And then, you know, cranking these business plans down to like what mattered most, which turned out to just be sandwiches. Right. There's so few great sandwiches in Los Angeles, which is so insane as a New Jersey boy.

Like, it doesn't make any sense. I know. I know. How many times you, still, you drive around and you're like, you're hungry and you got to somewhere else you got to be. And you're like, I just need a quick sandwich. Let me just roll into a place. And I'm sure I could get something fine like anywhere in New York City. And it's not. It doesn't exist. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. There's like five of them. Yeah, five. Something like that. And they spread around this to you, Jerry. Langers is one of the best places in the world. But it's just one place. Yeah. Like a lot of them. So, you know, it felt like something that was needed. and I started writing it and trying to find a little bit of money and looking at places to potentially rent with no idea how that works. And I'm really glad that it didn't work because I would have failed really quickly.

Right. And in that process, started baking bread because if I'm doing a sandwich up, I'm not going to maybe not going to bake all the bread in the restaurant. But I want to know how it works. And I want to know how to talk about it. So I committed at that point to baking every day. Like I was just like, okay, if this is from what I've read, bread about bread. If you're not doing it regularly, you can't really learn anything from it.

If you're not at least doing it every weekend, it's hard to know what to change to make it better. Yeah. So I just did it every day. Wow. So who was your first, what was your first? Was it tartine? Was it?

Honestly, it was, um, it was, um, Sullivan. So it was, uh, just the, you know, no need at the gates easiest New York Times recipe, kind of figuring out how it works. That's a yeast bread. And then kind of figuring out how sourdough works after that. Right. So you didn't have anyone in your life that knew anything about it or introduced you or anything. It was just curiosity. Great sandwich is great bread.

Yeah, got to be. It's key. Right. And it also was just kind of like, okay, so I've traveled around L.A. trying to find the good places. And a lot of them are really close. But the thing that makes them suck is that the bread is garbage. So if the bread is garbage at all of the notable sandwich shops in Los Angeles, there may not be a person there waiting who's making. the good bread already, you know?

So maybe I'm going to have to do this myself. Right. That was the logic. I take such Jersey pride in this story. Really? Because Jersey... It hurts. There's a great sandwich on every corner.

And they're great bread everywhere. And it's like... Run by great people with great stories and like, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we're out here in the wild and it's like... It's rough. Amazing tacos. Oh, unbelievable.

Very thankful for that because that wasn't part of, you know, New Jersey existence. No, exactly. That was our education. was all that part of it. But man, being out here, like, thinking, like, what happened? Right, exactly. Because I know that everybody wants it also just because it's a very transplant-oriented spot.

Like, there's tons of people from the East Coast here that are like, we're all the sandwiches. And no one's, or not a lot of people have, like, rectified that. Yeah. Still feels like 10 years later, there's a market gap. Yeah. So you start off doing the no-need bread, which kind of like popped. Like, the New York Times put those articles out and it was like. It was a big deal.

It was a big deal. Everybody was kind of getting into it. Yeah, Bitman, I think. That was a Mark Bitman thing. Right, right. And did you get into it pretty quickly? Yeah. I mean, it's just sort of my nature.

Like, this could have been woodworking or like anything that I'm just like, you know, that, you know, I can design a path for my future from. I'm just going to be like, okay, this is the thing. I've got to do it. And I've got to do it right. Yeah. So it just was full on. And I would, I remember, you know, going to BBAH or BBD or, or,

whatever, one of them, you know, I would wake up at four in the morning. I would bake the bread, and then I would look at, you know, I would analyze how it worked and go into the agency to work for the day and give everybody all the bread. And that's kind of what was the system for a while until, you know, I was getting really close to a lease with this really crappy space near my house for the sandwich shop. And it would have been a disaster because I was signing, like a one-year lease with a one-year option, which is like, you know, basically after the first year, they can raise the rent as much as they would have just killed me. Yeah, killed you.

You want long leases for restaurant spaces. Right. Especially if you're successful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This guy's making money. Yeah, or you won't be really quickly. Yeah. So that fell through in the same week that that deal fell through and I was heartbroken and crushed

and, and I'm, you know, just shows you that sometimes when you're heartbroken and crushed, it's like for, it's a good thing. Yeah. A little gift. there's a restaurant in Atwater Village in L.A. called Dune. That's like a sort of Persian Middle Eastern-style falafel place that also does some sandwiches. And my friend worked there and I was hemorrhaging bread. So I just gave bread to all of my friends all the time.

And it was actually this Chibada that he gave to the owner and was like, this is better than the stuff we're getting. You should use this. And he called me out of the blue and was just like, hey, I need like 25 small Chibata sandwich rolls a day. can you do that? Wow. And I was like, oh, well, I'm opening a restaurant, but I guess I could do this, you know, to hone my chops and get us to a position where, you know, maybe we're doing some wholesale out of this sandwich shop, but also baking bread.

And this, you know, helps me to practice. But at the time you're baking this bread at home. Yeah. This is in your... It's a nightmare. An apartment, a house? Yeah, a house, small, tiny, 500 square foot house. A little oven?

Yeah, like a crappy hot point, home depot oven. It turned out to be great. Yeah, yeah. As good as one could be, it doesn't break. But, you know, for Chabada, it's not like I can bake it in a cast iron pot like you would for a sourdough or a bool. Yeah. You have to bake it out in the open, which means I had to, like, kit out the whole oven and, like, set up two racks and covered them with ceramic tiles and had two, you know, 12-inch cast iron pans on the ground with truck chains in them that I would pour boiling water on while I had. Yeah, and I would scald my arm all the time.

And I, at one time, I started spraying the tiles down just to get some more steam from underneath. And I sprayed the light bulb and it exploded all over the bread and all over myself and was like really gnarly and getting the, I had to use a potato to get the light bulb out and like all this. It's just endless issues. And how long are you, had you been baking the Chabada at this point? Like when they... Still very new. Like, it was, the shapes were like all.

over the place and like I still didn't really know I was just sort of following a recipe at that point I hadn't even like made it my own that that much yet I definitely put in like 20% whole grain flour which the recipe doesn't have which has to change in hydration and all that stuff but um yeah it was still very new oh no no no like three months three months yeah just three months oh yeah holy cow you really did dive in yeah I mean if you're doing that to the if you're doing that to the oven at three months oh yeah like that's it's full on you're full on yeah yeah it's It was total, I mean, it's basically the way it's been for the last six years that we've done this. I'm just in the fire.

Right. Just in the fire dancing, like trying to get this shit to work. Yeah. And there's catastrophes every other day. Every other day. It's ridiculous. Anyone who owns a restaurant or, you know, especially a bakery, it's just ridiculous. It's amazing.

And I don't want to jump the story, but when I was talking with Ken Forkish up in Portland, and he was describing it. too. And he was, it's like that you're, you get into it because of the baking, but then you're also a plumber. You're also a guy that fixes ovens. You're also a manager of people. You're like, you're like tons of other jobs that you're not even thinking about when you're making your first shabbata. I wasn't thinking about anything. It's like, oh, this bread is good. I'm going to keep making it. Like, that was the extent. And now it's just like this monstrosity. So what was the, so when you first start baking it, I mean, you were three months in, I mean,

because I did the same thing. where I just got hooked on it, like second loaf. You're like, what did that do to you? Like when you first, and was it the Chabata or was it the bull? Honestly, the first bread that I was working on intently after doing some no-need stuff out of the gates and graduating to Forkish, you know, flour, water, salt, yeast, and then eventually tartine, I was just working on this, which there isn't, like, doing Chibata properly requires equipment that no home kitchen has.

Like, you need a kush, which is like this linen cloth, and you need a, transfer peel and you need all this other stuff that makes it much more complicated than the way that we've hacked together making sourdough bread at home. Right. You can cast iron pot and like all that stuff is really successful. It works really well. Chabata's a whole other nightmare. It's a, yeah. And it's, but it's also the sandwich bread. Oh, it's so good. It's so fluffy and light inside and you can, you can kind of tailor the crust to how you, how long you bake it. Yeah. It's also very, it's a yeasted bread, so it's very, you know, forgiving if you fuck up. Right. Um, it's, Yeah, I loved it and I thought that that's what we would do.

I was trying to, initially, to do it where I could make it work without the flour on top. Because I hate when you bite into a sandwich and there's flour on the exterior of the bread and it makes, it like numbs your lip. Right. So I was trying to like be an innovator three months into bread baking at all to like figure out how to do it without the flour. But you never got there and had to do it traditionally and it's still. Why does the flour end up on it? Because when you're transferring it's, it's proofs upside down. So it's proofing in.

this linen cloth that you then flip over onto a board and then slide it onto the right so when it's upside down you need to put basically the the linen cloth is just filled holding flour so nothing sticks to it right but you can still manipulate what's on top of it so it won't stick so this is the flower from the kush got it yeah oh man the transfers whenever you say transfer i just get so nervous because it's like really because like i've gotten really good at like yeah like you know i put it the refrigerator so it gets a little harder and easier to manipulate and drop into the Dutch oven. Oh yeah. And, you know, Forkish

has one recipe where it's like with Poolish and you just it's an hour of proofing at the end and you just put it right in the Dutch oven and it's like it's so like forget it's hard. Yeah, so any kind of like moving it from the thing to the thing it's where you panic. Yeah, I mean

it's where you drop it on the floor. You know, like which happened so many times all the time. Yeah. I guess too are the same way. Oh God, the baguettes. Did you, so, okay, so I want to get to the baguettes because that's been the bane of my existence. Oh, it's so impossible at home. Impossible. So your buddy says, okay, so if you can get me these roles. Yeah. The boss called me out of the blue. He was named Scott, one of the nicest people in the universe and remains our account today. And, you know, when he asked me, I was just excited that someone

liked my stuff. I didn't really think about it that much. Yeah. And Jed, my friend who connected us didn't really let me know that this was a possibility. I just got the call. So I just said yes. And I didn't realize that that's like the end of my life because it's literally the end of your life. Seven days a week. Yeah. You need the bread. It never stops. Right. And I have to be on time. I can't be late. I can't. And it's just me. There's no one to help me. I have to be there. You know. And what time's delivery? So I think if I remember, I would wake up before. I remember that, which in, in, in, looking at things now is, you know, is late.

It's like sleeping in. Not that I'm on the floor anymore, but... So I would wake up before, I would, you know, basically for Chabada, it's bulk-retarded. So I would mix the dough the day before and leave it in the fridge for 24 hours, basically. Yeah. Or it's more like 18 hours. And then flip it out onto my, you know, sort of, it's this big.

This is my work surface is like two feet by three feet. And divide it into shapes and then let it roof in the kush for like, you know, I think it was two hours at that point, which was nice because then you can make breakfast. Right. The luxuries of early bread bakeries where you had breaks. Yeah. And then would bake it on, directly on the ceramic tiles that I bought from Home Depot and put in my, in the oven, pour the steam in, close it up, bake for 20 minutes.

Right. And then shower, get ready to go to work, pack up my bag. And then drive in a, you know, in a bus tub, drive the bread over to Dune, pick up a coffee from across the street or next door and then drive to the studio and work for like 12 hours. Oh my God. It was very, very gnarly. And at the time, I mean, how many, how many rolls? It was like 25, something like that. So 25, so what, 50 dollars? Uh, no, it's like 30. $30. 30? That's so much work. Yeah, it was so much work. It was insane. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing about, you know, go ahead. You know, go ahead. It's just the thing about

our bakery and the growth of our bakery that's been so insane is that most people would be like, I'm going to open a bakery, I'm going to raise half a million dollars and I'm going to put it in a building and we're going to start from there. Right. Or it's like, I didn't know what I was going to do. Right. So I just kind of had to, you know, force it through these, you know, and luckily I had a job. Uh-huh. So I could, you know, fund my project, which was losing money, you know, it wasn't losing money. It was making money, but it was making $30 a day. Yeah. It's not enough to, to, you know, cover everything. It's not enough to cover my electric bill in my house for the month. It doesn't make

any sense. And you haven't even factored in all of the stuff you did to the oven and the supplies. Crazy. I hadn't written a business plan for a bakery at that point. It just wasn't in the cards. You're just doing it. This is fine. I'll just get some reps before I open in like three months. And it just totally changed course after that. God.

So where are you getting your flour at this point? At that point, there were a couple different ways to do it. I was buying Central Milling ABC from there was Ellie Breadbakers which was like a

kind of like a meetup group or something like that and then once a month they had a thing where you could order 50 pound bags from Central Milling they would drop it off there and you go pick it up

so that was really helpful at the beginning because there's nowhere to get you know I would have to go to the supermarket and buy like 45 pound bags of King Arthur

which was not efficient and I did do that for a while until I figured this out out. And I was using that for a while for all the white flour. And then always out of the gates, Gristenthol was who I used for all of the whole grain flour. And I have not been over. I've never been to Gristenthal. Oh, yeah. And everybody that I love and respect is like grist and tall. Yeah. I just get from Central Milling and get it sent in. But, and I've gone down to juistow. Yep. But I've never been to

Gristenthal. Yeah, gristent toll is pretty, pretty fantastic. and basically set the tone for who we were as a bread bakery out of the gates because Nan, Kohler is the owner, is, you know, not only a huge proponent of like smarter food systems, like, you know, smaller agricultural relationships. Yeah. Between Miller, farmer and farmer Miller baker. Yeah. But also just like understands quality and, you know, would not stand if the, stand for if the quality was any less than her expectations.

and we were the beneficiaries of how seriously she took all of this. Right. Where does she start? Like, where does that start? For her? That was not, yeah, because that was not a common thing, like, that we needed to think that deeply about the ingredients and that they came from this region and that this is what we're going to.

Sure. Like, like, where does that? I mean, I think it's, it all started, you know, maybe in the last 10 years. I mean, I'm sure it was, you know, Alice Waters and, like, all that kind of stuff has been around. but it really became, it hit the mainstream relatively recently, like the last 15 years, I would say. Yeah.

The people figured out, like, maybe how you could make a business out of it. Yeah. Right. It unfortunately just means you have to have a premium product, which I don't think that you should have to, because if you're buying that stuff from NAN or from other, even from Central Milling, it's a premium flower. You have to pay more for it because it's being done at a smaller scale,

which seems to, like, be sort of counterintuitive, but it's something that's breaking right now. Right. It's slow because the powerful people want to keep things as they are so they can continue making money. Right. But the smaller,

more localized food systems are the ones that are being employed by all of the best restaurants and all the best food businesses now. Yeah. And I think the giant corporations are realizing that they may be in trouble over time. They are certainly in trouble over time

because their product is significantly less it's just crappier. It's just not as good. It's just not as good. It's not as good. It's not made with caring. It's made by machines. And that will always produce something that, you know, if you feel the hand of the person who makes the product.

Right. From the bread to the, to, you know, the farmer to the miller to, and that's just in the bread world. Yeah. It makes it better. It just, you know, you may not even notice it, but you can taste it. You can feel it like it's in there. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's getting, the train is right.

rolling a little bit faster now for reconnecting these relationships that existed for thousands of years prior to America and money and, you know, just like. Well, that's the thing. It's the way that it was always done. Yeah. And then these, they kind of hijacked everything. Yeah. And it's not only, and not only just the system.

It was like, that I think was one of the things that turned me on about baking my own bread in the beginning was like, oh. I haven't really eaten real bread in my life. Period. Yeah. I mean, it's true. I didn't know. I thought I was doing the right thing by buying the cool thing with the label that look kind of country on it and stuff. And I thought I was doing it. It's like, these guys are unique.

It's got religious stuff on the, or whatever, Ezekiel or Dave's Killer Bread or all that stuff. Yeah. Those are made by gigantic corporations that are trying to make you think that it's a small bakery. Yet it's able to sit on a grocery store shelf for two weeks without turning green. and no one bats an eye. Yeah. It's funny. I mean,

it's not funny, but it's really clear that it goes back to the same distaste that you had for being sold. Yeah. So that stuff in advertising. Yeah, 100%.

It's the same thing. It's the exact same thing. That falseness. Yeah. It's why when growing a business now, that's, I don't know how, I guess it's large to me.

Yeah. It just becomes all the more important to not, it's just so easy for companies to hide things or just not talk about. them or refused it's same thing with politics too it's just like all dodging and all tactical yeah if you have to do that at all in your life in any way you're full of shit yeah and and that is wrong yeah for both for yourself yeah and for the people that you're lying to right

and that's a that's America and now the world yeah right that's so gross it is and there's like but there's this kind of natural rebellion against it. And what was seen as, what was seen as kind of like hippie, uh, alts, weirdo. precious. Yeah.

It was, was always kind of there, but it was only like it at Grateful Dead shows or something. Yeah, yeah. Someone's handings out something in the parking lot. Yeah. It was like,

oh, they were little weirdos. Yeah. But now it's kind of like settling in. And I, I guess, I mean, I would like to think that it's because people are sensing the falseness and see it as a new way,

but there's got to be also a business component where people feel like they can make money and have a business that's going to feed them. Yeah, I mean, like the practicality of that has to exist. Yeah, you can see it bleeding over into the other side too, where the giant corporations are buying up smaller businesses to try and appear as though they are that way, are thinking that way now, but it's really just a strategy for mitigating the last. loss of business for their big, you know, big brands. It's like beer.

Like, like, oh, yeah. Right. I mean, all of the, they had this microbrewer revolution in the States. Yeah. Yeah. And now you're like, every time you pick one up, you're like, am I, is this really a guy in Vermont? Or is this, you know, in Bev or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, um, you know, it's disgusting. Yeah, it is. It's disgusting. I know. But then you find, but, but you're in it and you're, you're creating it. Yeah.

at that level and you're just cranking out this stuff. Even at that level, where it was just 25 of these little square, like four by four, you know, turbot rolls, it was just some, with the fact that someone liked that pure thing that I was making was

a thousand times more rewarding than any, like, spot that I made that won an award or any promotion or any raise or any, it's just like, yeah, 30 bucks a day for this thing that I made with my hands. Yeah. It's just like,

changed everything. That's amazing. It started to unravel all of my questions about myself and who I was. Right, right. So how quickly do you go from, did they start asking for more?

No, they're still getting the same amount, which is incredible. For real? It's like 28 a day, plus they get sourdough, and feccia and other stuff that we now make. But at that point, I was just making Chibada.

Wow. And I think that the thing that kind of changed everything, which is why I'm endlessly thankful, you know, for Scott and who owns Dune, and just how kind he's always been. Yeah. Is that he didn't just,

and he wasn't doing this for the previous baker he was using and doesn't do it for other companies. I think he does for some, but for some odd reason took it upon himself to, you know, their menu is written right when you walk in on a mirror to the left. And they just wrote Bubbing Grandma's Jabata.

They sold it on its own. It was on there, this beet sandwich that they make that was really delicious and a couple other things. And they wrote our name, which I came up with on the phone with him. Oh, really? Not in, you know, like a,

a, you know, figuring it out session just in like, oh, I got to come over the name of this. How about my two grandmas? They have nothing to do with my food interest, but they are good people who have contributed to who I am and what I believe. And that's, it just came up on the fly. But he wrote it on the mirror.

And then when people were like, this bread is great, they would ask him where they could get it and there was nowhere to get it. Right. It's Bob and Grandma, but we're the only customer. Yeah, so it's a mysterious kind of thing. That's the coolest.

So it didn't, it wasn't, something I would ever think to do myself and be like, hey, could you put our name on your menu? It would really help us out. That's a really gross thing to ask. But he just did it. The other cool thing, the other cool thing, which could be a move, which you do see people do, is they create the illusion like it's hard to get. Right? Like, that's a marketing thing of like, no, there's a line. Yeah. Because only 10 people are getting these burgers. Right. The convenient part is that it was... It just happened. It was hard to get, because I couldn't do it anymore.

It was, it was hard. I got to get to work. It's not because it's like some special thing. It's just because it's a guy who's got a job. Like, he's just got to go do it. And a little oven.

Yeah. So I think at that time, even while we were selling that, I realized like, okay, even if this, even if I still am going to open a sandwich shop, like I've got this thing that's happening now.

I should be, I need to save like every dollar that I make. Uh-huh. Because not only am I like, you know, have no time to live because I'm baking in the morning and working until 11 and then coming home and sleeping for three hours. Right. I just, there's something like either the sandwich shop or something else, a bakery or whatever is, could be in the cards and I need to be prepared to do that myself. Ah, right. So right. Yeah. So it got kind of, I got kind of serious about it at that point.

And even when I was just doing 30 of these little tiny loaves, it became clear that there's a business in this. Like, this is, people are interested. I'm getting some emails here and there. And I started doing bread for a couple places. I can't remember who came next. It was like, Cafe Stella or something like that in Silver Lake.

And wax paper was pretty early, which is one of the few good sandwich shops in L.A., which is in Frogtown now, like, a couple blocks from where our bakery is. Oh, yeah? I've never been there. Oh, it's good spot. Yeah, really good.

And the nicest people you'll ever meet in your life around that place. Oh, cool. Peter and Lauren. incredible humans. But yeah, it started getting real. And once I got down 30, I was like, I'm doing four bakes every morning because I can only fit like 16 in the oven. Yeah.

And you're like, this is not sustainable. Four bakes at what, like 20 minutes? 25 minutes, something like that. I didn't have room to put the bread anywhere after it came out. My house is just really, really tiny. It's the same house I live in now. Were you living alone? At that point, at that point, no, I was not.

I was not. But then shortly thereafter, yes, I was. Such are the ups and downs of the bread bakery business. Yeah. It is a funny thing how it starts to slowly take over the house. All of a sudden there's like just big things of flour and all your equipment and all your bins. Yeah, it's like you're a kitchen. You're like a professional kitchen in the midst of other people's stuff.

You're right? It's not. Who didn't sign up for this? Luckily, that wasn't the thing that. ended that relationship. But it was, you know, it was definitely a stressful time as it's been since. Yeah. Because of the lifestyle.

So what time, at what point do you realize, like, I can't do this at home? Yeah. Yeah, very, very quickly, like probably within another two months or something like that. Oh, yeah. Because I was doing Stella and I think I was doing maybe wax paper or something else at that point. Wow. And there was a pizza place in Highland Park that a couple of friends of mine had opened called

town pizza. It's still, still there on, on York. And, uh, they, were only open at night. So I would go, I would mix the dough at my house, which is 100 steps up from the road. Right. And then carry bins of dough up and down my steps to the car, drive the dough up to town pizza, shape it there, bake it there in a dry as fuck pizza oven, which has no moisture and is

terrible for everything other than pizza and would like try and figure out ways to engineer steam in there. I was just a nightmare. But I could do more. It was fine. It was servable. It wasn't perfect. Right.

Um, and they were friends of yours. They'd like to come in there. They didn't even charge me any money. Oh, wow. It was just like the nicest thing that anybody could do. Yeah. Um, and then eventually I would, I was making bread and I would just leave them there and leave them bread and that was my payment for their space.

But it only lasted like two months or three months. Uh-huh. Um, and what only lasted them? My tenure there. Like I had to find more space. Yeah. Um, and at that time, I had been in contact with Zach Hall from Clark Street. I don't know if you've ever met him before.

I haven't, um, nice guy. And he, he's like probably a year. year and a half ahead of me in terms of growth and all that stuff at that point. And he had a space in Grand Central Market where he was selling his bread and was in the process of moving his bakery out of Grand Central Market while still, excuse me, selling retail there. So he didn't need to use his oven and mixer in the tiny space in Grand Central Market. So I rented the space from him and used his mixer and steam injection oven for the first time, which was revolutionary. Wow, man, that must have been so great. Oh, it was like the greatest feeling.

in the world because it just immediately improves your bread and makes it look amazing. Yeah. It's a whole other universe. There's just so far you can go without that. Yeah. I mean, you can do Maurizio and make your bread incredible and just doing it at home with what you've got. Right.

And still produce beautiful things. But if you want to go to that next level, it's got to involve a professional oven. Yeah. I was like really excited to use that. So I was only there also for like two or three months. And then it was just getting realer and real. in Reeler. Like I think at that point I probably had five or six accounts and was making, you know,

like a thousand dollars a month or like something like that. And it was going going well. And I kind of got to the point where I was still freelancing. I was still doing gigs here and there, but was focusing more and more on growing the bread business. And it became apparent that I think this is the business. Yeah. At that point was when I was like, oh, this is working.

Right. People want this. I don't know why, but people are really interested in this. I'm just going to go with it. Let's try. And then when I get to the other side of this, when, you know, I can breathe again, I'll open the shop and we'll have bread ready to go. Right.

And it didn't happen like that. Yeah, yeah. Still thinking about the sandwich shop. Yeah. Since then, always. Yeah, always. So at a certain point, I, you know, it was awkward just by nature because I'm making my bread behind him, like four feet behind him

while he's selling his bread in front. Yeah, that is weird. And, you know, he's like eating a competitor, which was very nice of him to do in the first place. And it turned out, you know, like we are still competitors. Yeah. If you want to call it that. Yeah, but I mean, he's got a really good reputation.

Yeah, yeah. supplies a lot of bread. Yeah. But it's like one of the, it's like, you know, the Lodge and us and Clark Street are kind of the second wave. Right. L.A. kind of bread baker. reason. Now there's other ones coming up too that are cool.

Right. But it's like, it was very generous of him to not only do that, but also to help me figure out what I was doing at times. Yeah. Because I didn't know how any of that equipment worked or how to adjust things or, you know, so he was very helpful in that limited time that I was there. Yeah. But then I needed to make a real move and set up my own spot. Yeah. So I bought his oven and mixer and moved it on a flatbed truck that I rented from like a regular tow truck company. strapped down. Oh, my God. I have a picture of it and pulling out of Grand Central Market with the

oven totally open and mixer strapped down to the back of this flapbread. He pulls out onto, what is that, Hill Street and makes a right to go towards where the bakery ended up being the first bakery. It just runs right over the curb. And I'm behind him in my

truck and watch the whole oven that I just paid like $10,000 for. Like, leave the ground. It's on wheels. And then slam back down and could have just completely gone over. You're screaming in your car. This is one of the many situations in growing the bakery where you're like, I just have to hack together something.

I'm not going to pay insurance to get this oven covered if it falls off. We've just got to call a tow truck company and figure out how to do this. I just made it work and got it to this 270 square foot closet. Is that where I met you? No, that's the small space. Oh, that's the second space. That's three times the size of the space that I moved in that same building. So I started in the closet that could just basically fit the oven, the mixer, one rack to take the bread out on and a table.

And it had a three comp sink in there. And that was it. And it's in one of these kitchens that is so awesome where it's like a big warehouse that's converted into 19 private kitchens for upstart food businesses to kind of like pay relatively reduced rent. and very short commitment to try and develop their product and then they can maybe graduate to it's like a proof of concept. A real space. Oh, what a cool, that's great.

It was awesome, yeah. And that was called Fishburne Kitchens in City Terrace. Right. And we were there for, so I was in that space probably for six months until I was like, okay, we've got an employee or two,

we've got a driver or two, and we're doing like a dozen accounts or something like that. And I can pay these people and I can pay myself. And it's working. And I was still freelancing at that point, even at that point. Wow.

Because it wasn't, it was paying me some money, but it wasn't paying enough for me to, like, cover my rent and stuff like that. Right. Subsidizing my way of life, which was really insane to think that that was possible. Yeah. Especially with just 12 accounts, which is still extraordinarily difficult. Yeah. But then we moved into the space that we met at, which was 600 square feet in that same building. That was 600 square feet.

Yeah, it doesn't feel like, yeah. Because once there's stuff in there. Yeah. There's nowhere to move. Yeah. But it was a cool spot. Like, it was enough to like. Yeah, we got stuff done in there.

Yeah. Like, yeah. At the end, I think I was in there for another year. Uh-huh. And at the end, it was, we were doing things that I was not comfortable with in terms of, like, spilling out into the hallway. Right. Right. Um, just really too many people in a small space, incredibly hot.

Yeah. The flower and all that stuff flying all over the place was lodged everywhere. Yeah. Like, you know, it's just the regular kitchen stuff where if your space isn't suited for your project, it just starts really falling apart. And there's mold and you have to go that. And like, just constant stuff. Yeah. It's happening. It's like a New York apartment. It's just like a New York apartment. Nobody should live in that small an apartment. Yeah. You're like, if you move one thing, the whole place is chaos. And it was chaos there at the end. So we went from, say, 12 accounts when we moved in there and it was just sort of me. And right at that point, we'd try and. And right at that point, we'd try and. We transitioned from our first head baker, Kevin Morton, who's one of the best people in the world and now owns Village Bread, which is out in Cali Mesa off the 10, which if anybody's, you know, from L.A. is driving to Palm Springs or anywhere out east must stop at. It's incredible. And him and his wife, Amanda, are some of the best people in the world. We transitioned to Chris Lear, who's our current head baker, who is my friend from when I lived in Boston for moving to L.A. He was a musician who owned a bike shop while I was working at an ad agency there, and we've just,

became friends through music and mutual friends. Right. And when I moved to L.A., he went to pastry school for two years. Oh. And then moved here and immediately got a job at Moza, because he's a genius. Right. For his first job ever.

Jeez. And then was it tasting kitchen in Venice where he became the head pastry chef there and, you know, a year and a half. Whoa. And the timing just worked out really nicely that when Kevin was going to open his place, Chris was like done and ready to come work,

so we've been working together ever since. And that was a huge thing. It's like, I'm working with my friend. I can listen to jazz all the time. Yeah. Like, you know, it was really made everything incredible. And he's brilliant.

And he knows stuff from like a real, from real schools. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he had about as much, you know, professional experience at that point as I did. Maybe an extra year on me. Yeah. But he was such a brilliant cook and a brilliant thinker about food. Yeah. That it immediately like wildly improved what we were doing.

We had tons of creative opportunities to create our whole menu of products that we were making of breads. And we went from like doing, I don't know, Chabata and maybe three different sourdough loaves to doing like a dozen different things like Fecca. And then we were making Barbary for, for the gals of Kismet and all this other unique things that we kind of put our brains to and made it really exciting.

That's so great. Oh, that's so cool. And that's when it really exploded. Oh, to be with your friend listening to the music that you love and doing that thing, that's like. It was really, it was a really cool time for a very short period of time. and then it became insane. Right, because it blew up.

It just went bonkers. Right. And when we were reaching the end of that time in that building, when I was like freaking out trying to find us somewhere to go, still with the intention of opening it as a sandwich shop with a bakery attached.

Yeah. And like five different deals falling through at the last minute and like really kind of garbage people doing garbage things to us. Right at the last minute, we had about 48, 50 accounts. We're like spilling out into the hallway every day.

I kind of felt like it was getting to a dangerous point. And we had cut off accounts that had a waitlist of another 50 accounts at that point. I found this space on Riverside Drive kind of right on the border of Frogtown and Silver Lake. That was formerly sweet Lady Jane's bakery. They were like a cake company. Yeah. It smelled really sweet and gross in there when we first moved in. Yeah.

And found this 60. 200 square foot space. So we went from 600 square feet to 6,200 square feet. It was two floors. Right. Had its own dedicated parking lot and all of this stuff. That's where I came in, that's shoot for the food network thing. Right, right, right. That was a great space. It still is our space, which I'm so cool. I'm extraordinarily thankful for it because it's just a really unique size. Yeah. It's like a transitional size. You normally go from like a 1,200 square foot space to like a 25,000 square foot space, whatever, if that's the traditional

kind of course for a bakery's growth. Yeah. But 6200 is really unique. And we only needed about, I don't know, 15% of that out of the gates. And, you know, rented out the downstairs and were really overwhelmed by how large it was. But it was like we just had to hustle to add on some of those accounts so we could cover our rent. And we did that pretty quickly. But it just, once we were in there and the walls had opened up, it just really kind of went, like, that was the hardest.

Other than COVID, that was the hardest time we ever had because when you're growing constantly, there's no like, you know, it's not step up. It's just straight shot vertical. Right. You, you're, the whole thing with bakery stuff is like developing systems. It's the same thing for like, if you're doing the same thing over and over again, Yeah. The only way you can improve is to just modify your systems over time to do the same thing better or more efficiently.

Right. But if you're constantly scaling up, there's no time to stop and be like, how do we improve this product that we're not happy with while we're scaling? Right. Because you just got to catch up to scale. And there were times where we were just like getting pulled in both directions and trying to figure it out. Yeah.

And we always got there, but it was just so tough. Yeah. And there were some people in the bakery that didn't work out out of the gates when we were over there that made things really. complicated. We haven't had that problem since, which is incredible. Yeah, that's got to be hard, because that is such hard work. It's hard because also I'm not a yes chef kind of person, either as Chris. You don't expect that kind of militaristic order in the bakery. It's more like we expect the people to come on board to share the same enthusiasm for what we're doing as we do

and thus push themselves to do better every day and learn more and really take pride in what they're putting out. Yeah, they're invested. Yeah, if that's not their goal, if their goal is to be famous or get likes or look cool or that shit, then it's not going to work out. Like, it's not going to work out for us. Right. That's just not, it'll be constantly pulling and, and it just won't ever work out. Yeah, you don't have time for that. No, no. You've got to go to get all this bread out there. Especially as like, you know, it's a sensitive, hyper sensitive person. Yeah. When I can't get through to people, not in that I need them to be the way that I need them to be. Yeah. But just in like if I can't communicate in a way where we understand each other, it just drives me crazy

and I can't sleep. Right. No, of course. What are they thinking? You don't need all that stuff. Yeah. Are they, are they upset? Yeah.

Or are they trying to undercut my authority or undercut my, like, and doing it in a really tactical gross way. Like that, that, that were, those were things that we had to deal with kind of early on. Yeah. And once that changed and once that era was over, right. it's just been like unbelievable. Yeah. We have the best human beings, which is why COVID was so intense,

because I feel extraordinary responsibility for these people's lives. They've given themselves in a way to me and my idea. How much of a reduction during COVID, yeah. So it was like the second week of March or something like that, the NBA shutting down in Tom Hanks. Yeah. That seemed to be the week. Yeah, March 11th, when Woody got it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the, yeah, that is the, you know, that's Jesus. Yeah, that's the benchmark. Right. That, that week, um, we went kind of from 140 restaurants across town to 40 in like five days. Wow. And, you know, that, that 40 accounts with also all reduced. So it's more like we went from 140 accounts and they're, you know, coordinating revenue that they generated to like, you know, 25% of what we were doing.

Wow. which obviously has repercussions across the board. Sure. And we all had to just sit there and like sit in a room and figure out what to do. Right. Do we shut down? Do we keep going? What's the right thing to do?

What's the ethical thing to do? Like all of that. Those conversations were really fucking intense. Yeah. And the only reason why we survived is because the people, my managers, the people who make the decisions with me. Yeah.

Are brilliant and empathetic and dug in and gave everything that they had. to figuring out how to be safe while also taking care of all of our people. Yeah. Because food people are wildly underpaid for their efforts. And unfortunately, there are very few options for how to rectify that. Just paying your staff more, which I think is a lot of the kind of gut reactions you see from people on Instagram or in articles or whatever, means that your prices have to go up. Unless you're like a corporate company and the CEO is making 250K a year and you should really make a third of that.

Then that's something really changed. But if everyone's being paid fairly in the management sphere or ethically in the management sphere, then even if you're paying people well for a food role, which is like somewhere between 16 and 18 an hour. That's not going to work if you cut their hours to, you know, 30% of that. they're not going to be able to live. And of course, there was no movement with the government in towards of support for those types of folks. And there still really hasn't been other than unemployment, which we kind of... I saw you had posted it at one point. Yeah.

Some explaining that. Yeah. That was the first time I had actually wrap my head around that. Oh, it was extremely difficult. Yeah. And remains extremely difficult. Yeah. You know, where are you at now?

how many of the counts are back? So now, well, we had an outbreak. So we kind of went back up a bit over the course of like, say, two months of like March, April, beginning of May. Yeah. And then in June, we had an outbreak. Someone got sick. Someone got sick. And then in the end, nine people got sick.

Whoa. Out of how many? Out of 43. Wow. You're 43? Yeah. Some of those are drivers which don't really interact with the bakery. Yeah.

Once this all started, we just, the drivers just stay outside but it was the same the outbreak happened the same week that the protests started happening

and Garcetti opened the city right right so I think one spilled into the other and then affected a couple I think of our bakers at the same time and then that's what's sort of spread it around

some of it didn't make any sense some of it was like not connected right Right. Right. So there must have just been like a crashing wave over all of Los Angeles. Yeah. It felt like it. Yeah, it did. We're still digging out of it now. 100%. Yeah. So you shut down? So we shut down immediately and then had to figure out what to do. The tricky part too was that during our off hours. So we kind of close at 3 p.m. every day. We're like 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. We were doing our bakery expansion construction because after that growth that we were talking about. needed to make it so that we could use the downstairs, which is like another 2,500 square feet of totally usable space, but it's separated by a staircase that needs to, you know,

you've got thousands of pounds of dough that needs to move. So we had to put in an elevator and, like, you know, really work on the floor downstairs to make it functional and move on the mixers down there. And it was just not moving at a good clip because we were in the space. Right. Normally you would do all that stuff while you're closed and open back up. So we decided while we were,

down. We could have opened back up in like three weeks or something like that. We stayed closed for six weeks. And we had some people who were really sick and most people who were not. But we also just wanted to make sure that everybody was okay before we were like, let's go make some money and some bread. It's like, no, that's the least of our concerns. Yeah. Oh, it's hard. Oh, it was so, so, so hard. Yeah. So you stayed closed and fixed it up down there? Yeah. So we stayed closed and we're just like, okay, everybody, we bombed the place with, you know, a sanitizing solution, which doesn't really do anything, but was sort of something that we just needed to do, even if it's just for optics.

Yeah. And then just got the workers in there and just banged it out. Wow. And that involved inspections and all sorts of crap that delayed it for way longer. Initially, we were like four weeks. We can get this done. Yeah. It'll be great.

But then there was problems and always. Always. Yeah. But once we were passed and through, yeah. Then we opened back up. Well, we were going to open back up five weeks and then it was like right when things were peaking. And I was like, these people just suffered so much. I'm not going to bring them back.

Yeah. When it's worse than when we got our outbreak. Right. It just didn't make any sense. Yeah. So we stayed closed for another two weeks after that. Whoa. I had already made the announcement to all our accounts like, send us your orders.

We're going to gear back up and then had to cancel it like two days prior, which is not a good thing. Yeah. But such are the times. Yeah. And then we opened back up. with like 35 accounts. Um, we did so many,

so many different iterations of crafty scheduling and maneuvering to try and make this, um, right. Yeah. Um, and now, um,

you know, our, our new head baker, Jess Abel, um, helped, you know, I basically said,

we, if we're going to open back up, we need to figure out a way that we can continue going. Mm-hmm. If we have another positive. Right. Not for the business. Yeah.

But so that the business can have, providing jobs for all these people on the other. side of COVID. If we disappear, this whole thing doesn't work. No, you got to think of that. And that was something that was, you know, told to me by my neighbor, Peter, who owns Coco's Variety, which is a little bike shop that's really fantastic. And he's one of the best people ever met and has been kind of my pillar of support during this whole thing. Yeah. He's been going through it too. Yeah. So we decided to do this thing called cohort groups. Now that we have two floors, right. We have the luxury of being able to separate people all day.

So we would basically have four teams, divide the whole bakery in of four teams that never physically interact with each other. And it requires walkie-talkies and a lot of careful stuff. That's how TV's working now. It's like all these departments have to be separated and you're not going to interact. There's no walking across and asking the makeup people for this. Yeah. It was just impossible. Yeah.

But it was just like figured out how to make it work. We had to hire some new people, which is weird because everybody's working part. part time and then they get recompensated a little bit more now from unemployment, but prior, they were doing the $600 boost, $600 boost. So they were getting a good wage close to what they were making while only working part time, which was key. And then now, of course, the Pua, the $600 bonus payments are gone. Right. So it's gnarly. Are you back to full steam? I mean, I don't even, no. I'd say we're, we've got like 75 to 80 accounts now, but they're, they're all I'd say it's more like equates to what 50 accounts would have been

with the steam. Right. But we're okay. We're covering payroll. The problem is with a bakery, when I sell my bread to a restaurant, they don't have to pay me right then. They pay me within 30 days. So we were closed for six weeks.

So zero income for that time. And then when we open, we don't get any of that money for 30 days if they pay on time. If they pay on time. God, and most don't. I'm sure. Some don't. Most do. Most are really appreciative and thankful and all that stuff.

And some are horrible and we just have to keep working with them. Right. But it's like life. Yeah. Yeah. The more. The more they're involved. Most are fantastic and supportive.

Wow. So if you were able to survive that, I mean, it just feels like, yeah. I mean, it just, but it feels like we're kind of making the steps back towards places being able to open. They're getting more creative with being able to serve. And being in LA, like I'm more fearful for places that are cold and that aren't going to be able to feed their people if it keeps going. But we can still be outside. Like these restaurants are getting very crafty. Yeah, it's very real.

I mean, New York is just like, you know, they're further ahead in terms of the virus. Yeah, but. But winter is a real, a real thing. It's going to get cold soon. Outside seating doesn't work in like two months. No, I know. So it's like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen.

Hopefully they can continue to hold tight and keep the virus at bay and then maybe that'll be okay. For us, you know, I'm just hoping that the morons don't screw it up for us. Right, exactly. Just keep it. Just keep it at bay or keep it moving in the right direction and we can keep, you know, moving in the right direction. It's just. Whenever I tell people, and first of all, congratulations. Really, I mean, seriously.

I'll take that in four months. Yeah, I know. I don't want to jinx anything. But, I mean, that's such, that's so watching you adoring all of it and knowing that you guys were still going was like, you know, these places mean a lot to me. And like, you're a good friend. And it's, it's just great to be able to survive because we know we're going to lose some people that we really, really. Yeah, it's happening. It's going to continue happening.

I mean, you know, like really notable, longstanding, fantastic restaurants are closing. and every, like, restaurant, people who aren't in the restaurant business, it's very easy to look at a place, I don't know, Beverly Soon Tofu just disclosed, which is a really fantastic place that's existed for 35 years. And to some people on the outside,

when you see a restaurant closing after this experience, they're like, they didn't save any money. Like, it's like, yeah, they did. Do you understand how narrow the margins are to run a restaurant? It's so impossible. I remember in New York, like, just at comedy clubs. Like, if there was a snowy weekend,

Yeah, you're on the edge. They were on the edge. Yeah. One weekend. Yeah. And you got to do a promotion to get more people. Yeah. Like, that's how the restaurant life is every day.

I know. It really is. And it's amazing how much we depended on it also. Oh, yeah. For our food. Like, it became, this is, you know, that's not the way people lived for a long time. Sure. You know, people cooked and did all their own stuff.

And I was like, no, we really, whenever I tell people about you and I always, and I throw in, They do bread for like most of the places in L.A. That you eat is getting the bread from Bub and Grandma's. And they're like, what? What? Moza. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right?

Because Nancy. She, yeah, she's LaBrea, yeah. Yeah, LeBreya. And, you know, so iconic for bread and that you guys supply for that. That always is like, whoa. I mean, that was top five most insane things that have happened to us was just like that email, you know. Yeah. Come out of the blue or had you known?

No, I think I think what happened was that Chris, who worked there, had met up with an old friend who was still a pastry chef there, gave them a loaf or two, and they brought that bread into the, into Moza to try,

and for just luck that Nancy was there, tried it, was like, wow, this is way better than what we're getting from the now mechanized, you know, massive international Libreia. Right. And that was the transition. Wow.

And now it's like a much deeper, you know, with tons of different breads and things that we've built for them and, you know, pizza dough and and all sorts of stuff. Oh, man, oh, man. But that was a, that was a pretty wacky. That's a big one. Yeah, that's a big one.

I'm really thankful for it. Yeah, it's like all of a sudden, you know, like, it's like, oh, we're real. Yeah, right, exactly. It's like we're providing, we can't get any bigger. Yeah, it's pretty nuts. Why can't I make good fakasha? It should be so easy. You can.

I keep screwing it up. What's happening? I don't know. What's it looks like at that? It's flat and hard. Doesn't have bubbles? I stick my fingers in it. Yeah, but it does it like when you put your finger? It doesn't air up.

Yeah, yeah. Yeast or sourdough? Yeast. Yeah. No, sourdough. Saladough. Yeah. Your starter's probably not ready to roll.

Yeah, maybe. Send me your process and we'll go over it. All right. But that sounds like that's what, typically with sourdough stuff, you're not getting enough activity. Right. Either that, I mean, how long are you, leaving it, after you dimple, how long are you leaving it out to proof?

Like another hour. Yeah. I mean, you could go, you could go two. Sometimes we go two, two and a half. Really? Yeah, it just depends on the day. Yeah. But usually we give it two hours.

Yeah, it just sits next to the oven and like a covered rack so it doesn't crust over the top. Right. And just stays warm and develops. And the thing about fecas is like, chances are if that's your experience, it's under. It's not over. Right. Over will just be a bubble festival and like a just big open cavities and that kind of bread.

So just keep pushing it, I would say. Yeah. Are you used to eat? Oh, you said sourdough. No, sourdough. Yeah. And, uh, yeah. But yeah, the time on that, you can just let it go with facacha because it doesn't have

anywhere to go. It's not like it's going to blossom up massive. No, I should. I mean, I'm making pretty good breads. Do you feed your starter that day? Um, I usually feed it the night before. and then in the morning. In the morning.

Feed it again. How often after you feed it again are you mixing it in? Once. No, no. How, I mean, how, sorry, not how often? How long after you feed it in the morning are you mixing it into the dough? Like probably three, four hours. Oh, okay, cool.

Yeah, that's fine. It should be okay. You're temping it? It's like 80? Yeah, but I do the float test. Yeah. Float test kind of sucks. I don't really, what's that?

Float test kind of sucks, though. It does kind of suck, but, you know. It doesn't always work. I know, but. I wish that it's, But I wasn't getting a lot of rise. Like all of a sudden, after doing it for years, I was, things weren't going that great. And I was like, let me just try this test.

And it was like, oh, yeah. It actually kind of recalibrated. I was, I was, I was rushing things and not being so active. Because it's problematic. Like, it's like if you just, I mean, most people are like, oh, I'm going to look up a recipe. Right. And I'm going to cook something. Right.

And if it's reasonably like what the picture looked like, success. Yeah. Bread is not like that. It's not. It's not like that at all. And it requires like a hundred times of doing it for you to get it right once. You can get it to be edible. Right.

It's always edible. Which is really great about it. It can be a total pancake. You cut it up with a little cheese or butter and you're like, oh, this is pretty good. This is so good. But if you wanted to look like what, you know, you imagine in your head when you pull the thing off. Yeah. Just takes reps.

And that's the way that chefs look at cooking from recipes. You start with a recipe. You start with an idea. You've got to do it a thousand times. Yeah. You have to get really good at it. I mean, that's kind of, it's a lot like stand up that way. Yeah.

And like you repeat these jokes over and over and over again, but it takes that long. And there's always, and from the outside it might seem like you've just been working on that joke for a couple of years, but you're, there's little subtleties that are changing. You learn. You have to, yeah. That's exactly. I mean, I'm sure that's why you love comedy. Yeah.

It's like, it makes total sense. It's just about, um, nuance and learning and getting your ass kicked. Yeah. and just fucking failing constantly. And this one, I hate to even bring it up, but the baguette at home, lost cause? It depends. If you wanted to look, I'm not complimenting in my own work,

but this is because we have a steam injection. Right. It needs a lot of steam. A lot of steam. And it's always just going to, even if you get steam in there, it's still going to be dry shortly thereafter. They come out more like Shabbat, actually.

Like a little bit flatter? Yeah, you know. Yeah. I think that that's standard. I think you could potentially get there, but I don't know. Flavor's not bad. Yeah, as long as it tastes good, it's like you can cut a really thin thing in half and still make a sandwich on it. Yeah.

But you really? I never got it. You didn't? No. I never got it right. Yeah. It would kind of look, it would just sort of be like a blank tube. Right.

Yes. Like a blank flat tube that has no differentiation in color. No. Right. Yeah, it's pale. It just didn't look good. No. The taste is okay.

Yeah. It looked like an olive. garden breadstick that was made in a machine and was like this is not what I imagine but shape there's like technical things like I don't do you ever take any SFBI classes or anything like that that would be a good thing to do if you really were intent on like making the baguette work at home because to build up that strength requires like some pretty um just sort of specific shaping the technique I know to get that tightness so that it really launches when it hits the heat yeah um upboard And there's like a five-day intensive class up there

with some really great instructors and also they have all the professional equipment so you can get some run on the same oven that we have and rack ovens and all sorts of stuff like that. I was looking into like maybe doing some classes right before COVID. Oh yeah. It's not exactly at the time.

I'm not going to be. But SFBI is with some other bread nerds. That's the spot. Which one? SFBI. SFBI. SFC baking Institute. Oh, okay.

And they're up in San Francisco. That'd be great. Yeah. That'd be a nice week. trip and stop at all the bakeries. Yeah, hanging with bread nerds. Yeah, yeah. They're the best for the, sometimes.

Yeah, that's amazing. So the sandwich shop has been the quest from the beginning. Yeah, and. Gonna do it. And yeah. It was almost not going to happen. In addition to like, you know, all of the COVID shit, we, so all of that happened. I got Bell's palsy, half my face stopped working in the middle of this stuff.

You know, there were a lot of emotional moments in the bakery. Things were breaking. People were breaking. Yeah. And then in April. So we were going to do this sandwich shop. We, it was in the news. We announced it.

We got a space. We signed a lease. Put a deposit down. We got investors all lined up in the fall in November in like six weeks. It was like quick. And we raised a bunch of money. Wow. And it was like, wow, people really want this.

It's working. Yeah. Really exciting. And then April world is around. And one of our investors who had committed early and was sort of a friend of the Bubbs world dropped out. And that was two-thirds of the investment. It was our biggest monstrous $600,000 investor, which wouldn't have been that big a deal if it was November, but it was April. So no one's investing in anything at the moment.

So the last four months or so, April, May, June, July, yeah, like four months or so, not only have we been trying to revolutionize how we're doing the bakery to make it as safe as humanly possible and, like, grow the business back up when we were, after we closed, trying to like raise money during COVID. And potentially lose the whole, you know, dream. Yeah. And had to, you know, I was supposed to start paying rent at our space July 14th at our new space. Whoa. And that's $10,000 a month.

Whoa. And luckily, in just conversing with our landlord, our new landlord, who is not even really our active landlord. He was completely reasonable and allowed us to push things back and give us a much longer runway, which was an incredibly kind gesture. Especially when he's, you know, he's got mortgage payments to make. Sure. This is not like a big corporate landlord. This is just a guy. Yeah.

And pushed everything back and gave us a nice softer, longer runway. to take off, which is really, really, I'm very very thankful for. And then, um, I was just pounding the pavement to try and find somebody. Yeah. Um, and little things were coming in here and there. And then we, like two weeks ago, I got it. You did. Yeah. So it was like, it was getting really dark. Yeah. Like, it was getting really, really dark. Yeah. And, um, combined with us, you know, having an outbreak, which I never imagined what happened to us because we take things so seriously and care about our people so much, which was a real hit. And then that happened right before.

The money going away happened right before. Problems, problems, problems. Yeah, constantly. I mean, that's the whole thing. That's the whole job. Yeah. For everybody is just like, how do you manage problems? Yeah.

And now you're going to open the shop when? Yes. So we are hoping to break around October, October 1st, ideally. And then it'll take probably six months to build this thing. I don't know, something like that. Okay. So I would say May June. Right.

the hopeful angle. That could be great. The vaccine will be out and everybody will be eating out and looking for stuff. I hope so. Oh my God. It could be perfect timing. Or we could be in the sped up end of existence. I mean, that could also be tipped over the edge of collapse and elections went nuts and vaccines were withheld.

No, no, no. It's all going to work out. This is a good timing. This is a good omen. I think it is a good. Yeah. I feel like. Like, you know, as soon as, as soon as I got the call from the big investor who committed, I, you know, lost it.

Yeah. Oh, my God. My laptop almost fried out from just pouring water on it from my eyes. God. It's just like, it was just, you know, an incredible amount of pressure. Isn't it funny how, like, I know you're joking, but like it's the end of times kind of considerations of problems. And then if everything goes great, yeah, vaccine comes. Everyone's peaceful, making progress.

Everything's good. And you're just opening up a sandwich up. You're just going to have all of these other problems that really are just as big as the end of times. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, at least at the end of times, if it really did end, I had no choice. And it just like, you know, it comes to me. I'm in charge of all the problems at this place.

I've got to figure out all the solutions for them. Luckily, in my case, I care about solving some of the problems. Unlike some other people in our world right now. Oh, man. Do you have the sandwiches? have you been playing around with them? We've got some things. You've got some ideas? So Chris is in this interesting, Chris is going to come with me and we're building him a pastry kitchen. So not only is it going to be a sandwich shop.

And it's, you know, initially I was like, oh, we'll put it in a 500 square foot old restaurant. It'll be a tiny little place with sandwiches and, you know, we'll make some bread in the back. Now it's a 3,000 square foot sandwich shop. We're building a pastry kitchen in the back where Chris can have free reign to do whatever he wants. Pies, cakes, croissants, all that stuff too. They'll have all the bread's retail. And then we're going to have a full.

sandwich menu. Man, oh man. Yeah. You're gonna do the cool manufacturing thing where you can see through the glass that the people make a little bit. A little bit of it.

Yeah. I can like stay away from tartine conversations, but yeah, it's gonna have a little window yeah, for Christmas stuff. But it's more gonna be, I think like,

do you know Eisenberg's in New York City? Like old sandwich shop? No. It's just like a classic old Jewish sandwich shop. You walk in, it's very narrow and long. On the left is a bar that goes all the way,

you know, like a low lunch counter and some seating in the back. It's kind of like the archetype that we're going to have the old New York coffee shop diner sandwich shop. Oh, nice. But at the same time, we'll have classic sandwiches like a perfected Italian and a BLT and and things like New York lunch kind of things. Right, right. But then also some more progressive like vegetable-based sandwiches.

Nothing that's too like out there. Yeah, you've got to keep a little jersey too. Yeah. It might be a nice pork roll egg and cheese. Every morning, I have fresh. baked Kaiser rolls with egg and cheese. It's not going to have dumb shit on it. It's just going to be egg and cheese.

I'm okay with it. I don't have to win a James Beard Award for an egg and cheese. I just won an egg and cheese. Yeah, but you know, it's going to be good. Did you see Sam Sifton from the New York Times? He was missing the egg and cheese at work, like going and getting from this little bodega. So he actually made it at home and wrapped it in tin foil and let it hold for a little bit.

You've got a. Yeah. So it melts. Yeah. So you have that thing. That is my favorite thing in the world. I mean, my, my fiance now is like, you know, just constantly, I just eat extraordinary, extraordinarily, like the highest number of eggs any human can possibly consume on a daily basis. It's just my affliction. Yeah, yeah.

I have no problems with that affliction. I love it. It's great. But there's no, like, I go to Bell's bagels and get a bagel egg and cheese from them, which is really delicious. And I love those guys. Yeah. And actually, they just move across the street, which is awesome. I was their first customer on the first day in the new spot.

Oh, the bad. I gave him a shout out on a live from here. I saw it. Yeah. They, uh, you know, that's my egg and cheese. Yeah. I do want it on a Kaiser roll. Briefly, they did do it on a Kaiser roll, but.

Yeah. Um, so we're gonna, a little, a little, yeah, you want it a little softer. Yeah. Well, it's just, it's different. It's a different thing. It's a different. Yeah. It's not, it's a, it's a thing that I want sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's got a, like, you know. Jersey. Jersey. Jersey. Jersey.

Yeah. So we'll have an egg and cheese and a bacon and cheese and a sausage and like maybe a vegetable egg and cheese like some kind of green. But then we'll also have like a brazed brisket sandwich that would be like my grandmother's brazed brisket. And, I thought your grandmother's weren't a food influence. It was like, you know, made with canned, you know, stuff. It was just something that was no, like there's one item that they're known for at one Jewish holiday from like, that's the thing. Yeah. But yeah, like a pretty diverse menu. and then we'll also probably stay open in the evenings for a couple nights a week and do like, you know, dinner, like dinner.

Like, we'll do just roast chickens and that's it and have a lot of jazz. Ah, great. Which is just something that I really want and haven't found here. Yeah. And, you know, Chris and I, that's like our main bonding thread. Yeah. And it would be so good to have. Who are you listening to now, Jazz Ways?

Oh, just all the same people that people have been listening to for. Forever. Yeah. I mean, you know, you go through runs where I do where you're like, I'm a McCoy Tyner guy right now. Oh, yeah, I don't know. He's awesome pianist player. Oh, yeah. And then Kenny Dorham, Miles and Coltrane, you know, all that stuff.

Oscar, Peterson. Yeah, Oscar Peterson. Love Oscar Peterson. He's so good. Amad Jamal. I've been on a year run of Oscar Peterson. I mean, it's just that music that you can set there. I write to it all the time.

Oh, it's just there. Yeah, I mean, I used to listen to it while I was writing to. Yeah. Um, yeah, Alice Coltrane lots of more spacey stuff too, Sun, like all of those things. Mingus and, yeah, Mingus is great, always. Yeah, I love those guys. Yeah, man. Well, congratulations. I didn't know going into this that you had gotten the, yeah, it was, it was, um, it's a big deal. It was a huge, I was asking around. I was sending out some emails. It's just like, you know, there's plenty of people who would have normally been

interested. Yeah. Who asked it prior and, and we're interested, but it's just, I, I, I don't blame them. This is ridiculous time. But that you pulled it off. I mean, yeah. You know, not to get too hippie-dippy about it all, but, you know, you found the thing that really turned you on for the right reasons. Yeah. And it's, and these things should happen in those scenarios. Yeah. It's extraordinarily lucky.

Yeah. And you're not going to bring this bread home with you, right? Of course not. I should probably take it. No, you must. I'm sure your freezer isn't full of your own bread. I know. Like you had to eat, this is the problem when you bake bread is you're just like, you know,

where do I put all the rest of my shit? I know exactly. Well, this was the best. Thank you for coming by. This is really cool. Always pleasure. And we'll have to do another one from the shop. Yeah, that sounds fun.

Yeah. All right. You're the best. All right, man.