Shakin’ & Bakin with Duff Goldman

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. All right. Welcome back to The Oven Light. This is episode number 11, and we are excited. We’ve got a great episode for you. We’ve got a wonderful guest here. Really needs no introduction, but I’ll go ahead and give you a little bit of a tease. You know this guy is the Ace of Cakes, the creator of Charm City Cakes. Now he’s branched out. He’s now the Ace of Taste, and you’ve seen him on Food Network.

(00:54):

He is one of the most successful celebrity judges as it relates to food. Ladies and gentlemen, Duff Goldman.

Duff (01:00):

He’s going.

Rick (01:02):

Great to have you on the program. We’re thrilled to have you on with A. B. Maury and Fleischman’s Yeast.

Duff (01:06):

Yeah, this is great, man. This is really exciting. It’s an honor. I’d tell you, man. Fleischman’s yeast has been a part of my baking since I can remember. I mean, it’s the brand that we use. As you know, you saw my pantry.

Rick (01:19):

Well, to give a little background to our listeners, Duff, we met a few years ago and we were getting ready for IBIE, and we’re going to talk about this big trade show for the baking industry for B2B. It only happens every three years, so you got to put your best foot forward. And a few years ago, we had a great idea of we wanted to create the art of baking and who is a better artist than our good friend Duff. And we said, “Hey, first question right out of the box, do you even use Fleischmann’s East? And what did you do? You pulled it right out of your pantry.”

Duff (01:44):

Got a big deli on it. Yeah. I do a lot of baking at home. I do a lot of stuff where I’ll bake stuff for Instagram and I’ll do a lot of classes and stuff, but I bake a lot. I love to do it. I think a lot of people are always like, “Do you really like to bake?” Ask my wife. I really actually like to bake. I do. I enjoy it. And so we were talking, I was like, “Here it is, just my deli full of whitemith. I got a ton of it.

Rick (02:06):

” Well, we love that about you. You know what? Let’s jump into it. I’ve got a ton of questions and I think we’re going to have some fun and we’ve got some great excitement as we get ready for IBIE in September in Las Vegas again. We’ve got round two and it’s going to be even more bold and more exciting. So let me ask you this. You’re talking about your family, you’re talking about your wife and new daughter now. And what do you guys like to bake at home as a big trio?

Duff (02:27):

It’s funny, when my daughter was three or four days old, I was in the kitchen and I was making chili and I put my daughter in her car seat and I put the car seat on the table and she made chili with me, three days old.

Rick (02:39):

That’s great.

Duff (02:40):

Starting her young. But yeah, really like at home, like my daughter, she loves cookies and I just wrote a cookie cookbook and there was this really funny picture where my wife was on her phone. She was holding the baby. I had just baked thousands of cookies. There’s cookies all over the kitchen. And like really quietly, my daughter reached out and grabbed one, was eating this cookie and she’s got this look on her face. She knows she’s doing something bad. It’s really cute. But yeah, we make a lot of cookies.

Rick (03:09):

That’s fantastic. Well, you talked about books and I got to break this one out because we’re going to bring a few of these to Las Vegas and this is super good, right? It’s baking for kids and there’s some great recipes. So tell us the inspiration on this. We know you’ve written a lot of books, but this is the hotter one and it sounds like you got a cookie one that’s right behind it.

Duff (03:25):

Yeah. Yeah. That one will be out in September. I’ve read a lot of kids’ cookbooks and a lot of them I feel like are oversimplified. Kids are super smart and they love to understand why things happen. And I think it’s really important to be able to answer those questions. Why does baking happen the way it does? Why do I have to do the things that it tells me the recipe? So when I write cookbooks for kids, I actually put a lot more information in there than I do with like a cookbook for adults because kids really want to understand like, why am I putting baking soda in there? I don’t like it. It tastes weird. And it’s like, well, when you use it right, they’re like, this is what happens. And when you can explain it to kids like that, I find that they like understand so much more and they’re that much more excited and enthusiastic about

Rick (04:12):

It. That’s awesome. And well, we can see it on your show when you judge a lot of these kids, you and Valerie, our family, we sit down and we watch and we’re so amazed. We’re like, oh my goodness, these kids could be running their own shops, their own businesses. They’re really go- getters.

Duff (04:25):

Yeah, they really are. It’s funny that actually one of the seasons we just filmed of Kids Baking Championship, it’s all kids who own their own businesses. Well,

Rick (04:32):

Then there’s a great segue right there, right? The youth of today, I think we’re set for the future, right?

Duff (04:37):

I have a lot of faith in the kids today. I tell you, man, I think that our generation, we kind of went from no computers to computers to smartphones, like just technology just exploding. And I think for us, it’s still like these things are weird, right? They’re weird. They’re great in some respects and they help us with things. But the kids today, they have never known a world without digital technology. And I think that they’re going to be able to use the technology with a lot more discipline, I think, than we do. I think we’re like, “Wow, computers are so amazing.” I remember I got my Apple 2C and it was like we were printing all kinds of crazy stuff and we were doing all this crazy things. And I think that now with kids, they understand sort of like the pitfalls and I think they’re going to do great.

Rick (05:28):

Well, you had a better computer than I did. My first was a Radio Shack handy color computer. If you remember that, we used- I remember the tandy to download information in games. It was crazy, but back then it was the big deal. So hey, you mentioned cornbread. So I mean, that goes great with chili, obviously, but you’ve got a background of doing bagels, biscuits and cornbread and graduate of sandwich high school. You have more bread maybe in your veins and cake.

Duff (05:54):

So I worked at Sandwich Pizza and I was the calzone guy. I was really good at cows.

Rick (05:58):

So you’re making calzones at sandwich pizza. I mean, do you think a customer gets confused over that or what?

Duff (06:04):

It was a little confusing, but we did have sandwiches. We have subs and stuff. But also when I was in culinary school, I was a bread baker. Bread’s my thing. I love bread. I like baking bread because if you have a steak and it’s inch and a half thick and your grill is 600 degrees, you know exactly how long it’s going to take to cook that steak. Every time you do it’s insane every time. With bread, it’s like, okay, if I’m going to use 100 grams of yeast, 500 grams of flour, whatever, you use your formula. Every single time you do it, it’s going to be a little bit different. There’s an intangible that happens with bread where it’s like you have to have a conversation with the bread. You have to tell the bread that like, listen, this is where we want to get to and hopefully we’ll get there together.

(06:44):

When you’re baking bread, it’s more of a dance. With the steak, it’s like, sorry, that’s what you do. With bread, it’s like, “Hey, come on, let’s rise. What do you say?”

Rick (06:52):

It’s a relationship,

Duff (06:54):

Absolute relationship.

Rick (06:55):

All right. So we talked about home baking a little bit, but I kind of think we’re over COVID. There’s still a lot of wrinkles and little veins hanging out there, but how did you get through it? What was it like for you making it through the pandemic?

Duff (07:07):

It’s funny, my wife got pregnant and we had a baby and it really kept us pretty busy. But I think it was like, there’s a silver lining in the fact, my wife and I have really been there every day in my daughter’s life. She’s 18 months now and we’ve been there the whole time. And I think a lot of working parents don’t really get that time and we have and it’s just been absolutely wonderful. I love being a dad. It’s the best thing in the world.

Rick (07:35):

Well, congratulations. It’s the coolest thing that could ever happen. I’ve got a 13 year old son. We talked about technologies and eSports camp this week. That was never thought of when I was his age back in the, well, whenever that was, but around 1982. So hey, we talked real quickly about A. B. Maury and getting a chance to work with you three years ago. And guess what? We’re thinking of interesting ideas for IBIE coming up in September and we said, “Boy, let’s call Duff again. Let’s see if he’s got some interest.” So can you talk a little bit about maybe your interest and what’s going on in industrial baking? It was your first look at the show three years ago. It’s a big industry. There’s a lot going on.

Duff (08:13):

Yeah, there really is. And for me, I have 12 employees and I know a lot about the baking that I do, right? So if I’m going to bake a cake, I know a lot about baking a cake. I don’t know how to make 5,000 cakes. And going to the IBIE and just seeing how these machines are put together for me

Rick (08:35):

As

Duff (08:35):

Just like an artist and baker, I’m more like a glorified home baker at this point. Like bake cakes, we have a bakery that we make a lot of cake, but we’re not doing like huge production baking. And so for me to see that, it’s just fascinating to me to see how people are able to create massive amounts of consistently excellent product. It blows my mind, man. It blows my mindset. I love going there because I feel like I’m like a kindergartner getting to go to like the big kids club and all this stuff. Most of that stuff is equipment that I’m never going to need or have no idea what to do with it. But just as somebody who is such a fan of baking, I love it. It’s a whole side of the industry that I get to learn about because it’s something that I never get to see.

Rick (09:20):

Yeah. It’s like a baking field trip. And I’ll tell you this, our company AB Maury makes Fleischman’s yeast. We’ve talked about that, but we make hundreds of other bakery ingredients like dough conditioners to softeners to mixes and things like that. We’re about 40% of the baked goods that people eat, but you wouldn’t always know us by name. So it’s an extra responsibility. You’re trying to feed the world, or at least we’re trying to feed a lot of people here in North America.

Duff (09:41):

Yeah. And also like you’re trying to give people that experience. I mean, the thing about baking is that there’s something special about it. Like our earliest memories of mom baking a cookie or grandma making some muffins or something like that. Those are things that are really special to us. To be making the product that are allowing people to not make 12 muffins, but make 12,000 muffins, but still make them good, still make them scratch that itch that we want from the baking. That’s a big responsibility. And I think it’s something that you guys really pay attention to, because whether you’re making one croissant or a thousand, it’s about delivering that experience of getting something excellent.

Rick (10:18):

All right. So we usually have part of the program, we call them rapid fire questions. So our guests, and we’ve had a lot of our internal bakers and experts on everything from yeast to how to develop the right kind of dough, all those sorts of things. But instead of rapid fire, we’re going to give you the double decker bus a round of three questions, okay? So we’re going to hop on the bus and the first question is, what’s your favorite band? We’re going to talk about music a minute. So what’s your favorite band or maybe an album?

Duff (10:42):

Oh, man. I’d say my favorite band is probably Zeppelin, I think. Probably Led Zeppelin.

Rick (10:49):

It’s iconic.

Duff (10:50):

Yeah. And I can’t really pick it up because it really depends on what kind of mood you’re in. If I’m feeling a little more mellow, I might listen to Led Zeppe on three. I’m feeling a little more introspective. I might listen to physical graffiti. If I’m just really pumped up and my one leds up on one, it really just depends.

Rick (11:09):

That’s awesome. All right. Let’s jump in the food side. Favorite donut or favorite baked good?

Duff (11:14):

When you say favorite donut, like favorite donut out there that somebody can go get?

Rick (11:19):

Yeah. Or a favorite one to make. I mean, it could be yeast rays. It could be baking powder coming up.

Duff (11:23):

So my all time, don’t laugh, don’t judge. My favorite donut that is consistently good is the blueberry cake donut at 7-Eleven.

Rick (11:34):

Really?

Duff (11:35):

It is an excellent donut. All

Rick (11:37):

Right. You heard it here first.

Duff (11:39):

And not the donut hold. They do these donut holes. They’re different. You got to get a whole donut. The blueberry cake donuts at 7-Eleven. They are phenomenal.

Rick (11:47):

All right. Round three of hop on the bus with stuff here. Favorite trip or maybe a favorite location you like to go to?

Duff (11:53):

There’s so many. My favorite trip, I was working in Australia, supposed to go home and instead I traded my ticket in. Instead of going home, I went to New Zealand and I rented a motorcycle and I rode around New Zealand by myself for like 10 days. Totally unplanned, just rode around. It was life changing. Absolutely life changing. New Zealand’s just such a beautiful place and people are wonderful. You’re literally riding a motorcycle through Middle Earth. You are in Lord of the Rings. It was great. It was just great. But I’d say food-wise, I think Hong Kong, because literally in Hong Kong, no matter where you are, within 15 feet of you, somebody’s cooking something delicious.

Rick (12:32):

The old street food, right? There’s nothing wrong with a hotdog on the street in New York too if you just happen upon it. There you go. Sometimes they hit the spot.

Duff (12:39):

Yeah, totally.

Rick (12:40):

They do.

(12:41):

They do. All right. Hey, let’s start talking about AIBI. You can see a little bit of the hint behind us, this whole idea of London calling, right? We’ve had a little bit of fun with the double decker bus. We came off from doing virtual reality in 2016, The Science of Baking. Then we did the art of baking with you in 2019. And we came back and said, “We need to do it again, but we don’t want to do augmented reality. We want something just authentic. People haven’t traveled in a couple years and we thought, let’s take them someplace that’s foreign, but you can speak the language.” And the UK came front and center. London is part of an identity for us, Associated British Foods. Our parent company is based there in the UK. And we said, “Hey, let’s call Duff.” And the first thing you said to us was, “Why don’t we recreate Baker Street?

(13:19):

How did that happen? How do we miss that?

Duff (13:23):

” Yeah, it totally makes sense, right?

Rick (13:25):

Yeah. I mean, it’s where Sherlock Holmes had his supposed office. You had Madam Tuso’s wax museum. So we created this whole idea and you and your team, you’ve got a great team at Charm City Cakes is helping us create some really interesting vignettes on a walk inside the streets of London. So tell us a little more.

Duff (13:43):

Yeah. I was looking at the plan and this booth looks incredible because it literally is transporting you into a neighborhood. There’s all these storefronts and we’re going to make all kinds of different items that are going to be in those storefronts and people are going to be able to see. And I don’t know, I think it’s really smart to really play that travel angle because a lot of us haven’t traveled in the last three years. It’s crazy. I think doing London I think is also really smart because the baking in the UK is such a rich tradition. I’m sure you’ve seen the great British bake off.

Rick (14:13):

Yeah.

Duff (14:14):

Great. I love how the Brits take baking so seriously. They really focus on the details that sort of make baking incredible and delicious. So I think going to London is really smart, but the booth, it’s going to be so much fun. It’s going to be really cool.

Rick (14:30):

Well, we’ve had a little bit of fun with the red double decker bus, double decker booth, right? Seems like a natural tie. Foam booths, recreating a little bit of Buckingham Palace, bringing in a sister group of ours Twinings Tea. We always have a coffee bar, but we thought why not have tea? And there’s been that culture. You’ve been there and the popularity of the Crown and Ted Lasso Down Abbey have kind of fed into it. So why do you think London’s so intriguing beyond that?

Duff (14:55):

I don’t know. I feel like Americans are always fascinated with the UK. When Lorraine Pascal was on the holiday baking championship with us, there was something about being judged by somebody with a British accent that you just kind of like …

Rick (15:12):

So speaking of other British kind of moments that really capture us, music. So part of this whole deal with working with you this time around was like, we want to do something fun. And IBIE had an opening for a happy hour, an official happy hour. So we pitched a great idea, got some interest from ABA and also BEMA and RBA. Those are the three baking agencies that put together the event and said, “Hey, how about we put together a cool happy hour, a band playing rock music.” And we said, “Duff, we’re coming to you again one more time if you could bail us out. ” So tell us about your band, Flo Grock.

Duff (15:45):

So Fog Rock is a bunch of chefs. Every chef has been in a band, right? And just a band just go together. It’s just kind of how it goes. I met our lead singer, Bruce Kellman at a restaurant opening in LA and we were talking and he’s kind of like a big dude like me and somebody was walking by, they’re like, “Yeah, look at the two of you. You should be in a band or something.”

(16:04):

And Bruce was like, “I play guitar.” And I was like, “I play bass.” So we started a band. So we got all of our friends who are chefs who also played music. My sous chef, Jeff Manthorn, great guitar player, great singer. He’s in the band and we got a couple of the guys from Bruce’s old restaurant in LA Union. Our drummer Fran was a bar manager. We have some really incredible musicians in the band and we do covers. And so we usually do pretty loud or more like rock music, but for this, since everything is kind of like London, UK, we wanted to do British and

Rick (16:36):

Beijing. Well, let me ask you this. So the theme of this, it’s called the Rock and Pike. So we’ve created a OR account. We’re even taking it down to the tap handles on the draft beer, but we’re going to have a great time. And this is on Monday, September 19th at the end of the day. So we’re talking five to six. So if you’re at the show, come check it out. But we’re so excited and thrilled to see you in Las Vegas here. And just boy, it’s weeks. So we’re excited. But I want to flip a little bit and maybe hit you on a couple other things and then we’ll let you go because you’ve been gracious with your time. So we want to talk about the Fleischmans a little bit. We’ve got a long history. Fleischman’s have been around since 1868. It started out these two Austrian immigrants, came to the US and met a guy named James Gaff, who was more in distilling and brewing with his family.

(17:18):

And he said, “The bread here is not any good. What can you do? ” And the guys went back to Vienna, came back with some slants of yeast and the rest is history. But in the meantime, they created this cool area up in the Catskill Mountains, which is now renamed after them. It’s called Fleischman’s New York. We’ve been there, we’ve done some donations with the local community. We actually helped bring back the community pool, but it’s really cool. So I know you’ve got a little bit of Jewish faith as well and you have that spirit of giving back. So is there a connection there?

Duff (17:47):

Yeah. Growing up Jewish, when you’re going to temple, the concept of Sadaka, it just kind of drilled into you. If you got it, help people out. It’s just part of how to be a good Jew, how to be a good human, got to help out the people around you. And so I think just from a really young age, my community, my parents, everybody was really good about teaching us as kids to do meaningful work to help make the world a better place and help people out. And the other part of Sadaka that I really appreciate, and it’s weird because we’re talking about it, is that you do it anonymously. It’s not something that you talk a lot about. You don’t like walk around with a sign like, “Oh, look how good I am of doing all this good work.” You just do the work. And it doesn’t matter if you do the work, somebody else does the work, it’s just the work that needs to get done.

(18:33):

It’s just how we grow up. You grow up in quarters in the little metal jar to plant trees and it kind of grows from there. And I go to soup kitchens every year, not just on the holidays, because it’s important. And I show up as a guy who knows how to cook, not as a guy who is some famous dude on TV. And hopefully, my daughter’s old enough, she will sort of pick up on that because we’ll be doing a lot of that as a family. And it’s just something that I want her to see that there are people that are not as sportious as we are and support. We got to help them out.

Rick (19:02):

Amen to that. I tell you what, the world could use a lot more of that spirit. So we thank you for that. One last question. We know you as Duff. Everybody knows you as Duff, but your real name’s Jeffrey. There’s an interesting story on, I think it was your brother who maybe had a tough time calling you Jeffrey and he would call you Duffy. So is that the real honest truth?

Duff (19:19):

That’s the truth. Yeah. My older brother, he’s 22 months older than me. And so when I was born, my parents brought me home from the hospital and like, “This is your new brother is Jeffrey.” And he was only 22 months. So he kept saying Duffy. It just came out as Duffy. And so they were like, “Yeah, call him whatever you want. ” They thought it was cute. So they started calling me Duffy and then that’s it. My name has never been Juffy, except on my birth certificate.

Rick (19:41):

Wow. We know you as Duffy. We love you as Duff. Okay. So hey, one last thought for you. So anything we can expect from you the second half of 2020 or getting into 23? You mentioned a book. What else?

Duff (19:51):

So yeah, the cookie book should be out right around September, maybe October. Got a new season of holiday baking championship. I got two new seasons of Kids Baking Championship and a new season of spring. We’ll hopefully film some more Ace to taste soon. I really enjoyed making that show. I like blowing people’s minds like, “Wait, you’re the cake guy.” That’d be more than just cake.

Rick (20:13):

Exactly.

Duff (20:13):

And then we actually are looks like, we’re not green lit yet, but we’re replacing Buddy versus Duff with everybody versus Duff.

Rick (20:21):

Oh.

Duff (20:22):

I wanted to compete against a lot of different people. I felt like I had nothing else to say when it came to Buddy, but I wanted to get other cake decorators who were just as good or if not better than him and get them in there. And it brings out the best of me working with different people. It’s just going to be really fun. We’re going to do the big crazy cakes, but then also every challenge is going to have a baking component to it. So not just cake, but like actual real pastry chef stuff. We are really like amping it up and the network basically really wanted to really challenge me and like have it. So every team is going to have some amazing cake decorators on there, but also at least one incredible pastry chef. So now I got to not only be able to decorate a cake with my team, but also I got to bake something incredible against people who are really good at what they do.

(21:11):

So it’s going to be like a real slug fest. It’s going to be fun.

Rick (21:14):

That’s going to be awesome. And I’ll say this, you have one thing that I think we share in common. We have on our logo, we’re passionate about baking. I tell you what, you can’t find a guy who’s more passionate, but Duff, hey, we can’t thank you enough for being a wonderful partner, being a wonderful guest on The Oven Light. If you’ve got questions for us, for the listeners, the viewers out there, send us a note at the ovenlight@abaury.com. Duff, any final parting shots? Last thing, volume on this or that?

Duff (21:39):

Yeah, just @duffgoldman, all the usual places, but really I’m just excited for everybody to come by and see the booth. It’s going to be really fun. I’m going to be there hanging out. I’m really excited about being able to just hang out in London and have some tea and crump it.

Rick (21:54):

It’s going to be good. Actually, our baking team is creating some really cool sweet scones in our kind of format, which will go really well with the tea. But Duff, hey, thanks so much. Appreciate you being on. And for now, do you want to go ahead and just send us out?

Duff (22:06):

All right. Switches off. That’s it for the oven light.

Rick (22:13):

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.