Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 54 - Jim Serpico

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

It’s time to break bread with Jim Serpico, show biz big wig and founder of Side Hustle Bread! Robert Kelly stops by for a Quick Bite after I finally track him down! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Insurance isn't one-size-fits-all, and shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives' name-your-price tool for years. With the name-your-price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy. Or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple to see your options. No guesswork, no surprises.

Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit progressive.com and give the name your price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life on your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. It's time for breaking bread with Papa. Hey! Don't you know?

Hey, it's our goal. Hey, it's time for Breaking Bread 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 am Tom Papa. Thank you for joining me at the table once again.

We have a great show for you today. We've got a comedy legend producer turned breadbaker, Jim Serpico, on the program who's worked with so many of my friends and is such a talented guy and now is taking this journey into the bread baking world, which is so exciting. We'll get more into that in a bit, and we'll grab a quick bite with Robert Kelly.

My good friend, Jim actually created a special with him, just one of the great comedians, great people, and great eaters of all time. Robert Kelly. Very excited. Okay, so I have been, I am hot off a very, I would say triumphant. Triumphant. Frank, come here, Frank.

I have a pug who, Frank, ah, there you are. Come on in. He's been peeing everywhere in the house. And if I don't see him, I know he's peeing. So I have to keep doing the, and then he thinks that he gets a treat. And then I hold my hand up because. he's a pug and can't really see straight, and he just looks my fingers and he thinks that's a treat.

I know it's disgusting, but this is a little life that I'm living. Last night, I had a great meal. I brought over my good friend Fortune Feimster and Aaron Foley, and I made lemon pasta, which I have been perfecting, and I think last night I finally zeroed in on exactly what it was. So great to cook for them. The celebration was a midweek celebration, great wine. We had some silver oak wine.

And the lemon pasta, it's an easy dish, but it's really such, this time of year especially, basically you got to zest your lemons. You get that lemon zest. You get like two tablespoons of that. You take a nice little pot as your linguine or Bucatini is cooking. And it's just lemon zest and cream. And as you start to whisk that into its nice little texture, you use. start adding in a little butter and you start adding in a little parmesan and it just slowly starts to

cream and starts to get to this consistency and then without draining your pasta you take that pasta into your concoction start mixing it around not that different from the process when you're doing caccio pepe uh it's the same kind of a thing where you just want it to stick you don't want it to be too loose you don't wanted to be too heavy. So it's really just the practice of it. The ingredients are so simple. You know, lemon zest, salt, pepper, cream, and you're in. And then you start throwing in some butter and some Parmesan. Simple. What is not simple is getting the feel for it. And that only comes from repetition. But to be honest with you, I haven't made it that often. And like I said, I nailed it. It was so good. And then you have the bread. And again,

You know, the triumph of when you do make a great meal is when you just kick back and you watch it just disappear from people's plates. You don't have to sell it. You don't have to do anything. You just sit back and watch how much they're enjoying it. I nailed it. I encourage you to make it too. Maybe I'll even post the recipe that I used. Lemon pasta. This is the time to do it. Go for it. Jim Serpico, very talented producer. He's been part of my comedy extras in my life. coming up in New York. He worked with Dennis Leary forever with his management company. He created Rescue Me

and Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll. He was a part of Marin. He's worked with Gary Goldman. He's worked with Robert Kelly, as we said earlier. Pete Correilly, Comedy Central Rose of Jeff Foxworthy. I'm just picking things off

of a long, long list. The job. Comics come home. He has this great sense of comedy. He's always been in the orbit of New York, always worked with friends of mine. And the reason I'm so excited to spend time with him today is because he started baking bread.

He started baking bread just like I did, got obsessed, just like I did, had ideas of selling it just like I did. And then he went out and he did it. And he started showing up at farmer's markets. And now he's created a business, which is not just like I did. I do not go down this path.

So I'm so excited to see what happens when someone changes his kitchen into a bakery and starts expanding into his garage and other spaces and starts making a career, an extra career. It's called side hustle bread.

You can look it up on Instagram. You can look it up on social media and go to side hustle.com, which I will post all this information so you have it. It is a triumph. And I'm telling you, he's starting to feel all of the stuff that I was thinking. But what happens when you need 700 loaves of bread by Sunday?

He's going to tell us. And as much as he enjoys it, it is a lot of work. And now he's got this side hustle bread is not such a little side hustle anymore, but a great inspiration. All right, so enjoy the conversation now with Jim Serpico, and then we'll grab a quick bite with Robert Kelly. Cheers, thanks for being here.

Cheers. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. This is so cool. I'm so excited to talk to. I had no idea what you've been up to with your life. And this... It's pretty crazy. This comedy to bread mashup

is so perfect because it is, I know we're going to have very similar stories and then we're going to have some, and then we're going to have some little splits in the road. But let's start off just so our listeners know. You have been, we've been kind of crisscrossing a lot. I don't think we ever actually did a project together. We have not worked together. But you've done projects with a lot of my friends. Tons of your friends.

Yeah. I manage a couple. Right. Who do you manage? Jessica Carson. Nice. I worked with Brewer for about four or five years. Okay.

Produced a lot of his stuff. And someone named Jared Freed. Nice. Love Jared. Yeah. He's a good guy. He's very big with the 20-year-old girls. They love him.

They love him. They love Jared. They line up and they throw feathers and wave stuff out. It's so great. He's such a good guy. So yeah, and Robert Kelly, I mean, you've done a lot of comedy specials. And of course, Dennis Leary, you guys have been, is that how you, how did you start out into the comedy kind of orbit? I had a job as an assistant at a music booking agency.

Because that's the other thing you and I have in common. I was a jazz trumpet player in college. I studied music. Right. So I'm a big jazz guy. My father was a trumpet player. Oh, wow. I thought I was going into music and I got a job at a booking agency, booking all these groups.

And I started booking those groups at the colleges. So they sent me to NACA. And then I met all these agents at the big agencies, you know, selling the comedians at like WME and APA and all these places. And I became friends with them. And they asked me to be a middle agent for their comedians. That kind of threw me very quickly into the war. world of like booking when I was 22 I was booking Adam Sandler's college gigs as a middle agent and then driving him to the gigs.

Wow. It was crazy. And that's when I was like, I like this comedy thing. I'm going to go down this path. And I went to a management company real quick and Dennis Leary, Billy Jay, Roger Cable, Judy Gold. All these people were there. And then I would go to the clubs and try to sign people like Dave Chappelle.

I didn't successfully sign Dave Chappelle, but I tried. Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's basically how I started a comedy. Wow, that's so great. Yeah, because, I mean, you always had such a cool, you always had such a cool group that you were always involved with, like, really good people. Like, I always, I always really, I was friends with a lot of the people that you worked with and admired Leary immensely.

And you just always seemed, I just always pictured a very cool environment. And didn't, did, uh, did Conan work with you? Yes, absolutely. Conan Smith. I was in your office. That's when I was in your office. I wasn't working with Conan at the time, but we went to high school together and we're good buddies. You did?

Yeah, yeah. We went to high school in New Jersey together. And we had all the same friends, the whole thing. And, uh, yeah, I love Conan. And they, when he went work for you for a bit, uh, I went to pick him up to go for drinks. And yeah, I was in your office. Conan comes to my farmer's market. He does.

Yeah, and he buys bread. Oh, that's amazing. We both live in Long Island, so yeah. He's a good friend of mine. Yeah, but I really, I always admired your projects and like I said, it was more of the people that you obviously had an eye for. You, it was kind of, it made sense when people were working with you. Like you had a pretty distinct taste, I would say. Yeah, I guess I gravitated towards a certain.

with a little bit of an edge and character-driven stuff and people like that, yeah. Yeah. All right, so you're successful, you make a bunch of stuff, you're making TV shows, you're managing people, you have a nice little company rolling. And then, this is where our stories really merge, when did you make your first loaf of bread and why?

Well, it started on a trip. We took as a family to Italy and took some cooking classes. And we've really started with pasta. And then we were making pasta at home after that trip for five years. And we kind of went on to, I would always enjoy a bread called lard bread or prosciutto bread. Oh, I appreciate that. And that was really the first one that I got deep into trying to replicate recipes. I would try at other bakeries or restaurants.

And I eventually got pretty good at it. and that became my thing. And all my friends and family would love it and ask me to make it for them and I'd make it on holidays. Was it in the ring? That was the first one. It's in the ring. In the ring. It's usually in the ring.

Yeah. Yeah. That is such a good bread that I live with all vegetarians. So it's difficult to like make it when no one else is excited about it. Yeah. It's a big ring of meat and cheese that you have to eat by yourself. It's so good, though. It's so good. Man, we went to Italy and we took a cooking class too, and we got the book and we're like, we're going to make pasta every night. And I think we made it once. Yeah. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It is a lot of work. And then especially when you read articles by like really good cooks and they're like, dried pasta is just as good. You're like, oh, what? I haven't made pasta in a long time.

But I'm over my head with the bread, so I don't even have time to make anything else. Yeah. So how long did it take to get the prosciutto bread down to where you were happy with it? Probably three years. Yeah. Yeah. Three years. Tweaking it and playing with different flowers and different cheese, different meats.

Right. Right, right. You know? Yeah, because in the beginning, I do this with the olive bread, too, is like, you just grab some, it's not consistent. You're like, oh, I found these olives. I'll use this one, and I'll throw this one in. And even if you have the right ingredients, bread is so tricky because to get the consistency down is a feat. But then if you start messing with the ingredients, where do you get your prosciutto?

You know, I go to Restaurant Depot. You know, I make about, at this point, I'm making. at least 120 rings a week. I supply a wholesaler. Yeah. So there's a bakery that does a lot of the Italian stores and supermarket's around here and specializes really great artists in Italian bread, but to get in the supermarket, you have to be certified kosher.

So he had to stop making it. And I make meat bread for them. And they put it in stores. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's great. And then I sell it at the farmer's markets. And then one of the things we came up with at the farmer's markets for people like you who,

you don't have other people that want to eat meat bread. I put prosciutto bites in a cup. And I sell five to six prosciutto bites, which is the same bread, but they're little munchkins. Oh, really? That's brilliant. So people just walk around the farmer's market and eating the bread like it's a snack. That's brilliant. Yeah, it's pretty wild. All right. So when you're going along, you're perfecting the bread. You're perfecting this prosciutto bread. You're obviously, what is, what was it like for you where all of a sudden you're like, I had this little hobby. And now I seem to be getting. in deep with this? Like I like this is this seems to be a little bit more of an obsession than other things in my life. You know, it didn't it didn't completely evolve gradually where it was like this is an obsession. I'm going to keep going deeper and deeper. We were making this bread and other

types of bread and at the beginning of COVID, everyone in my house was home. I have my wife and three boys and we were joking around because we always called this our side hustle like everyone does but we called it side hustle bread and we decided to open an Instagram account featuring photos of the prosciutto bread at the beginning of COVID and people started DMing us asking to buy it and it happened it just happened wow you know so we ended up getting in deep without thinking about or planning it. Right. But you're at home, you're baking this out of your home oven.

Not anymore. I'm still baking at home. But at that point, at that point, 100%. Right. One oven. One oven. Yeah. And you guys, you're showing your kids and your wife, like, people want this.

Well, they realized it just as much, right? And they were kind of in the background saying, to me, people want this. Let's do this. Okay. And I didn't really want to be associated with it. You're right. I wanted to make it, but I was deathly afraid of people think I was doing this because I was failing. Well, I had nothing going on at TV and film because of COVID.

Right. And, you know, I was very insecure about it. Right. I could see that. I mean, people were literally sending me stuff because, like, my YouTube thing got really popular, just showing people how to make sourdough. And it was a little bit of the similar thing. It was like, you were a comedian, right?

Right. Right. Right. I mean, I still struggle a little bit. I mean, I'm very proud of where it's gone to, but I still struggle with it a tiny bit. You know, but it is like, it is now all consuming. And, you know, the thing about 10,000 hours, I'm no, it was near 10,000 hours. But I am spending a lot of hours doing it.

Yeah. and like just repeating the process, which is part of what I love. I joke around. I feel like I'm a Buddhist mom, but I'm half serious. It's like I kind of love getting in the zone and just doing it over and over. I know. I know. Yeah, 100%.

And it must really increase because I haven't done it to the point where you're cranking out that many loaves. But it's just the process of it. If I do four loaves a week, it's still just that routine of, when you feed it, when you feed the starter, when you get the thing. I mean, I literally, I'm not kidding, Jim, I just literally started my radio show this morning in the first mix. In between breaks, I would go fold it. And then I was, and I had it all in my head and it's completely just a part of your life.

I know that when these are final shaped and I'm putting them in the fridge, we are going to start our podcast. And that's how you end up living your life. I did it yesterday. I was joking with someone. I finished, scrambled to finish a bake because the deli in the town I live and uses my bread like four days a week. And I had to do this bake.

I finished the bake at 1130. One of my neighbor's kids delivered the bread to the deli and I was on a video pitch with NBC at 12 noon. I mean, that's my life now. Yeah, yeah. I had to plan the bake around making the pitch. I know. And I really, don't you catch yourself and you're like, this would be so much easier if I was just showing up for the pitch. I'm like literally down to the minute dusting flour off your pants as you're getting going into your next project. Yeah. It's so funny. But it, but in a way, it's kind of natural, isn't it? I think so. I mean, for me it is like it's a very, it's just what my life is. It's natural for me. And, It is interesting since COVID.

If COVID didn't happen, this would have never happened for me. I'm kind of so glad in that way it did. Yeah. Because I have not commuted. I used to commute three hours a day. Wow. For maybe 30 years. Wow.

Yeah. Three hours each way? No, an hour and a half into the city and then an hour and a half out every day. But we would work long intense days. and it was just mentally exhausting. Yeah. And I would never in a million years have the time or the mental wherewithal to do anything like this. Yeah.

And now I can't imagine myself ever getting an office in Manhattan again. Yeah. Why would you? You know? Yeah. I don't think it's ever going to go back to exactly the way it was. I don't think that these pitches are going to be in person. Mm-hmm.

maybe a little bit, but not 100%. I could be wrong, but it's just as efficient. So why would they go back? Yeah. Do you feel when, this is kind of a side thing, but do you feel like when you do pitch this way over Zoom, that you can be as impactful as when you are in the room with them? For me, it's so much better.

Yeah? I'm just a nervous person, right? unlike you, right? I'm not on stage. I'm more comfortable behind the computer and writing. Right. You know, I'll write comedy scripts and stuff, but I feel better on the computer having my notes.

Right. It's hard for me to memorize these things. You know, you have a 12-page pitch that you have to memorize. Yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah. No, that's right. I guess the comedian to me is like, oh, but if I could just be in there, I could, I could charm them.

I could turn it on. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. I think it works for me. And then the other crazy thing in this business, it's, I used to go to L.A. a week every six weeks. And, you know, we're on a pitch right now. They keep canceling the pitch meetings and moving them. Uh-huh.

And they always did this, but now it's even more. So I would have to always extend my trip from a week to two to three weeks to try to pitch six networks, a project or something. Right. And now, you know, they'd say, I want to do it at 8.30 New York time. I was like, all right, I'm fine. I could bake around that. That's great. It really makes you think that it's not like, it's like, it's like, you're, you like, it's like,

this forces to work more efficiently. Like you really, you had the feeling like you had to be out there like 24 hours and like cranking, but you really didn't to get the same amount of work done. I don't think you did. Yeah, but you felt it when you were doing it, didn't you? Yeah, but you know, I always led an unorthodox Hollywood career in that I was always based in New York. Yeah. And even though all the selling we did was in Los Angeles, you know yeah we would we would do it from here and go out there just for those meetings and then come back and live regular lives right right yeah so great okay so now you are you're you're in your you've perfected your prosciutto and then what's the first farmer's market you you

you decide you're going to uh where do you all of a sudden start poking out of your little kitchen and bag up some bread and go the instagram account got some traction relative to being a Long Island breadmaker. Yeah, right. We're not comparing this to Ariana Grande. No. But those people are loyal. They are loyal.

And a woman's granddaughter who was 10 years old DM'd us and say, would you like to do my grandmother's farmer's market in Lyndonhurst? And I was like, yeah, let's do this. Yeah. And that was that was the very first one. So it all happened from Instagram and an invitation and not even knowing much about the farmers market world. Right. So how do you do when you first show up? How many did you bring? We probably brought 60 to 70. Wow. That's that's substantial. Yeah. And at that point we were still doing out of our oven. You're at home.

Yeah. We were still doing it there. And it was chaotic. I mean, we had my wife, my three kids, my oldest son's girlfriend, my middle son's girlfriend. And we really didn't know what we were doing. We really didn't. Like, you know, we follow recipes. We measure in cups, not weight.

And we're scrambling. And I was just getting into sourdough. And that was a whole other learning curve in a process. I have not been making sourdough for like five years. Wow. Okay. It's been a couple of years. But then to make it on scale and like to make different types and baguettes versus boules, it's like there was some panic.

Yeah. And really failed batches of bread. Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out what the hell we're going to do. Yeah. Once you want to bake fails, that's it. You're screwed. That whole timing thing is just you're just a mess.

You know, the good thing about the farmer's markets in a way, you might get some pre-orders, but it's like you bring what you want and you sell it. We also had a very robust home delivery business, and that's being that you're baking to order. And when that fails there, you have a problem. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

So we went through that, too. This is so great. It's so great. because you literally are living like the little quiet thought in my head of, what if we just started like, what if we? Well, that was my kids. Like, what if we? And then they run away and I'm left with it.

Right. Yeah. You're a baker. Oh, man. Wasn't it a cool moment? One of my favorite parts is when you got your first like 50 pound bag of flour delivered to the house, right? It's just like.

I took pictures. I was like, I had it on my shoulder. I was like, I got 50 pounds of flour. Yeah. I literally just got three 50 pound bags. And my wife was like, what are you doing? What do you use? I'm baking bread.

Central Milling out of Utah. Really good. It's like a malted, a malted wheat, and then all purpose. And then the reason there's, usually I get two, and the reason I have a third and going up to 150 is there was like, this baker's wheat. And I've never used it before. And someone told me that they swear by it for breads. But that makes me nervous, right?

Whenever you mess with your formula, you're like, oh, shit, this is going to be, like, starting over. Absolutely. Yeah. I do try to experiment with new stuff during the week. When I'm baking something else and it's a small bake, I'll try to do something new then. On the weekends, we can't mess around. Right. So you do that first farmers market and you must have sold out, I'm sure.

It goes well. Well, the first, always like at the beginning of the farmer's market, it's everyone knows. It's like at the opening of a TV show or a movie, like everyone comes. And then in a TV show, five episodes in the ratings settle into what it's, uh-oh. This is really what it's going to be? Farmer's markets are the same thing. Really? Absolutely.

Same thing. Everyone's there the first weekend you sell out, then you make more. and then it's a little less. And then you have to then figure it out. You have to figure out ultimately along the way. What's the right amount to bring? What are the varieties? We were making too many different varieties.

It was fine for the customers, but it was very difficult in the house. Especially because we didn't have the experience on how to schedule it. Right, right. And shift it. You're cleaning out your refrigerator to put stuff in there. Yeah. So when do you, so, so where are you at now? How much, you're doing like 700 loaves a week? Approximately. I know, I'm looking at on my computer here, Sunday's 33. And then, so that's Sunday, Saturday's probably 250. And then this bakes during the week. Wow. And where are you baking? Where are you baking now? That's the interesting thing. So I converted my garage.

Uh-huh. Into a bakery. No way. Yeah, so I have a 10-pan oven, steam oven in my garage. Whoa. And, um, fairway closed down here in New York. Uh-huh. And I went and bought the baker's table.

Really? And the flour bins and a bunch of their stuff. No. Yeah. And, um, and, um, and I pick up the flour. I use King Arthur flour, mostly. And we store it all here. So we bake a good percent of it, what we're allowed to.

We have a home processor permit from the New York Department of Agriculture to be able to make basic breads. Right. Anything with extras, vegetables or meats, we have to go use a deli at night when they're closed and use their ovens because they have the right certifications. Oh, so that's where you're doing the Bersudo bread now? Yeah. Yeah. Man, oh, man. This is, I'm not going to call this a side hustle.

I'm going to call this a hustle. It's a hustle. It's a hustle for real. It's still sign hustle money, though. Trust me. I know. Well, yeah, yeah. That's, yeah.

I mean, Brad, you really got to open up a retail place and sell some booze. I don't know what the answer on that. is I do have a friend that I met through this that he sells massive amounts. It's a different business. He's in wholesale. Uh-huh. You know, so he's just putting it out. Yeah.

It's a very different thing than what we're doing. But his breads are artisan and amazing. There's a great baker and queen's Gianduca. Okay. And they do it. Old school Italian way brought from. his family. They still do it. He cranks out a lot of bread for the city or did for all the restaurants and stuff. And it's just family owned. They've just been doing it forever. And it was so

cool to see someone that just did it that way, like the artisanal way, not because it was trendy. Like they've been doing this for 70 years. And but that wholesale business of supplying all of the restaurants, that place is open and baking at some stage every single minute of the day and night. There's someone in there. So that's what's crazy through Instagram. So the wholesale company I'm talking about is Montreal bread from Brooklyn. They moved out here.

I don't know. They have an 8,000 square foot factory with state of the art ovens. I hit this guy up on Instagram DM. And within an hour, he's like, come to come to the place and meet me. And we start talking. He gives me the codes to his facility. They're open 24 hours a day. They're helping us bake some of the stuff.

Wow. But, and we could use their facilities. And just to see that process of how it's done on a big scale, but still artisan is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. That's crazy. What have you learned from that?

What surprised you? They're still doing a lot. Like the ovens and everything there is state of the art, but they're still doing a lot of the formulas by hand. They're still doing a lot of the baking calculations by hand. That surprised me. Right. Yeah.

How many people do they have there? They've got different shifts. It's open 24 hours a day. Right. Yeah. So, you know. Yeah. I've gotten to know.

some of the workers and they must have 25 to 30 people at different times and different shifts. They don't have surprisingly, like they're so efficient that I don't think they need more than four people to shape all these breads at one time or more than six. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's very compartmentalized where they have people who shape and that's all they do.

And they have people who work the oven. That's all they do. They have people who beg. That's all they do. Yeah. It's very different than the way I do, which we all do everything. Right. You know, and just that's the one part of this that's tough.

It's like we have to label. We now have to put our ingredients on everything. So we have to bag it all. And my whole house is now a bakery. Every room in my house has stuff. If my wife hears this part of it, she's really going to freak because I've taken over like half of the kitchen. There's like a whole corner, you know, with just equipment and stuff and barrels. And if I were to spread out to another room, that might be a problem.

It's tough, man. But it's got to be pretty great. You've got to feel pretty good about it. I mean, this is a, this is a... I really feel good about it. Yeah. I have to say, like, we've gotten to the point where we really figure it out how to do this on a scale. We figure it out the formulas.

We made computer programs. We have oven schedules, like down to, you know, when I'm looking at the sheet on the computer, I know I have to make 31 prosciutto bread Sunday and it's six pans. And I know exactly what time they have to be shaped, how long it's going to rise and when it's going to go. Right. And then into the next thing. So we are really so efficient now. We know exactly when the bake's going to end.

Wow. That's great. Yeah, it's pretty intense. Yeah, it is intense. But it's really, it's really, the scale is different, but it's no different than the way you have to, when you first started and you're just figuring out your day and when you can get it shaped and go make your call and do that. Like it's just that in a bigger. Yeah. Yeah.

It's the same mind. Exactly. Tell me how good your prosciutto bread is. I, I've been told that it's as good as any presudo bread in Long Island, which is an extension of the city. Yep. Right? Yeah. Like the City, Long Island is basically people who moved from Brooklyn and Queens.

Yeah. So they know it. Yeah. I think it's up there, man. And it's being sold in pork stores and Italian delis. Wow. That's so great. And how can people find your bread?

At side hustle bread is the Instagram and the Facebook. Side hustle, artisanalbred.com is the website where people could order and deliver. liver, you know. And then the sourdough now also equally excites me. And that's being carried by a couple of retail stores too. Oh, nice. Yeah. There's something about the depth of that process and making that bread with that natural yeast that's pretty moving. So what is your favorite bread to make? My favorite is this country loaf olive bread. It's got green and colomont olives, herbs, herbs of Provence, and lemon zest. And I just, I think it's my Sicilian background. Just olives is a, it's been such a part of our life. And to get like that artisanal country loaf

combined with the olives, that I could just eat forever. And it stays. It's a sourdough. Yeah. Do you add those extras after you mix? I add it in, in, after the first mix and I mix it and fold the first one, you know, in the first five minutes. And then when I go to fold for the second time in 30 minutes, that's when I dump the stuff in. When we first started, we would just throw the stuff in the mixer. Right. And then the bread wouldn't rise. Right. And we didn't know that you can't mix this stuff in because the mixer crushes it. Right. And the acid affects the. the yeast. Right. You have to like layer it in and you know, start that by watching YouTube.

Yeah. I know. Right. It's amazing. It's amazing what you can learn from all that stuff. I was just watching an Instagram post the other day where somebody had jalapenos and cheddar. That's what I do. It's one of my most popular. Oh, that's a good bread. Yeah. That's a really good bread. And just watching the way that they folded it all in in this one process. I was like, You know. I saw that. I saw that video. You did see it, right?

Yeah. Robert Kelly's looking at porn on his phone. We're looking at bread mixing. Exactly. That was a lot of halitinos. It was. It was a ton. Yeah.

It was a ton. But we do it similarly. We do the same thing. We folded in that way after. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's so good. Well, this is amazing.

Now, this is kind of like one of those things, like the way you're saying it, this wasn't planned. This is like almost like a comedy career. It's like you just started doing it and you loved it and then it becomes something. It wasn't by choice. It wasn't really by choice. And we're still like, we got ourselves into these things. It's three farmers markets Saturday and three on Sunday. So we can't even physically be at all of them.

Right. We're scrambling to get people to do them. And we're trying to figure out all those logistics and how do we. I mean, I was, I'm doing the Southampton Farmer's Market now. And I have a small SUV. And I forgot the tents and the posters and the banners and the breads. And I couldn't see out the mirrors. Things were hanging out the window.

And like, now I'm going to have to buy a van or something. Oh, it's so great. It's so great. Oh, man, that's amazing. Well, this is one of my favorite conversations of the podcast because it literally, because you talk to people, you talk to people who like, you know, have been doing like these giant chops and it was baking, but, but that we came from similar worlds and like we're kind of like had this little obsession and you're like the, you're like the culmination of those little daydreams I have. And I'm not sure if you convince me to do it. That's the thing. I'm not sure. if I would want to convince you to do it. I don't know where I'm saying. I'll tell you, my wife might say, don't do it. Yeah, I can imagine. Well, I'm going to find you when I come east, and I'm going to get some Nepeudo bread for sure.

All right, man. We'll do it for sure. Thank you so much for your time. This is awesome. Side hustle bread. All right, and I'll post about it and send people your way. So you can work even more. Yeah, thank you.

Appreciate it. Have a good one, man. All right, Jim, take it easy. Bye. All right, now it's time for a quick bite with our good friend Robert Kelly. Bobby, where were you? I'm out at a meeting. I was at a meeting.

Oh, my God, with who? I was hanging out with Russell, Russell Peters. Oh, my God. Yeah. Sorry, buddy. It's all right. I've just been tracking you down all day. Sorry, but yeah, I've been in and out of.

things all day, that's why. Good for you. I was, I'm eating nachos with Ryan Hamilton and Todd Barry right now. Where? At the cellar. Oh.

Yeah. We were hoping we were going to see you. Does it feel weird? No, it feels good. Yeah? Oh, okay. I mean, you're not here, but we had some good sets. Noam's playing his music upstairs.

That's annoying. So it feels like, it feels like, like it's back to normal. Right, exactly. So I was talking to your old buddy, Serpico, who's doing a whole bread thing now. He's selling bread called Side Hustle Bread.

And he's selling 750 loaves of stuff. And I was like, wow, people get really weird during the pandemic. Yeah. And I was looking at it with you and see how you made out food-wise through the pandemic. Like eating? Yeah.

Oh, I fucking lost 50 pounds. Nice. And then I put it back on. Oh, did you really? I put it all back on. No. Oh, all of it, yeah. I went on the whole 30 in Aruba last year.

Yeah. In December, lost 50 pounds. Wow. And then went on the road. I got a gig in Tampa. Uh-huh. And fucking Mike Paltam made me have monkey bread. And then I spiraled out of control like a heroin out of it.

No, really? I went to God, dude. Yeah, I remember the day. I remember what happened. Oh, my God. But I'm back at the gym now, so this summer I'll just get back on it. Yeah. Was it worth eating all that food?

No, dude. I got to get my shit together, you know? Right. I mean, you know, the food thing, I had to get it last year. It was unbelievable. And then one monkey bread. It was weird And then this is the bad part

He made me eat it And then I ate it And I go you have something He goes dude I'm gonna die Right And he didn't have it It was literally like a fucking Like a drug movie

You know Yeah yeah It's powerful It was like a drug movie But you know I don't know I guess gotta get it together Because I'm done

Yeah Well you're a man of extremes Yeah, Billy Burr said I ate my way out of show business. At times it feels like you're eating your way into show business. Yeah, I have to listen. I'm mad, too. Is this for your bread podcast? What podcast is for?

Yeah, this is my breaking bread podcast. Oh, you're breaking bread podcast. I'm kind of mad at you. Why? First of all, I've never done it. You haven't? No, never done it. breaking bread.

I thought you did it. I haven't. And you know my story about my grandfather, right? Yeah. Was it bread? About the, did I do it? Did I tell you that before? Yes, you did do it.

Yes. You told us all about your dad, your grandpa's bread. Oh, shit. Okay. Well, there you go. Then I apologize. Thanks for having me on. We do so many and we talk all the time.

It's like, is it a podcast? Is it not a podcast? Yeah. Well, I just wanted to make sure. I just wanted to check. because I haven't seen you and I miss you. And I was wondering, like, because we kind of, I didn't get an update in where you were at food-wise during the end of the pandemic. Now that we're out of it, I figured it was time to take the temperature.

Yes, no. I'm still fucking trying, buddy. All right, buddy. It's my last, I don't do drugs. I don't mess around. I have a monthly wife. I don't use, I can't use Q-T. tips.

I'm banned from Qutips. One of the heads fell off in my ear. The thing they say will happen that you're like, that's never going to happen to me. That happened to me. Right. I go to the hospital. Right.

I have boogers and farts. That's all I have left. So when Monkey Bread shows up, you're going to lose your marbles. That's okay. I lost my mom's, but I'm going to get back on the horse. I spend on losing weight. And I'll be back, but I do love bread.

I know. I wish Sherpico maybe send me some of his bread. You know? I'm going to get work together for fucking ten years. All right. I will get on him. I'll get you bread. And if he doesn't, I'll send you mine.

Will somebody send me bread before I can't have bread anymore? All right. Done. All right, I got to go. The cellar's getting too loud now. I'll see you later, brother. Love you. Bye.

Love you too. Bye. There you have it. That's our big show. Thank you to Jim Serpico. Thank you to Robert Kelly. Oh, that just felt like a New York show. That felt like good people from New York who love comedy and love eating and celebrating and baking bread.

This Serpico story, we're going to have to check in on this intermittently because this is going to be big. And I think we're getting in on the ground floor, so that means we're going to get a lot of prosciutto bread. Thank you so much for subscribing. Thank you so much for reviewing the show. It really helps a lot. if you go to iTunes or wherever you listen and you give us lots of stars and lots of love. Thank you so much. Keep your comments coming. Keep your suggestions coming. Your guests that you'd like to hear from. And more than that, enjoy your life.