Kristina Cho: I went to the University of Cincinnati and I was there from, like, 2009 to 2013.

Dan Pashman: Did you hang out with the Kelce brothers?

Kristina Cho: I .... Okay, so I will say...

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Kristina Cho: I will say ... Jason Kelce, I saw you in the dining hall many times. 

Dan Pashman: Okay, and he doesn’t listen to this podcast, just so you know. I don't think he's gonna hear this, but anyway, go on. Speak directly to Jason. Please, go on.

Kristina Cho: [LAUGHS] Yeah, yeah..

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Kristina Cho: Jason, we would see you at ... we would see you at Center Court. 

Dan Pashman: But you don't have any special insights.

Kristina Cho: I don't remember what Jason's cafeteria order was. I don't remember what he was eating. [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: You don’t remember what he was eating.

Kristina Cho: No.

Dan Pashman: Okay. All right.

Kristina Cho: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Well, this has gotten us nowhere, Kristina.

[LAUGHING]

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Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters. I’m Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. And before we get to today’s show, two quick but very important notes for ya. First, if you need gifts for the eaters in your life, you still have time to order my cookbook, Anything’s Pastable, which Wired just named one of the best cookbooks of 2024! Thank you Wired! Get Anything's Pastable wherever books are sold. Or give someone the gift set of all three of my pastas and my cookbook. The pastas and that gift set come from Sfoglini. You can order those at Sfoglini.com. That's S-F-O-G-L-I-N-I- .com.

Dan Pashman: Second quick note: Memphis! I'm coming to Memphis. Our first ever live Sporkful taping in Tennessee. It's January 16th. I’ll be chatting with the Memphis restaurateur and general legend Karen Blockman Carrier at the Buckman Arts Center. I’ll also be hanging out after to chat and sign copies of my book. For more info and tickets, go to sporkful.com/events. I can't wait to see you there in Memphis. Okay, let’s get to the show.

Dan Pashman: Today, I’m talking with two cookbook authors with a lot in common: Kristina Cho and Bryan Ford. Kristina and Bryan are both children of immigrants, third culture kids who got into food not through restaurants, but by launching their own blogs. They both wrote debut cookbooks that explored baking traditions that have long gotten short shrift in American food culture. And this fall they both released their second cookbooks, where they’re getting more personal and more in depth about the subjects that matter most to them. We’ll start with Kristina. 

Dan Pashman: In 2021, Kristina Cho published her first cookbook, Mooncakes and Milk Bread: Sweet and Savory Recipes Inspired by Chinese Bakeries. And before it came out, there weren’t many English language books about Chinese baking, and Kristina’s book earned a lot of praise. Her new one, Chinese Enough reflects not only what she ate at home, but what she ate with her grandparents, who ran Chinese-American take out restaurants while also cooking traditional Cantonese dishes in their home. Kristina’s maternal grandparents emigrated to Cleveland in the 1960s, and owned a Chinese restaurant in the area. As a kid, she spent a lot of time there after school.  

Kristina Cho: It was a Chinese American restaurant. It was pretty big. Like I remember there being a banquet room in the back. There was a bar that I often did my homework at during off hours.

Dan Pashman: Right.

[LAUGHING]

Kristina Cho: When there weren't other people having, like a cocktail there. I remember late at night or if they were closing and my brother and I was still there, we would rollerblade in the dining room after they picked up all the chairs.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Kristina Cho: It was epic. So amazing.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] And what are some of the things you remember eating in the restaurant growing up?

Kristina Cho: I have such vivid memories of specifically my favorite afternoon snack after school. I would go into the kitchen and, like, ask my grandpa or one of the uncles — like I call them uncles, like they're not actually my uncles, but one of the chefs back there. And I was like, "Can I have an egg roll?" And they would drop like a fresh egg roll into the fryer for me. I was so specific as a child. I would cut it, like, [DAN PASHMAN LAUGHS]  lengthwise and then scoop out all the vegetables, because I was like, I don't want that. I don't want the vegetables.

[LAUGHING]

Kristina Cho: I just want the — I just want the flavor of the vegetables that's like still in contact with the inside of the wrapper and then I would dip it in like so much sweet and sour sauce. That was like one of my favorite afternoon snacks.

Dan Pashman: So you would only eat, like, the fresh fried skin.

Kristina Cho: Yeah, that has vegetable essence. That's what I would say.

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: So even at this early age, Kristina wasn’t just eating her food, she was taking it apart and rebuilding it. Soon, she was leveling up, seeing how else she could reconstitute her food that would create more excitement and deliciousness.

Kristina Cho: My mom would prepare us, like wonton soup, with like a bowl of rice and vegetables on the side and then shrimp chips. I would put a little bit of rice in the shrimp chip, then dunk it in the soup, so that the shrimp chip softens for like one second. And then you take a whole bite and it's like crispy soft and chewy and you get the flavor of the soup. I was already thinking of textures and flavors, you know?

[LAUGHING]

Kristina Cho: I was like ... I was a very strange kid. I really like doing that.

Dan Pashman: No, I mean, honestly, I feel like I'm looking in the mirror. This is the exact kind of stuff I would do when I was a kid.

Kristina Cho: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: I was always, like, dunking, dipping, combining, you know ...

Kristina Cho: Yeah!

Dan Pashman: Like what is this? Does this go well together? How can you fuse this to that?

Kristina Cho: Totally.

Dan Pashman: What if I turn this upside down?

Kristina Cho: Yes.

Dan Pashman: Oh wait, it fell off. That didn't work. Let me try it a different way.

Kristina Cho: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: Always playing with your food. Yeah.

Kristina Cho: Yeah. [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: Anyway, a lot of the food at her grandparents’ restaurant was classic Chinese-American take out, things like orange chicken and the egg rolls Kristina had as a snack. But when she went to her grandparent’s house for dinner, she saw a whole different side of Chinese cooking, one that would stick with her when she became a food writer years later. 

Kristina Cho: My family is Toisan, which is, like, a Cantonese sort of area. Both my grandparents are Toisan. My grandma speaks mostly Toisan and her food is rooted more in that specific style of Chinese cooking. It's kind of hard to explain what it is, but like my grandma cooked with a lot of dried shrimp and a lot of preserved things I remember. Like there's like dried bean curd, shiitake mushrooms, dried scallops and so she would use that a lot in different, like, noodles and soups and, like, braises. 

Kristina Cho: Like, I go to my grandparents house. They make this, like, very specific style of food. You always start with soup and then there's five to six little dishes of some vegetables, some proteins, and you're just, like, mixing and matching and, like, assembling your bowl. Like, that's where I could experience that type of traditional Chinese food.

Dan Pashman: So in a way though, your shrimp chip rice wonton soup concoction, it was a very sort of Chinese way to approach eating.

Kristina Cho: Totally. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Like, it's not so much like a — I feel like I'm, like, learning to embrace, like, one pot cooking ...

[LAUGHING]

Kristina Cho: You know, like one singular thing? Like I've always loved components to my meal.

Dan Pashman: Kristina was not the only one experimenting with her food. She may have gotten that trait from her mother, who was always doing her own experimenting in the kitchen, taking classic midwestern dishes she picked up, and adding her own twists … 

Kristina Cho: So my mom, when she makes her spaghetti and when she makes her meatloaf, it starts off with a base of ground beef, whatever the cheapest ground beef you can get. [LAUGHS] The flavor bases are — it's like salt, white pepper. It's, like, a little bit more pungent, I think, like, funky than just regular black pepper, you know? It has an underlying heat that can kind of creep up on you. And then oyster sauce and ketchup. Oyster sauce is my mom's secret ingredient to everything.

[LAUGHING]

Kristina Cho: She puts it in her potato salad, her tuna salad ... I agree with her. It adds this like really nice salty and, like, savory depth, like, baseline of seasoning.

Dan Pashman: When she was 12, Kristina started getting interested in not just constructing food, but cooking it. She started making things like mac and cheese, and soon moved to more ambitious projects, like cheesecake. Then young Kristina, who you'll recall was building edible structures of shrimp chips, found she had another passion: architecture.

Dan Pashman: In high school, she took technical drawing classes, then studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati — that's where she saw Jason Kelce roaming the dining hall. Both Kelce brothers went there. Kristina planned on a career as an architect, but she was still really into food. For her senior thesis, she drew up plans to redesign a grocery store — a Kroger of the future. In 2014, after graduating, she went out to San Francisco for an internship.

Kristina Cho: I lived in the inner Richmond district of San Francisco and it has, I think, one of the best farmers markets in the city in the Bay Area. And I would go there every weekend and just, like, buy vegetables. You know, just like whatever was calling to me. Take them back and make a dumpling filling.

Dan Pashman: In 2017, Kristina started a food blog as a hobby, called Eat Cho Food, and began posting recipes and essays. 

Kristina Cho: I really liked photography from architecture school. And I was like, I'm going to see what happens. I think that was more the mentality I was going into it. I probably never deep down thought that I was going to be able to write a book or win awards or anything. Like everything has been a complete surprise to me, but I really just thought that maybe it would be a fun hobby and help me channel my creative energy.

Dan Pashman: As time went on, Kristina found herself spending more and more of her week thinking about cooking, and her blog, not about the job she was supposed to be doing at the architecture firm. That being said, her architecture training did come in handy when she had to come up with recipes for her site.

Kristina Cho: It teaches you how to iterate. Yeah, in architecture, you just, like, have to do it. You have to get your hundred bad sketches out of the way in order to get your good one. When you want to be a recipe developer or you're trying to see if making food is a potential maybe job or whatever, you kind of have to, like, go through that.

Dan Pashman: After a few years, Kristina’s blog had established an audience, and she had a few thousand followers on Instagram. In 2019, a literary agent got in touch, and suggested she write a cookbook. Kristina said she’d think about it. A few weeks after that meeting, she was getting ready to host a Lunar New Year dinner party.

Kristina Cho: We were going to have like 30 people come over to our apartment, so a lot of people need a lot of food. And I remember thinking like, "This is so fun. Like, I love it. I was like, maybe I'll be a caterer." I don't know. I was just like, I just love just spending all day in the kitchen, making lists, planning ...

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Kristina Cho: [LAUGHS] Like, I love a list. Like, I was, like, making plans of what time I want to cook the food and what should be served. I just loved all those details. And then the party rolls around on Saturday and I had some co-workers, who are also friends, come and they're like, "Oh, Christina, you like missed promotion day." My office did like surprise promotions. They're like, today's the day we are gonna announce senior designer or whatever. And I realized I was like, I don't care.

[LAUGHING]

Kristina Cho: Like, I was like, I didn't get promoted. I didn't — I wasn't expecting to. And I was just like ... I just like, didn't care and I just like had this introspective moment in this party surrounded by so many of my friends during a holiday that I — I've always felt that Lunar New Year was like my true start fresh new year. Like I love that holiday so much and I had this moment to myself and I was like, I'm gonna quit my job.

MUSIC

Kristina Cho: I'm just gonna, like, figure out how to do this and trust my gut. Like there was something telling me that I should just like give it my all and so that's how I decided.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: After that dinner party, Kristina made a plan. She stayed in her job for a few months, using that time to save up money and develop her book concept. Then she quit architecture, and a few months after that, around Thanksgiving, she got her book deal.

Dan Pashman: You chose to do your first book specifically about Chinese baking.

Kristina Cho: Mm-hmm.

Dan Pashman: But your blog was not only Chinese baking.

Kristina Cho: Nu-uh. No.

Dan Pashman: So why did you make that choice?

Kristina Cho: It was a lot of guidance from my agent. It seemed better to kind of start off with an idea that was really unique. There had been no other kind of, like, modern English written cookbook dedicated to Chinese baking, let alone, like, any sort of Asian baking, you know? There had been plenty of Chinese cookbooks, Asian cookbooks that maybe had like a steamed bun recipe in some chapter or [Dan Pashman: Right.] maybe like an egg tart recipe, you know? But there wasn't like a 300-page cookbook that had like 80 plus recipes dedicated to, like, all the different nuances and facets of a Chinese bakery. At the time, I was, like, really passionate about it. I was like, I really like that idea. That's something that I wish I had maybe when I was 12-years-old and like learning how to cook and bake, you know? Like I didn't see anything like that reflected in media at the time.

Dan Pashman: In 2021, Mooncakes and Milkbread was published. It won two James Beard awards, and the New York Times and The New Yorker both listed it as one of the best cookbooks of the year. After that success, the most logical thing for her to do would be to follow it up with more baking content, but she didn’t do that. She wanted to show off a different facet of her experience. So instead, she wrote her new cookbook, Chinese Enough: Homestyle Recipes for Noodles, Dumplings, Stir-Fries, and More. 

Dan Pashman: For this one, she drew influences that spanned her whole life. When Kristina was growing up, her family used to take trips back and forth to Hong Kong. In the book, Kristina has a recipe for Spam and Mac Soup, a Hong Kong diner classic. She also has a whole photo spread of step-by-step instructions on assembling an egg roll, like the ones she used to eat at her grandparents restaurant. She's got a chapter called “I Love You, Here’s Some Fruit” as a homage to a practice in her family, and some other Asian families. Kristina also wanted to show that her Cleveland roots were just as important as her Chinese ones.

Kristina Cho: I think the Midwestern has come across and like a lot of the recipes fit on one page. You know, they're very efficient. And I think of Midwestern cooking is like that kind of efficiency using what you have. You know, nothing like unnecessary ingredients just for the sake of it. There's a bunch of different recipes that I think kind of, like, encapsulate that. My mom's spaghetti, I feel like is like one of those recipes that really gave me the confidence to just, like, do what I wanted to do and feel confident in it. My mom's spaghetti is essentially what you would consider a Chinese spaghetti, which is a concept I didn't even learn about until, like, the last couple years,  My mom made it up when she was 12 because she was tired of eating rice every day,

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS]

Kristina Cho: She wanted to eat [LAUGHS]... She wanted to eat spaghetti and I think that recipe is a combination of definitely, like, Cantonese flavors using cornstarch in the sauce to thicken it and make it glossy, but then it's, like, still ground beef and really affordable spaghetti noodles that makes a comforting and filling meal that I think a lot of people grew up with in the Midwest or at any kind of American setting. I think I find a lot of confidence when I think back to recipes like that. I'm like, "Oh, like my mom and my grandma were already adapting. So why can't I?".

Dan Pashman: As Kristina dove into her past for Chinese Enough, she ended up uncovering stories about her family she had never heard. 

Kristina Cho: My grandma’s a really stoic person, like she kind of holds a lot in. And like, there's a recipe for hom chi, which are these, like, fried glutinous rice dumplings that are filled with pork and mustard greens and they're really, really yummy. And I sat down with her a couple years ago to learn how to make this. She gave me this, like, one piece of dough and she wouldn't allow me to make dumplings until I finished perfecting the shaping of the dough, you know? Because that's like, what she was taught to do. And so while I was just sitting there, just like, manhandling this dough, [LAUGHS] trying to figure out, like, the right technique, she starts to, like, open up about how, like, "That's how I learned how to make this," and, like, "my older sister and then the village aunties actually taught me how to make this," because my mom had essentially a grudge against her. Like her mom did not like her because she had a lot of kids, and my grandma was the youngest, I believe, a girl. She just valued her brothers more. You know, like she found, like, the presence of another girl in their family almost like a nuisance. And so she was kind of like describing her mom being this, like, really cruel person.

Kristina Cho: I had never heard that before. I had, let alone, never heard of her talking about her childhood ever. And then she opened up about how her dad was the one that, like, actually showed love and cared for her in that sense, you know? And I was like, "You've never ... Like, you never talk about this," you know? And I think if I didn't ... If I didn't, one, didn't make the effort of trying to learn this food and sit down and make this with her, I never would have learned this, like, very human aspect of her. And I think that the act of writing the book allowed me to kind of do all that stuff, but I think for people who are reading the book, I like to hope that, oh, maybe there's a recipe in here that reminds you of your mom or your grandparents or anybody in your family, and you think that they want to make it with you.

MUSIC

Kristina Cho: And there's something safe about this environment where you're cooking together that allows for these different conversations to happen.

MUSIC

Kristina Cho: And I think that Chinese Enough is the cookbook that I've always, like, kind of had within me, you know? Like I think if I could have started with a first cookbook, it would have been something like this, that kind of talks about, like, who I am. As a person, my style of cooking, who has influenced me throughout my life, and talk about, like, the communities and the people and places that I have called home throughout my life and how they impact my food.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: That’s Kristina Cho, her new cookbook is Chinese Enough: Homestyle Recipes for Noodles, Dumplings, Stir-Fries, and More. You can follow her on Instagram @EatChoFood.

Dan Pashman: Coming up, I talk with Bryan Ford, whose new cookbook goes deep on Latin American baking. And then, Bryan bakes up a storm, and lays out an incredible spread for me to try. I can't wait. Stick around. 

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+++BREAK+++

Dan Pashman: I am so happy that American Express is the presenting sponsor of today's episode because I love American Express. I have an AmEx Personal Gold card. If you dine out often, I strongly recommend the Amex Gold Card. So when you go to eat, you use your Amex Gold Card. First of all, you break out an AmEx Gold Card, you know, you just — you kind of feel like a V.I.P., but also when you dine out, you get extra points at restaurants and those points add up fast. Before you know it, you're gonna have enough points for a flight somewhere. Cardholders can enroll and earn up to $120 back in statement credits after paying at participating dining partners, up to $10 each month and get up to $120 back annually after you pay with the American Express Gold Card to dine at U.S. Resy restaurants, or make other eligible Resy purchases. Like I said, with my AmEx Gold Card, I just feel like a V.I.P. and I feel like I'm always racking up points. I get 4 times points at restaurants globally on up to $50,000 annually. AmEx Gold rewards your love of dining experiences allowing you to check out new restaurants, connect with your family and friends, and explore exciting flavors all while earning points. That's the powerful backing of American Express. For terms and to learn more, visit AmericanExpress.com/withamex.

 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I'm Dan Pashman. A couple of more holiday gift related details that I didn’t mention at the top of the show ... If you want to give that special eater in your life my cookbook and pasta gift set from Sfoglini, you gotta order by this Thursday, December 12th for guaranteed delivery by Christmas. Now orders placed a few days after that will probably still get there in time, but Sfoglini can’t guarantee it. Now this gift set is one box each of all three of my pasta shapes — cascatelli, quattrotini, and vesuvio — plus a copy of my cookbook, Anything’s Pastable. Place your orders now at Sfoglini.com! That's S-F-O-G-L-I-G-I-.com. Of course, the cookbook's also available separately wherever books are sold. Okay, back to the show. 

Dan Pashman: Bryan Ford grew up in New Orleans. His parents are from Honduras, and his cookbooks focus on Latin American baking. His first, New World Sourdough, was a best-seller. Now he’s just released, Pan Y Dulce, a much broader, and more in depth look at the huge variety of breads and baked confections from all over Latin America.

Dan Pashman: I met up with Bryan in his apartment in Queens. I wanted to chat in person, not just because I really enjoy in-person conversations, but also because Bryan had promised to bake me some goodies from his book. First though, I wanted to hear about the road that led him to this new book. He says it all started with his mother, who cooked for the family and preserved their Honduran culture through food. And one of Bryan’s favorites was always baleadas. 

Bryan Ford: Baleadas, obviously, that at a certain point, that was like every weekend when I was really young, like, it was, "We having baleadas, you know?

Dan Pashman: Yeah, talk to me about baleadas.

Bryan Ford: Yeah, man.

Dan Pashman: Because ... So I live out on Long Island, and there is a substantial Central American [Bryan Ford: Yeah.] population right around where I live. In fact, in my town, there is a restaurant called La Ceiba King.

Bryan Ford: [CHEERS]

[LAUGHING]

Bryan Ford: [CHEERS]

Dan Pashman: Isn't that where your dad's from?

Bryan Ford: That's where my dad’s from!.

Dan Pashman: He's from La Ceiba.

Bryan Ford: La Ceiba, man. Yeah.

Dan Pashman: And I had the baleadas. I had — there was one baleada especial, baleada con todo ..

Bryan Ford: Oh man, I love that you went down and got some baleadas. So baleada is the national dish of Honduras, actually. It is my lifeblood. 

Dan Pashman: A baleada is made with a Honduran tortilla, which is a flour tortilla that’s a little thicker and doughier than a Mexican style one. It’s folded over and filled with refried beans, cheese, and any other fillings you want to put in there. It could have scrambled egg, avocado, or meat. 

Bryan Ford: But the key with the baleada, the tortillas, the chew of the tortilla has to be very — it's got to have the right — you know, when you talk about bagels and pizza crusts, people say, "Oh, it's got to have the right chew,"? It needs to have this right snap when you bite it soft, yet a little bit firm. If you bite into a tortilla, a baleada, and you get a clean bite through the tortilla, like immediately that tortilla was probably a little bit dry or a little bit too thick, or just not right.

Dan Pashman: There should be a pull to it.

Bryan Ford: A little pull.

Dan Pashman: It needs to stretch.

Bryan Ford: It's gotta be almost translucent looking.

Dan Pashman: I showed Bryan a picture on my phone of the baleadas from La Ceiba King to get his take. He immediately noted the mix of dark brown toasty spots, and translucent, slightly underdone spots. 

Bryan Ford: And I’m gonna tell you right now, that's exactly how it's supposed to be. Exactly. Because those parts that seem a little gummy or pale and underdone, those are the parts that give that chew. That's the part that's going to have that little bit of elasticity and that softness in the bite. So the tortilla looks really nice. A hundred percent Ceiba King.

Dan Pashman: The tortilla might be the key to a great baleada, but you’ve also got to make sure that your fillings are prepared right.

Bryan Ford:  So the beans, the cream, and cheese — all three of them have to meet a certain criteria. The beans, for me — coconut milk. Coconut milk, that toquecito. That coconut milk in the beans, that little touch of coconut milk in the beans is important. The aroma of coconut permeates Honduras. It's such an important ingredient. So, you have the coconut milk in the tortilla, you got the coconut milk in the beans, not overpowering, and then cumin, comino. Comino, onions sauteed with butter. Beans prepared that way, just by someone who knows how to do it, it's — they're masterful. And then you refry them. The cheese, queso seco, queso duro, it's a Honduran cheese. It's very, very, very, uh, funky and salty. It's very, very overpowering. Now that, I will argue to the ends of the earth, there is no cheese that tastes like it period.

Dan Pashman: Food wasn’t the only thing Bryan took from his mother. When he went to college in New Orleans, he decided he’d follow her career path, and become an accountant. But around the same time, he also got into baking as a hobby — breads, croissants, and on Mardi Gras, he’d make King Cake. Now, if you’re not familiar with King Cake ...

Bryan Ford: Cinnamon sugar brioche, let's call it, baked and filled with cream cheese fillings, jam fillings, topped with a royal icing and three colored sugars, green, purple, and gold. And then they used to be stuffed with babies. When I grew up, you would go to school, you'd eat it and almost choke on the baby ...

Dan Pashman: Plastic, a little ...

Bryan Ford: Plastic.

Dan Pashman: Right, a little toy, not actual babies. 

Bryan Ford: Ohh! [LAUGHS]

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: For the record, no one’s eating babies.

Bryan Ford: Oh my god.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Bryan Ford: Let me give you a ... Let me give you an alt for the edit [DAN PASHMAN LAUGHS] because that did ... that didn't just stuffed with babies!

Dan Pashman: No, no. Are you kidding? We’re gonna keep it this way. People’s ears just perked up, Bryan. Okay?

Bryan Ford: [LAUGHS] Oh my god.

Dan Pashman: Everyone just stopped what they were doing for a second. 

Dan Pashman: Now that we have your attention, the little plastic baby — first off, it’s supposed to be a baby Jesus, not just any random baby. But it’s placed inside the cake after it’s been baked. Everyone gets a slice, and if you get the slice with the little plastic baby, then you have to bring the King Cake next year. In college, Bryan began trying to perfect his own King Cake recipe, and started selling them on the street. When he got his first accounting job, he continued the tradition on the side …

Bryan Ford: Went out there with a cutting board, and I would just, you know, serve them up, five bucks a slice. Bing bang, you know? Cops pull up, they don't like it, you know what I'm saying? It was always a battle, but, you know, it's Mardi Gras, so I ... Some cops would just take a slice as like a payoff or something like that, you know what I mean?

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS]

Bryan Ford: These are the moments I was realizing that I should have a bakery. And then I would start going to work every day talking about opening a bakery and it's like ... It was fun until I realized I was like talking to my bosses. And I'd be like, oh shit, I don’t think they ...

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Bryan Ford: Because they would like ... They would, like, engage it a few times, but like when I'm, like, always talking about baking ...

Dan Pashman: Right, right.

Bryan Ford: I was like, oh, like, I'm probably going to get fired ...

[LAUGHING]

Dan Pashman: Bryan, this is the fifth time this month you started a conversation with, "When I get the hell out of here ..." [LAUGHS]

Bryan Ford: Yeah, exactly. That's what it became. That's what it became. 

Dan Pashman: After a few years, Bryan took the plunge. He quit his job as an accountant, with big plans to open his own bakery. The decision was exhilarating. But after two months of recipe testing, with no income, Bryan realized he might have gotten in over his head. He went back to accounting. But a year later, he was still daydreaming about baking, so he quit his accounting job again. He decided he needed a change of scenery, so he figured he’d do some traveling. He’d never been to Europe before, and he was looking for inspiration to help him figure out his next steps.

Bryan Ford: I was like, hey, man, let me go out there to France and Italy and I want to taste a croissant and I want to taste focaccia and so I went. And I was like, yeah, this is awesome. I had my first month or so going around Europe, tasting bread. I've been spending all this time learning how to make croissants. I need to go taste them. [LAUGHS] You know what I mean, so ...

Dan Pashman: And what did you take from that trip? 

Bryan Ford: I took from that trip that I can't be in a box. I don't belong in a box, or a cubicle, or a job. I cannot exist within the structure of not being able to move freely or decide what I do. That’s what I really learned.

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Dan Pashman: Bryan came back from Europe, and in 2016, he got an invitation that fit perfectly with his new outlook.

Bryan Ford: A friend of mine was living in Miami and he was like, "Yo, I just bought this house by the water. Like, why don't you come reinvent yourself here."

Dan Pashman: So Bryan moved to Miami and started baking nonstop. 

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Bryan Ford: I just dove headfirst into perfecting fermentation, perfecting mixing dough by hand, perfecting the sourdough pre-ferments, the timing of them, the humidity, how it affects them ...

Dan Pashman: He started selling his goods at a farmer’s market.

Bryan Ford: I was actually selling King Cake at my first farmer's market [Dan Pashman: Okay.] selling King Cake and baguettes kinds of thing. Besides the King Cake, everything else I was trying to perfect was very European — olive baguettes, croissants, pan chocolate, brioche ... I was very determined to make those perfect country-style loaves, rustic loaves that looked like it had the perfect ear opening and all that kind of thing.

Dan Pashman: Around this time, Bryan’s mom came to visit, and Bryan wanted to show her how far he’d come with his baking.

Bryan Ford: I was showing her my sourdough cause I started to get really good at it. And she was like, "You should make pan de coco," and then that was it. Instant ... Instant light bulb, instant ... Instant, duh. Of course I should — I'm Honduran. Why wouldn't I?

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Bryan Ford: That was the moment that took this pursuit for a bakery where I would sell croissants and focaccias, like everyone else, no offense, [DAN PASHMAN LAUGHS] to the pursuit of saying, "Well, why wouldn't I make pan de coco and semitas and pan dulces and mallorcas and medialunas and golfeados? Why can't I make a bakery with that??

Bryan Ford: So I started writing about it, posting videos to social media, those started to gain traction and that was that. That was the moment where I realized, oh, people are interested in a pan de coco made with sourdough. It provoked their mind a little bit. It caught them off guard and got them to say, "Whoa, what is this?"

Dan Pashman: Pan de coco is a whole wheat roll made with coconut milk. It used to be naturally leavened, like all breads used to be, but in modern times, it’s generally made with commercial yeast. In Bryan’s recipe, he uses his sourdough starter as the pre-ferment. That leavens the bread naturally, without commercial yeast, making his technique a throwback to traditional methods. It also gives his pan de coco a more earthy, hearty taste 

Bryan Ford: So traditionally, it's a bread that's used for, like, if you're eating soup or stews, it's a bread you would use to dip into that. So it's ...

Dan Pashman: But it's not crusty though.

Bryan Ford: No.

Dan Pashman: Soft and dense.

Bryan Ford: No, it's not a ... it's a soft and dense bread. The coconut milk is a very enriching fattening milk to use in your baking. So if you're using coconut milk, you're going to get a fluffy inside, but it's going to be a little bit denser if you're not using water. But again, the word — don't fear the word dense, if you're listening to this, by the way.

Dan Pashman: I love a dense bread.

Bryan Ford: Yeah, dense is not a bad word [Dan Pashman: No.] when it comes to bread. Dense, density — challah is dense, right?

Dan Pashman: One hundred percent.

Bryan Ford: A bagel could be dense.

Dan Pashman: Bryan posting that pan de coco and getting a huge reaction was a turning point. 

Bryan Ford: That was the ticket to saying, hey, I think I have a story to tell. I think I have something to offer and it might not be a tangible location where you can come and see me baking and buy my breads, but it's a website, [LAUGHS] a blog ... Artisanbrian.com, I launched sometime in early 2018 and it had my first few recipes posted there. And let me tell you, man, to this day, I’ve still never seen people consume my recipes as rampantly as that pan de coco recipe that I posted for, I would say, a solid two years straight. I mean, every day there were so many people posting it. 

Dan Pashman: Bryan had found his audience online, but when he made this switch at the farmer’s market, where he’d been selling European breads, some of his customers weren’t sure what to make of it.

Bryan Ford: People don't equate Latin American baking with the things that they want to consume for five bucks a pop. How about that? Does that make sense?

Dan Pashman: Right.

Bryan Ford: Like, if you're spending five or six bucks for a pastry, most people are expecting it to be a certain way, you know, Danish or a croissant. People are importing butter from France to make croissants. And then they charge six bucks for the croissant. No one bats an eye. No one cares. They're just like, "Of course. This is great. It's a croissant. It's amazing." But you try to use Mesoamerican chocolate and source your vanilla from Mexico and all this kind of thing, and, "Oh, well, no, concha shouldn't be — this is ridiculous."

Dan Pashman: This skepticism didn’t hold Bryan back. In 2020, Bryan published his first book, New World Sourdough. It brought together all of the work he’d been doing on baking so far. There were recipes for ciabatta and focaccia, which he had been developing early in his baking career, along with pan de coco and other Latin American baked goods. Sourdough plays a key role in all of these recipes, and Bryan was showing that baked goods from Latin America can easily be placed alongside more well-known European breads. 

Bryan Ford: With New World Sourdough, I just wanted to let people know that you could actually bake from indigenous Black and Brown cultures in Latin America using your sourdough starter. Sourdough was not invented in San Francisco, man.

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS]

Bryan Ford: You know? I want people to feel like Latin America is in their kitchen.

Dan Pashman: Now this was a novel approach for a baking book. There were not many Latin American baking books out there. But this one was really good, and it hit just at the right time, when sourdough was already trendy and then covid got so many people into baking bread. New World Sourdough became a bestseller. There was a write up in the New York Times and Bryan went on the Today Show. 

Dan Pashman: Now at this point, like with Kristina Cho, the obvious move for Bryan would have been to lean into what got him a hit cookbook, right? Double down on the sourdough focus, but he too chose a different path. In his second cookbook, Pan y Dulce, which just came out, he leaves European breads completely behind and focuses exclusively on baking traditions from South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.

Dan Pashman: As I take a step back and look at the arc of his career, it feels like this second book is the one he’s been building towards. Like with Kristina, it’s the one that was always within him. As I said to Bryan, this feels like his magnum opus. 

Dan Pashman: New World Sourdough is a great book. It did well, you know, but I, just like taking a step back and thinking about the arc of your career that we've been discussing, like, it feels like that was sort of the warm-up and like ...

Bryan Ford: Yes, I've heard people say that.

Dan Pashman: A lot of people will say is, like, this is really, like, what's the definitive book on Latin American baking? Like, this is it. It's got so many recipes, so much technique, and then the storytelling and the photography, I just feel like it ties it all together.

Bryan Ford: I appreciate that, man. It makes me ... It's still, like, I know ... You know, like, it's just a lot of emotions, because of ... Just like that, I just think about my parents, and, you know, my dad's not here for this one. There's a lot, a lot of stuff that — it's more than just making a book. It's like connecting with my ancestors and trying to understand and unpack why I'm even here and how it came to be.

Dan Pashman: Pan Y Dulce has savory recipes and all kinds of sweet cakes, breads, and pastries, recipes with indigenous grains and regular all-purpose flour. And there’s a whole range of recipes in the Sourdough chapter, where Bryan gets to show in a range that goes far beyond his first cookbook, that sourdough has long been part of baking cultures throughout the world …

Bryan Ford: I see Latin American baking as the premier form of baking, like I like the ingredients and, you know, the chocolate and the vanilla and the panela. So that's why I'm so passionate about doing more and finding more stories, until, you know, when you see the World Cup of Baking, or any form of high level baking, there is the respect on the pan dulce, and it's there as a colleague to that croissant. That's what — that's the goal,

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Dan Pashman: With his new book, Bryan’s well on his way. But as much as I was enjoying our conversation, I have to admit, I was focused on more immediate goals, relating to the glorious array of baked goods from his new cookbook that Bryan had laid out for me. When’s it time to eat?!

Bryan Ford: All right, so we have a pizza Napoletana, which is a version of Argentinian style pizza. We've got some — this is a pan de plátano a la parria, which is a sourdough bread with uh, roasted plantains, honey, and sea salt baked on a banana leaf.

Dan Pashman: Oh, what should we eat first? The pizza, cause it's hot?

Bryan Ford: Yeah!

Dan Pashman: All right, let's do it. 

Dan Pashman: This is an Argentinian style pizza, with thick-cut tomatoes on top, and whole olives stuck right in the dough. 

Dan Pashman: Listen to that crackle. [CRACKLE]

Bryan Ford: Oh my god.

Dan Pashman: Like, you have great contrast here. We're eating char and crunchiness and then doughiness and the garlic and whole olives also. Whole olives on pizza should happen more often.

Bryan Ford: Mm hmm.

Dan Pashman: [EATING PIZZA] Let's keep eating. What should we have next?

Bryan Ford: Why don't we get into the plantain?

Dan Pashman: All right. So I should describe these for our audio listeners. These are long, narrow, they're like a foot-long, [Bryan Ford: Mm-hmm.] but only a couple of inches wide.

Bryan Ford: Mm-hmm.

Dan Pashman: A very ... A real char on the crust. They feel hard and they feel heavy and then they have a slight long sort of plantain quarters laying down the center of them. And then they're drizzled with honey and sea salt, you said?

Bryan Ford: Yep, yep. I'm gonna go ahead and get right in.

Dan Pashman: Let's just bite into it. [EATING] Mmm. This is a meal.

Bryan Ford: Mm-hmm.

Dan Pashman: I love how hearty it is.  

Bryan Ford: Now, we have the Alfajores. 

Dan Pashman: Alfajores are small, almost bite-sized sandwich cookies, with a cookie that’s sturdy and yet still tender, and a rich dulce de leche filling.

Bryan Ford: One of my all time favorites. 

Dan Pashman: This is a good day at the office.

Bryan Ford: Yeah. One of the takeaways I got from wholesaling my wholesale bakery exploits last year was perfecting these because I sold them to a coffee shop here. And the thing is that they're — they're maizena. So like they're cornstarch and wheat-based. So it's almost that marriage between corn and wheat that you see in Latin America. You need to have the right — they're crumbly, but they're not dry. You know what I'm saying? You understand what I'm saying?

Dan Pashman: Right, right.

Bryan Ford: They're crumbly, but they ain't dry.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Bryan Ford: They're crumbly, but they're moist in the middle. And then they blend in with the dulce de leche and you don't have filling exploding. You don't have — it's not cracking off and falling. So it — I'm not going to lie. I'm actually kind of impressed with myself [DAN PASHMAN LAUGHS] because this — when I bit into it, I was like, "Oh shit, that hit that."

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

Bryan Ford: When I bit into it, I was like, "That hit."

Dan Pashman: It’s so good ...

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Dan Pashman: That was Bryan Ford, his new book is Pan Y Dulce. It's available now wherever books are sold. You can follow him on Instagram @ArtisanBryan. And get this, we are giving away a copy of Pan y Dulce, and Kristina Cho’s new book, Chinese Enough. To enter, all you need to do is sign up for our newsletter by January 6th. You can sign up right now at sporkful.com/newsletter. If you are already on our mailing list, then you’re already entered into this and all our future contests. So get on the list! Plus, we'll drop you a line once in a while with recipes and links and other fun stuff. Open to U.S. and Canada residents only. Again, sign up now at Sporkful.com/newsletter.

Dan Pashman: Next week’s show is our annual Salad Spinner Year in food! This is our rapid fire round table show where we look at the strangest and most surprising food stories of the year. I’ll be joined by Nikita Richardson, a food editor at The New York Times, and Joe Yonan, cookbook author and food and dining editor at The Washington Post.

Dan Pashman: In the meantime, if you are looking for more Sporkful episodes, check out last week’s show, about the mixologist who went sober. LP O’Brien tells me about what changed with her work as a bartender when she went sober, and she shares some great recipes for Non-Alcoholic holiday drinks. That episode's up now.

 Dan Pashman: And hey, did you know that you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? Then there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXM.com/sporkful.

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Dan Pashman: Thank you to our presenting sponsor American Express. AmEx Gold makes your dining experiences more rewarding so you can discover more, connect more, and experience more dining moments. Enjoy every meal with the benefits that come with American Express Gold. For terms and to learn more, visit AmericanExpress.com/withamex.