Emulsifier Smulsifier

Rick (00:04):

It takes a bit of a blend of art and science to get baking just right and having extra eyes, ears, and hands can make a big difference along the way. That’s where A. B. Maury North America comes into play. We are the team behind industrial and artists and bakers that help optimize success. We’ll discuss more on this episode of The Oven Light. So let’s get going. Flip the switch. Welcome aboard everybody. This is episode number seven. Is that a baker’s half dozen maybe? I don’t know. Six plus one. Anywho, welcome to The Oven Light. We have a great show in store for you today. We have our product director from AB Maury North America, Nicole Reese, who has quite a history in baking. A few things that you didn’t know about Nicole. And so let me set this up. The oven light is on. Let’s go.

(00:59):

So Nicole has been with the company in a couple different stints, a couple different continents, has been with the company for more than 20 years. If I’m doing my math right, I had to take my shoes and socks off to kind of do the math, but it was pretty impressive. So Nicole is our product director, manages multiple categories. Prior to that, she spent time with A. B. Maury’s division over in Europe Maori Technology as a director of development and innovation. It’s amazing the world of LinkedIn, right? The things you can find. So spent six years overseas with a company. Also has quite a writing background. I’m looking at this plethora, a plethora, if you will, of baking books, the bakers manual, a couple of different editions, a fifth edition, understanding baking, third edition, baking unplugged. I mean, wow. Pretty cool. And then a compilation of articles here.

(01:51):

Nicole, welcome to the program.

Nicole (01:53):

Thank you. I’m very happy to be here.

Rick (01:55):

This is exciting. We’re going to talk about emulsifiers today. But before we get down to the nitty-gritty, let’s have a little bit of fun. We have some things we call the rapid fire questions.

Nicole (02:04):

Yes.

Rick (02:04):

So you walk into a bakery. What catches your eye? What are you buying?

Nicole (02:08):

Okay. You realize that this is actually something we do as a family is walking to bakeries. We take field trips. And so immediately I want to see what they are good at. What kind of bakery is it? So we’re going to get a little something from every offering they have. And what I mean is, if this is a bread bakery, I’m going to go start judging the breads and I’m going to decide which I need to have because it’s so unusual or because of that texture I can tell from afar. If they make pastry, oh my goodness, because I live near a French bakery and they absolutely have some phenomenal items. My weakness is puff pastry, specifically the ronyard or the ends, which are used to make Napoleons. I love crispy, but I love texture and that’s why I’m in baking. Baking is about different textures coming together.

(02:52):

So every shop has something different for me. Pie doughnuts on a road trip, I will go into convenient marts and I will buy packaged baked goods and eat them and judge them in the car. I just love sugar and I love baking.

Rick (03:04):

Nobody, like previously on the shows, there’s like, “Yeah, I’ll take a baguette or some donuts.” They’re not like, “Well, I’m judging. I’m going to look at texture.” I don’t even know the word you said about Napoleons, but it was really brilliant. And Napoleons are awesome too. Okay, let’s keep moving here. I also know that you have a little bit of a penchant for nutritional bars. We’ve kind of shared that love over the last few years of like, “Hey, have you tried this one and that one?” And I’m not trying to give a plug for anybody, but we tend to like this cliff bar that’s dark chocolate with banana and peanut butter, right?

Nicole (03:35):

Yeah, you introduced me to that one. That was new for me. I’m really glad we went on that field trip together. It was supposed to be just breads, but we ended up on the bar aisle. Yeah, because I travel like you do, there are times when you just need to make sure that you’re getting protein, fiber, vitamins, and those bars are a lifesaver.

Rick (03:52):

Okay. All right. Let’s get real for a second here. Now this is deep. This has nothing to do with bakery. And we’ve had some suspect answers in the past from previous guests. Favorite movie and why?

Nicole (04:02):

Okay. So I like a lot of bad movies. I’m not going to mention them here. I have really juvenile tastes. I love comedy. For about a decade, I would’ve told you my favorite movie was The Lord of the Rings. But recently, I’m obsessed with this movie that’s a sleeper that no one knows about called The Arrival. And it is a weird, slow, beautiful movie that no one expects it to be what it’s-

Rick (04:28):

Who’s starring in that?

Nicole (04:29):

Amy Adams to send it. Okay. And I forget the gentleman who’s with her, but he’s super famous too. It’s a very quiet movie and it’s just not what you think. You think it’s about extraterrestrials. It is about something so much bigger than that. Interesting. And wow.

Rick (04:43):

All right. We’ll have to check it out. We put that on the list. And speaking of arrivals, Nicole Reese is with us today. She’s product director for AB Maury. So let’s jump into some of the work. I mentioned you’ve been with the company in a couple different stints over a couple decades. Why is AB Maury your home? Why do you like it? Why do you like this new product role that you’ve been in for a couple years now?

Nicole (05:03):

That’s a lot to answer. It’s almost like saying, why are you in baking? I was hired … Literally the ad I responded to, Rick, was research baker needed. Do you understand that that’s like this magic sentence? Research baker. After being a pastry chef, after being a food editor and a food stylist, that was like baking science had welcomed me into the realm. And all of a sudden I got more ingredients to play with. Because if you’re a baker, you love to know how things are put together to make a certain texture and you’re just obsessed with that. And so more knowledge was fun. Go into the industrial side, more ingredients. And then I specialized in, of course, in the baking enzymes, the improvers that we have for both bread and sweet goods. And I became a research manager because I love making things. I used to make the actual cakes and now I make things to make cake butter and now I’m product director.

(05:55):

And that’s really fun because then you move across the company in a horizontal line working with every single department. We’re about owning a category from the conception of an idea all the way to managing the product lines and discontinuation, strategy, finance, innovation, manufacturing, how we’re going to do this and regulatory. I love that. And we used to wear a lot of hats in Wilsonville when it was really tiny. I used to be called on to do all those things. So I love it. It’s fun.

Rick (06:28):

Yeah. You kind of seen it from multiple angles. I’m going to get this out of the way just because we have to. Congratulations on your University of Kansas men’s basketball team winning the national championship again.

Nicole (06:38):

I feel like that’s sarcasm, but that’s okay.

Rick (06:41):

No, I meant it really sincerely.

Nicole (06:42):

No one ever expects it from Kansas. They get a little worried because they know that we’re not always that good and then all of a sudden we jump ahead and do something every once in a while. So what did

Rick (06:50):

You major in?

Nicole (06:51):

So I didn’t get to this role in a normal way. Most people have a food science degree or a bakery science from K States.

Rick (07:00):

Broadcast journalism. It was called telecommunication. Sounds like AT&T.

Nicole (07:03):

Explains why you’re doing this though. And I actually was an English major and the reason I was an English major, I love reading the course catalog. I got to the university and the course catalog was an inch thick. And I read all of the requirements for all of the majors. And then I read all the classes and all the things you could major in. And it was like shopping. It was like going to the grocery store. It was so exciting. I could not make a decision. So I quickly realized getting an English degree wasn’t going to take that much time. I could double major. I had a double major in art history. I wrote a thesis that was a blend from two different departments together. I took biology and chemistry and macroeconomics and anthropology. And it was fun. I had a lot.

Rick (07:45):

Do you want to host the show? You’ve got like great background and great stories waiting to be told. All right, so let’s dive a little further. Where’d you grow up? How’d you get to KU? What were these things that kind of made you who you are? Because obviously from the things you’ve been saying, you’re very curious. You like to look in depth at things. A lot of people look above and just, if they’re walking in a crowd, they might just see a massive people where you’re like, “Wow, look at that outfit. That’s a cool look and tie. It probably matches his shoes.” Or, “That handbag is from this, that, and the other designer.” I’m sure you have an eye like that. So why are you like that? How did you get that as a child?

Nicole (08:18):

It was very hard for me to understand that I should go into food. Believe it or not, I had a blind spot there. I like learning, and learning was fun. And I was never told by my parents that going to college meant that you actually choose a career while you’re there. You figure out kind of what you enjoy, what you’re good at, what are your skills, and then you’re going to go and get something and you’re going to work on that throughout your life. So I had no pressure to come out with, “Hey, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” And that’s hard because sometimes if you like everything, you have to cut back. So I went into … Actually, my first career was working in art museums. I was the head of education for a museum when I was in graduate school and art history.

(08:55):

And I was at Oberlin for that. And I loved, loved learning. And remember art history is much like food science in a way because food at any one time is a combination of everything, right? It represents what’s going on environmentally and politically and what we believe about our culture. All of our beliefs are somehow inside what we’re producing. It shows you our capabilities and artifacts are like that too. So art’s the same way. So as I was going through my 20s and trying to figure out where I belonged, it turned out that the one link throughout my life had been food and cooking. And that started when I was probably about three years old and realized my mother wasn’t a good cook. I spent time at my grandparents on the weekends. This is in California. I was born in California in the Bay Area and my grandfather would get off his shift.

(09:46):

He worked all night and he would come home and sleep a couple hours and then take me in the VW van down to the grocery store. And he would say, “You can have anything you want. ” We would go do the day shopping and he would bring it back to my grandma, but he would say, “You can have anything you want. ” We would go through the bakery. He actually was from Europe, which I didn’t put together as a kid. So I didn’t understand that it was unusual for me to be having bad guests with salami with butter as a sandwich as a kid. But he really just let me try things and hate them or try things and love them. I moved away when I was five and we moved to the Midwest. I’ve lived in nine different states, I think. I lose count.

(10:20):

But when I would go home in college, the one place I could always find was the grocery store. When I went back in my 20s, I could find the grocery store and the bakery and the ice cream shop that I had been to as a kid. And I started cooking in the Midwest at about age eight. My mom let me start cooking and baking. By 10, it was my own recipes. Out of necessity, Rick, my mother just gave me the joy of cooking, her joy of cooking because she said, “I can’t go to the grocery store all the time and buy you stuff. I’m sorry we’re out of cake mix. Just deal with it. You’re going to have to learn how to make a cake.” And so I would go through and make these recipes and some of them just were not kid friendly. Going to be honest, they were made for grownups.

(10:59):

And so I would have to adapt them. And then if she didn’t have the right baking powder, and I would read this, was it double acting in this? I’d have to figure out, what are we going to do? At age

Rick (11:07):

10,

Nicole (11:07):

Everybody. But it’s in books, it’s there. And so I would look and say, “Well, we have baking soda and cream and tartar. Fine. Can I get away with this? ” And so I just started making my own recipes to please me. And funny enough, did not think that that was a major hint in life of what I should do.

Rick (11:21):

Yeah. And then it evolved into this massive publications I

Nicole (11:24):

See in

Rick (11:25):

Front of us. They used to say when Julius Irving was on the basketball court, the doctor is in. I feel like the doctor is in today. We’re getting a clinic from Nicole Reese. So we’re going to dive a little back into the work here. So the episode today, we want to focus on emulsifiers. Let’s dumb it down. And I’m a dummy. So baking for dummies, what is an emulsifier? What does it do? Why is it important?

Nicole (11:48):

Well, you are going to get the dumb version because I assume we’re going to have the PhDs here today to help correct me because I am going to give you the simple version. So most of the things that we bake at home, whether it’s through a batter system for cakes or through a dough system for breads, we’re trying to trap air somehow. When you talk about trapping air in cake batter and in bread dough, you really do need something called an emulsifier to protect the gas bubbles. And here’s why. Usually we’re talking about oil and water or water in oil emulsions. And what that means is we all say oil and water, they don’t mix. And we use that as a metaphor. But if you put an emulsifier in there, they do. They do actually mix really well and they’re stable. And that’s how we stabilize these gas cells.

(12:35):

And what that means is you can get more teeny, tiny air bubbles when you’re making a cake batter, and that’s going to make a really fine texture, a great volume, soft cake. You want that. On the side of bread, when you’ve done all this work to make a dough, you don’t want to see the gas bubbles start to coalesce, we say, into just one big one. You want to be uniform so everything goes up in a nice shape.

Rick (13:00):

So if you cut open a bag in, you’ve got that big air pocket. You’re like, “No place for my butter.”

Nicole (13:04):

And baking is a stressful endeavor on industrial level. I mean, the process is pretty rigorous out there if you’ve seen it. And ingredients can vary on how they perform. And an emulsifier gives you this amazing consistency because it has the ability to link to the oil side. It has basically a water loving side and a fat loving side, and it helps link them together and stabilize them.

Rick (13:27):

So let’s talk clean label here because there’s clean label ingredient options in every category, including emulsifiers. Why is it such a hot topic today to have clean label? Well,

Nicole (13:38):

There’s been a movement for quite a while to try to simplify the ingredient decks. And you hear things like, “Oh, we want to see it be kitchen cupboard type ingredients.” Well, got to tell you, it’s really hard to make some of our favorite products just with what grandma had in the cabinet. And I know that from my cooking as a child, I always wondered why my cakes, even from the best cookbook in the world, weren’t as light, weren’t as moist, didn’t have the air bubbles and texture that the cake mix had. And then you read the back of the cake mix and you see that there are some pretty powerful emulsifiers in there.

Rick (14:14):

Can you give an example?

Nicole (14:15):

Well, in bread, we’re talking about sodium sterile actylate and mono anddiglycerides. Excuse me?

Rick (14:19):

Can you spell that? Can I buy a vowel?

Nicole (14:21):

And then you go into the cake side and you might see a lot more. So you might see sorbitan, monosterate and SSL and monoglyceride. You might even see a polysorbate in there, PGMEs. I mean, I’m going to start to abbreviate because there’s so many. We’re

Rick (14:35):

Going back to chemistry class, aren’t

Nicole (14:36):

We? Yeah.

Rick (14:36):

Yeah.

Nicole (14:37):

But as you can imagine, these are not friendly words. It sounds like you’re back in organic chemistry and trying to figure out, well, is that a friendly item? Do I want that in my food? And we have been working at ABMARI for years. We specialize in clean label and first was really in breads, working to get some of these ingredients out and offer through enzymes, which are a little bit more friendly for the label, a way of getting similar effects as emulsifiers without having to use them. And that is a really tough thing to do because emulsifiers, as I was trying to allude to, are extremely functional and very reliable, and we’ve had to work hard to make sure that our products can do the same.

Rick (15:21):

So a couple other categories that you cover. You cover softening or some fresh keeping. You also cover structure and quality, but a lot of work you’ve done also kind of fits in that better for you clean label space. Sugar reduction continues to be one that pops up. And depending on what side of the Atlantic you are, you can talk about the popularity, but it still continues to be at the forefront of talking about obesity and US consumers and sugar consumption. Are there better ways for people to protect their health? Is that a little bit of a growing passion maybe for you or you- Well,

Nicole (15:56):

Nutrition’s always been a passion for me and health, specifically how to find healthy ways of eating without giving up all my favorite things I like to indulge in. So I don’t really want to find myself in a place where I can’t have all the yummy things. Now, as far as sugar reduction goes, we’re at a really interesting time because we’ve watched that trend hit, especially beverages. And of course, anything that’s on our nutrition and sports bars, you’re always reading to see how many grams of sugar you’re getting with that little bar. It’s just kind of coming into bakery. And I feel I have a lot of sympathy for all the bakers out there. We’re all trying to figure out what do consumers want to see a reduction in sugar and which items? Do they care that the donut has sugar in it? Because we know that when people want to go on and get a donut, they want that donut to be wonderful and perfect.

(16:48):

And they would be shocked if the texture or flavor changed at all because somebody tried to make it healthy. That would go against the indulgence. So it’s really hard to be prepared to go any direction with sugar reduction, but it’s important that we start. And so at AB Mari, we’ve really started with, say, the healthier breads, your grain breads. And sometimes when you put a lot of whole grain in a formula and a lot of nuts and seeds, kids might find it, oh, maybe not as delicious and sweet. And so you compensate by adding a little honey or molasses or brown sugar. And lo and behold, over time, because we like our bread sweet in the US, the sugar grows. So we’ve been working to reduce the sugar through different means. And of course, I love our Rebem Stevia that we buy. That’s one of my favorite products because what we’re trying to do is give people the sweetness and the texture that they love without having them look at whole grain bread and say, “Well, was it really healthy?” We want them to walk away knowing I ate something good for me.

Rick (17:51):

All right. So here’s a true false question.

Nicole (17:53):

The

Rick (17:53):

Question is, is it true that people consume just as much sugar in all the sweet goods that they eat throughout the year as they do in the breads and regular baked goods, like breads and rolls and croissants and things? Is that a fair statement?

Nicole (18:12):

In the US, it is. So if you go pound by pound where we get our sugar from, we do actually get a lot of our sugar from breads and I don’t think people realize it. And as I start to flip over that nutritional facts panel and see where the added sugars come from, you’re absolutely right, Rick. That’s our concern that people are going to notice that they’re getting sugar in places they didn’t expect it. And that’s where we’ve seen the trend of lower sugar take place. People flip over their salad dressing or a sauce that they’re using on their meat thinking there’s sugar in the sauce. We’ve kind of figured the sweet goods area would be the last to take traction, but we do know that our obligation is to protect texture and protect that enjoyment of baked goods because if we have consumers that turn away from products because it isn’t amazing, that’s terrible for our industry.

(19:00):

It’s terrible for us. So that’s why we’re very careful about how we roll these out.

Rick (19:04):

Okay. So a couple other questions here. So you’re very involved in this group that is geared towards cereal chemists, very unique. Maybe it’s a niche. Why are you so engaged? I mean, you are very into it, you’re part of it, but it’s also part of your work lifeblood, if you will.

Nicole (19:22):

It is. I didn’t realize how much I love food science until there was an article that was being edited when I was at Pastry Art Design Magazine, and I read it and I felt really uncomfortable with it. And the editor said, “Well, you can go fact check it. ” So I called the American Institute of Baking and then I bought the pilot books, which were the baking and technology series that Lori Gordon eventually rewrote for Sauceland. I have both versions, the old piler and the new. I remember

Rick (19:49):

The pilot, yeah.

Nicole (19:50):

And I needed to learn all that food science. And so really coming in from culinary and coming in from the publishing world, I didn’t have the food science degree and I walked into what was once called the American Association of Cereal Chemists and here are all my experts. And I would go and sit in and listen to these talks on the actual studies of can we quantify the bioavailability of some of the antioxidants in our grains? Because did you know that wheat has as much antioxidant capacity as blueberries? And it is actually very healthy, but it can get inhibited by certain enzymes that are native in the flour on what can we do. And actually the milling process helps release some of these antioxidants. I’m always looking for when are the trends, when is the science going to help us support some of the trends?

(20:46):

We keep talking about, is sourdough healthier for you, longer fermentation. This is where you listen to people talk about the studies that actually show all of this, the fiber arguments. I love it. And then you get your experts. If I need to know something about soft wheat flour, I find the people who can help me. And I really want to help people like me who were younger, didn’t know where they fit, didn’t know that these jobs existed. We want to make sure that these students that are getting involved with the different trade organizations know about cereals and grains and milling and baking and that there is a incredible amount of interesting jobs out here that are fulfilling and fascinating. We really network a lot with the younger folks.

Rick (21:28):

And it sounds like you’ve been fulfilled in multiple parts of your career here. I’m looking at some of the magazines too. I mentioned some of the books earlier, but like Fine Cooking and looking at the holiday baking issue, fine cooking, fine cooking, chocolateier.

Nicole (21:41):

Yeah.

Rick (21:41):

Wow, that looks incredible. Writing some incredible articles. Do you miss having a chance to do this or your writing’s definitely different now? It’s evolved. It’s more probably science-based than for a reader to kind of enjoy how a cake is made.

Nicole (21:56):

Yes. I loved making things and that I do miss sometimes. That’s why I cook so much at home because I am usually trying to get to a platonic ideal of a food and I won’t give up until I get there. So I really do like taking assignments. You’re right. Sometimes people will think, “Oh, she’s going to be too science heavy. That’s why I wrote Baking Unplugged where you don’t even need a mixer, just a bowl and a spoon and an oven because I want people to understand that food is very simple and that you don’t need a lot, you don’t need a big space in order to produce good food.”

Rick (22:25):

I mean, here’s how she quotes it on the back of the book. This is real life stuff here. “Baking Unplugged reveals how most of the recipes I really want to make at the end of the workday, simple, satisfying treats, take little time and require no special gadgets, skills, or ingredients.

Nicole (22:40):

“That

Rick (22:40):

Says it right there, right?

Nicole (22:41):

Yeah.

Rick (22:42):

Pretty impressive. And like you said, at the end of the day, you don’t want to have to go through a lot of commotion, but it sounds like you’ve been able to simplify it for people to enjoy the baking experience.

Nicole (22:51):

That’s how I hope it is. And really, I think publishing and being an innovation in a company’s not that different except that publishing is a faster cycle. I was a test kitchen director at Women’s World and we produced 11 new recipes every two weeks, so that’s a lot faster than most folks. Someone would come up to me and say,” I want a job there and I know how to make the best chocolate cake. “And I said,” Okay, but can you make six different ones? “Because in a year, I’m going to have to have all kinds of different iterations of chocolate cake. If you know one way to make one, we can’t hire you. You need to be able to take things apart and put them back together and figure out how to make all of these completely different products. So for me, I love someone walking in the door and saying,” We’re going to need five Pokemon cakes and someone’s going to have to do high folic acid treats and someone’s doing five ingredient dinners and who’s doing this?

(23:41):

“It’s just like making things in a company.

Rick (23:43):

Yeah, that’s impressive. All right. So for those listening, we do have an email address and I’ve been lonely. Last episode we talked about getting a note for Oscar Karian, who’s our expert on tortillas. And I did. We sent an autograph photo to our winner and also a special A. B. Maui Stressball. So here’s the offer for Nicole. Send us a note. Send her a nice comment, send her a question to the ovenlight@abaury.com, and we’ll get something really cool back to you. It could be one of the books, something like that, maybe an autograph recipe from Nicole. I don’t know. It could be a surprise, but send us a note, stay connected with us. All right, before we go, I’ve got a couple last questions. So a lot’s going on in baking. Any certain products, any advances in your business area that maybe you think people should listen to?

(24:34):

And again, a lot of our listeners are industrial artists and bakers or within that set. Anything new from AB Maori that they should know or at least think about without giving away too many IP details?

Nicole (24:44):

Yeah. I mean, well, part of what we’re always doing is upping our game, right? So every couple of years is the next generation. So you can be looking for the next generation of our data replacement systems, the next generation of our sugar reduction systems. We always want to make sure we use the latest technology and we get better and better at it. So absolutely there’s more coming and there’s always more challenging in baking. That’s what’s so wonderful about it is it’s never really done. You’ve never solved all the problems yet.

Rick (25:12):

Well, I’m going to put a plug in too. We always talk about it. We’ve got this thing called the baking hub here in St. Louis, right? We’re easily accessible across the country. Visit our facility, visit Nicole, visit some of our technical bakers, and you can work side by side. If you’ve got a challenge or a problem or an opportunity, they can help you. Anything else on your radar that you’re high level, something you got to get off your chest and let people know you should be thinking about this or that? What is it?

Nicole (25:39):

I would say I’m noticing a big shift in attitudes about ingredients and technology. I think for a long time, we’ve been focused on clean label and clean process, and we’ve been afraid to talk to consumers about anything that goes through some kind of, I’m just going to say, biochemical or GM process. People are afraid to have that conversation. The world’s getting really interesting right now. We’re now able to ferment ingredients that once required a crop. And as we talk about sustainability and as we talk about how climate’s changing around certain regions and you can’t always get reliable crops of certain sizes, this is a really big deal. And younger folks are really excited to know what companies are doing in that area. And I think it’s up to us to be more transparent and tell more stories and get everyone on board.

Rick (26:31):

It’s a great note to finish on sustainability and the future because the future is with a lot of the younger folks out there listening to the show. So Nicole, thank you so much for joining The Ovenlight.

Nicole (26:40):

Thanks, Rick.

Rick (26:41):

I think we’ve had a great show. Episode number seven is now in the books, in the cookbooks and in the cooking magazines. And we appreciate you shining your light on us. And for now, the oven light is off, the switch is off, and we’ll see you next time. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of The Oven Light. Until next time when we discuss more about the wonderful world of baking technology, trends, and more, the switch is officially off. Goodbye for now. See you next time.