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 AB 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. Well, the switch is on. We're back on. The Oven Light is here and our next episode is going to be very exciting. We've got a second time visitor. We introduced her a couple months ago and you're going to be thrilled to talk to Nicole Reese, our product director here at AB Maury North America. Nicole, welcome back.

Nicole (00:51): Thank you, Rick. I'm very happy to be back.

Rick (00:52): We had a lot of people talking about your last visit. They were very curious. You shared some great insights, shared a lot about your background, your writing career, your collegiate career at Kansas, and your path to AB Maori. So we're thrilled today and we're going to be talking about softening.

Nicole (01:09): Yeah. So now everyone gets to know what I actually do.

Rick (01:12): Ooh. I mean, you've got multiple categories, but this is a big one for the company and we're talking dozens and dozens of softeners that have been part of our inventory for a long time, right?

Nicole (01:23): Exactly. I think we are close to ... We're about at least 80 in the portfolio. It's a big category. And what I really look after are what we call the technical ingredients, which are almost always enzyme driven products are these days, more excitedly enzyme plus other interesting new clean label technical ingredients. But softeners have been widely used since the 80s in baking to really help bread stay fresh.

Rick (01:51): So that's what I was going to ask you. I was like, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. I've got a couple basic questions. When somebody says softening or extended shelf life, what does it really mean?

Nicole (02:01): Well, technically, if you say extended shelf life, you mean like how are we going to keep something mold free and keep it from being stale over time? And those are two different topics actually. When we talk about softening, I mean, that's how we refer to it in the industry, softening. It's actually so much more than that because as I said, it's really about freshness. Imagine the day something is made, what the texture is like with the aroma is like you want that to last as long as it can. And enzymes, which are, I think, some of the coolest ingredients ever, because they can magically do things that other ingredients can't really help us in bakery products actually stall the staling process quite literally.

Rick (02:44): So when you walk into a bakery and you get fresh bread and it's a great experience, there's a reason there's day old bread and sometimes it's a buck off, right?

Nicole (02:53): There is. But I mean, think about the world we live in now. I mean, I think a lot of consumers don't like to think about the fact that there are ingredients there that are meant to help keep freshness going in their products. But the average person, I mean, let's say you've got, have you ever bought bag salad or boxed salad at the grocery store because you're trying to be good and you're trying to eat well.

Rick (03:12): Absolutely.

Nicole (03:12): You get it home. You hope you're going to have it for lunch every day this week. And there's just the time you go back in and you pull that out and it is not something you want to eat anymore. But we count on bread and our bakery products, we count on bringing it home from the grocery store and being able to use it for at least a week and enjoying it over that whole time. And that expectation is part of how we live now. And that's what we're really trying to ensure happens behind the scenes here.

Rick (03:38): So you brought up salad mix. Let us not talk about that whenever again. I carrot all not for that topic. Okay. So back to bread. So you mentioned extended shelf life. The other half was mold inhibition preservation. So those are two different things, but can you talk about they are kind of intimately linked?

Nicole (03:58): They're all related. I mean, anything, we all know this, if you make something, it's only going to be fresh for so long or there's going to be a day that it gets mold on it. I think we forget that bread actually is something that can readily mold. But something called water activity was something you measure in food and that tells you how prone it would be to molding. And the

Rick (04:19): More water,

Nicole (04:20): The better

Rick (04:20): Chance or no?

Nicole (04:21): Yeah. What it literally means is the water that's available for microbial growth. So the water that's unbound. So it's not literally how much water's in it. It's a whole different thing and that's what's really strange.

Rick (04:32): See what happens when you get really smart people on this program? I'm just going to let Nicole take over.

Nicole (04:37): So for example, I could have bread that has 34% finished moisture at the end of shelf life, but let's say that I have bread and it has a lot of sugar in it. Let's say it's like some kind of a really fancy brioche cinnamon thing. When you add the sugar, you're actually driving the water activity down a little bit and you're changing the chemistry of the loaf and now it's just not going to mold quite as quickly because it's less hospitable to microbial growth. Got it. That's how that works. So that's the kind of the mold tactic. The other thing is, is we work to keep ... We want to make sure that when a baker creates a product, whether it's cake, a cinnamon roll, bread, the reason that customers love the product is texture and the freshness. And we're wanting them to help keep that going as long as possible so the consumer can't enjoy it.

Nicole (05:24): So the two things have to happen together because what good is it to have a fresh loaf of bread that seems tender even a month afterwards, if it's moldy and the other side- Yeah, that's one good. Yeah. If it molds and it's still soft, you're kind of bummed. So how do these two things fit together? Yeah, that's really important.

Rick (05:40): Well, let's talk about the US consumer, right? If you go to other countries, some people buy groceries every day. They may buy fresh bread every day. We're not used to that here, right? We're very much spread out. Going into a grocery store, what's a typical shelf life or how long will a loaf of bread that you buy packaged bread on the shelf stand here in the US? What are our expectations?

Nicole (06:02): I'm going to go by what I know from my family and from myself that the general expectation is you've got at least a week and you pray for more. I mean, you're just hoping this thing's going to keep on going because if you have a lot of people using bread daily, you just don't want to go down and find out that you can't use it that day. So I've been very lazy. I expect it to last a long time. And you mentioned Europe or other countries. When I was in the Netherlands and I started buying bread there, I behaved the same way I had here and I just kind of felt that loaf was just going to keep on going, but indeed it did not. It

Rick (06:34): Just walked away on its

Nicole (06:36): Own didn't at that point. So three days later I had mold and I was still trying to be an American and do my shopping at best twice a week. So I was quite surprised by that.

Rick (06:46): Let me ask you this. So you mentioned 80 softeners, right? So AB Maury's got a wealth of softening capabilities, technologies, solutions, whatever you want to call it, in its arsenal, but it covers a lot of ground, right? We've been talking a lot about bread and rolls right now, but that could be cake, it could be this, that and the other. So what do you like in the portfolio? What are maybe some of the advances you've seen over your time here that are important for consumers to know? Is it the clean label aspect? Is it this, that, or the other?

Nicole (07:15): Okay. There's a lot in there. So I'm going to kind of break this down on the chunks. The first part is these are all enzyme driven products and we choose different enzymes actually by the application. And there's a reason for that. Enzymes, they're biocatalysts. They're actually catalyzing a chemical reaction in the dough to do what they do. And because they need a specific environment, the substrate that they work on has to be there. In our case, it's starch and the flour for the bread and they need a certain environment. And then they're active at certain temperature ranges, certain pHs, and then they're denatured in the oven. So if you think about the fact that a loaf of bread could take 25 minutes to bake an industrial bakery, but a bun might take seven minutes, a tortilla gets done in what, I don't know, a minute and a half, two minutes.

Nicole (07:59): We have a huge variety of heat profiles. So now we're going to have to think about which enzymes we use in the product based on that. So that's one set of issues of why we choose and how we choose. Yeah.

Rick (08:10): There's not a one stop shop,

Nicole (08:12): Right? No one size fits all. Now you could try to do that, but what's going to happen is you're not going to pick the most efficient tool and then bakeries are going to spend more than they need to. So again, softness and freshness is really about whatever texture is in front of you. And enzymes are pretty amazing in that we can use different classes of enzymes together and help create or preserve a specific texture. So is it softeners with a little bit of moistness that we're trying to help with a brand or actually does it need to be really fluffy and soft? So soft is actually pretty complicated when you hit the sensory world. And we need to make sure that our products hit the mark for the customers that we serve and the brands to make sure consumers get what they love. Yeah.

Rick (08:54): It's not one solution for one applications or also applications, it's many, right? Yeah. And a

Nicole (08:59): Lot of

Rick (08:59): Considering actor share.

Nicole (09:00): Absolutely. And you were saying like, what do I love in the portfolio? I mean, sorry, that's kind of asking me like which of my children do I love the best. These are- It's

Rick (09:09): A good thing you just have one daughter.

Nicole (09:10): I know. Okay.

Rick (09:11): All right, we passed that one.

Nicole (09:13): What I love about the portfolio over the years and how it's grown is that we have been able to create the right tools for each application. And think about how much ... Now a bagel, we want to make sure a bagel stays fresh. I'm not going to say soft because if you live on the East Coast, the last thing you want is a soft squishy bagel, right? We want

Rick (09:34): Crunch.

Nicole (09:34): Right. We're just trying ... We want some chewiness, but you want it to not be stale in 24 hours. So the fact that we can dial that in and preserve that, that's amazing. And we're really proud of things like that. So we get better and better at that. And also remember, ingredients just keep changing. I mean, now we're talking about keto products. That's just different than the normal white bread we used to deal with. So then we have to tackle that, like how do we do this for keto? How do we do this for other types of products we haven't worked in before? So I get really excited about that. I also get excited about thinking about freshness as more than just softness, the resilience, the springiness. I mentioned the fluffiness, the eating quality of it, what kind of experience we want consumers to have.

Nicole (10:15): And that's really what we've been doing. I think that's the trend in the past few years. And you're going to see that in the marketplace over the next few years is we're going to be able to do more and more with clean label ingredients that we've never been able to do before.

Rick (10:26): The complexity is pretty crucial because you're talking about fresh goods. You talked about things that you pick up in the grocery store, packaged aisle. So it was a little bit different there than a fresh bakery. Then you've got your frozen, and I know you work a lot on the frozen category, and then you've got refrigerated, right? It could be bagels, could be English muffins, could be whatever. A little hectic, isn't it?

Nicole (10:45): It is. It is. And one thing that, I mean, I would love people to know, love consumer to understand is that ... I talked about staling, softness is related to the staling of starch. Technical terms, we call it starch retrogradation. But what we really mean is that there's amylopectin, which is a branch starch that you see in wheat flour. It looks like kind of an umbrella opened up. And when something is fresh baked, all of the kind of ... I'm going to call it the spokes are kind of all out. And when things start to sit and subtle, starches naturally, we call say retrogrades and then that umbrella collapses. Enzymes can work and if they're really great and specific, they can take little bits off of the ends of the amylopectin. And what happens, it gets kind of stuffed in between. It might be just like maltose units being chopped off or small units, and that helps keep something fresh.

Nicole (11:35): So at ambient temperature, I mean, that's where really most bread should be stored. If you can freeze bread rapidly, that's great. It kind of goes into this place where in your freezer, as long as you're freezing it within an hour, you're good. Refrigeration temperatures are actually staling temperatures. So you are encouraging the starch to retrograde whenever you put something into the refrigerator. So when you buy, let's say a vending machine sandwich that's been refrigerated, somebody has thought very carefully on how to formulate that so that you don't have basically a cardboardish, stale experience when you eat that bread. And so there's a lot of science that goes into all of this. So yeah, environment really matters when you're talking about staling and keeping something fresh and soft.

Rick (12:21): Well, Paul Bright and I talked last time, there's two different things and whether it's mold inhibition or it's softening and we brought up the whole refrigeration. As a general consumer, probably somebody's thinking, "Oh, I'm going to keep this fresher and I'm going to keep the mold out by putting it into the fridge." But then you're losing that eating quality, the bite, the moistness, it can dry out and it's staling. So while you think you're doing one positive, you're actually hurting the other, right?

Nicole (12:46): Absolutely. And I think that's why you've seen a rise of some manufacturers trying to make smaller pack sizes for folks so they don't have to do that. So they're able to get through their product before the idea that you need to put it into the refrigerator, but it's a real challenge. People don't know. I mean, and yeah, then people were trying to bring it back. My mother used to try to steam hot dog buns, which could get a little soggy because they had all gone completely firm in the refrigerator for me. It wasn't the best experience in my childhood.

Rick (13:12): No. And you know what? I'll be honest, could I share something with you here?

Nicole (13:15): Yeah.

Rick (13:16): My wife likes to freeze bread sometimes. I'm not a fan of trying to bring it back to life. I feel like it's, you're trying to put the heart monitor on it and bring it back. And sometimes it's just not as good.

Nicole (13:27): It's kind of use it or lose it. You

Rick (13:29): Got to just ...

Nicole (13:29): Yeah. And

Rick (13:29): You fake it by putting in the toaster, but then you bring it out and it's really dry. It's almost cracker like, all right, sorry, I went too deep on that. But so you talked about this little umbrella and I'm going to use that as a segue to my next little piece. Let's put softening on the

Nicole (13:43): Sidebar

Rick (13:43): Just for a second. Okay. So umbrellas, where would you find them? A lot of times in the UK, London, we've been talking a lot about IBIE and that is my segue to some fun questions.

Nicole (13:53): Okay.

Rick (13:53): You're an international traveler. You've been to London.

Nicole (13:55): Yes.

Rick (13:56): What do you like? What do you like to do? What's a great memory of your trip along the cobblestone streets of London?

Nicole (14:02): Oh, I've had so many. I love to eat in London. I've gone to tea. I love to go into some of the really fun food houses and try things we haven't tried. I've loved riding on the red buses. I've got to tell you, public transit in that city is so easy peasy that I've taken a toddler around. I've taken my daughter when she was two, four, and seven through there. I love going to the shows. I actually am a person who loves gray, rainy days with a little bit of sunshine that comes through. I love the parks. There are so many parks. I have a long list of the things I love in London.

Rick (14:36): That's awesome. Well, you know our theme is very London calling based for IBIE and we're excited about it. The double decker bus will certainly have an appearance and red phone booths and a lot of the things that you brought up, but let's turn our attention to the Rock and Pint. So we are sponsoring a happy hour, official IBIE happy hour with Bema and ABA and RBA. And we've got Duff Goldman and his team of chefs called Fog Rock doing a concert.

Nicole (15:04): That's wonderful.

Rick (15:05): It's awesome. It is going to be great. They've been working hard and they're playing all British acts. Name me one or two British acts that you like listening to that's on your phone or iPod or however you listen, cassette, whatever.

Nicole (15:15): I was just happy that you used London Calling. The Clash is pretty classic.

Rick (15:19): We do have a couple Easter eggs around that as we get closer to

Nicole (15:22): The show. Yeah. Due to my age and generation and being one of the early MTV viewers, there's a lot of new wave that absolutely came out of the UK.

Rick (15:34): But are there

Nicole (15:34): Any songs

Rick (15:35): Or maybe

Nicole (15:36): Acts? It's still on my phone.

Rick (15:37): I listened to Series 33, Sirius XM33, First Wave. It is great stuff.

Nicole (15:43): I won't have friends after this. My stepfather is still embarrassed to this day that he had to take me to the mall so that I could buy an Adam Ant album.

Rick (15:52): That's fantastic.

Nicole (15:53): Stand and Deliver is still one of my favorite songs.

Rick (15:55): Okay. All right. We're finding more out about Nicole Reese's time. All right. Any other musical choices? Maybe

Nicole (16:01): Somebody uses that one. It's just too embarrassing. Come on, one

Rick (16:04): More. You got to have one more. Adam Ant, Stan and Deliver, right? We've heard that one.

Nicole (16:08): Well, I mean, at least if we're talking about nostalgia, at least we can be really excited about the comeback of Kate Bush. She was now more famous than she was during her original time period.

Rick (16:17): I'm running up that hill. I'm glad you brought that up, right? That was in Stranger Things and hightailed it up the hill to number one. So pretty cool. Thank you for taking us down that little path. All right, let's get back to the program. But I think it's interesting to know where people come from and what their histories are and what their passions are. And you've shown us a few those, so thank you. How about heading into IBIE, right? We're going to be highlighting a few things. We already talked separately about a really cool plant-based emulsifier. We're also talking clean label, oxidation, dough conditioning, a couple products there. We're also talking about a buffered vinegar under the BakeGarb brand that's very exciting. And then we'll be talking about indulge cake. But are there some neat advances within the softening world that maybe you want to share?

Rick (17:01): Or maybe is there a pet soft tase product or solution that you're like, "Boy, I really like this one a lot. It's pretty cool."

Nicole (17:07): So what I'm very excited about in the next year is that at this time I think we're going to be able to tackle resilience and the fact that sometimes you want buns and breads to be very, very soft. But of course, if you make a very soft product and you ship it, it can get crushed on the way the market. Let's talk

Rick (17:26): About stackability

Nicole (17:27): Then, right? So stackability is a really big thing. And- Who

Rick (17:30): Thinks about that? Raise your hand. I mean, still hold

Nicole (17:32): Onto

Rick (17:32): The driver's wheel if you're driving your car right now. But if you ever think about stackability of your buns or your bread when you're going to a grocery store, it comes in on racks and things have to stack on the shelf, right?

Nicole (17:45): Yeah. And I don't think people think about it, but we all go to the shelf and we look for the product we want and then we try to find the one that hasn't been smushed. We want it to be soft. We want to squeeze it, but we don't want to destroy it.

Rick (17:55): Guilty as charged. I mean,

Nicole (17:56): There's just a ... Yeah. All

Rick (17:57): Right. You know what? We should do an informal poll. Yell out yes or no if you're listening right now. I do squeeze my bread before I purchase. What do you think the percentages are? Is it a fifty fifty? Are you a squeezer? I'm a squeezer.

Nicole (18:09): Because of the industry I work in, Rick, I'm very gentle. I make sure that I just kind of lightly touch my elbow.

Rick (18:14): I didn't mean like you're not ... Yeah. There was an old Tommy Boy episode, but I want a pretty pet. Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to go down that path. But do people actually, do you just pick it up or do you actually kind of check it out physically?

Nicole (18:26): Yeah, I check it out physically as gently as I can, because honestly, it doesn't take too hard of a push before you know, "Ooh, no, I don't want that one." And really, I think the benefit to the consumer and to bakery. If you think about sustainability, the last thing we need are all of these damaged products that are just going to get thrown away. So to be able to have something that is soft and fresh, but still resilient and springy and can hold up to the transport, you can get it home and still enjoy it. I think that's huge. And I'm really glad that this is where we are today. We can do this now. And five years ago, no one had that. I'm just really glad that the world is changing. We can make better quality products and address kind of some of the behind the scenes topics that people don't really think about with baked goods.

Rick (19:11): I'm glad you brought up sustainability. It's something that's important to our overall company, associated British Foods, our parent company, as well as AB Maury globally, as well as AB Maori North America, right? We try to take care of our resources, but you mentioned not just having some wasted products on the shelf. That's not doing anybody good. And there are people that are food insecure. And that's why there's produce companies out there that take the beaten up banana, they find another use, or it's the reason brewers take their spent grains and they take them for cattle feed. So there are a lot of great opportunities and it's important to us and we do recognize that. So I appreciate you bringing that up. So talking about consumers and how they can impact things, are there some interesting trends, cool trends, other things going on outside of the softening world that you're attuned to?

Rick (19:53): Because you manage multiple categories, you have to have a keen eye on the market, but as well as what consumers are thinking and doing.

Nicole (19:59): What I love about food right now that I think we're going to see in bakery more and more is we're really able to fine tune the nutritional profiles of what we make now to provide options for folks that really have or need specific requirements. So for example, a lot of people in North America suffer from some kind of digestive ailment and they're just not really sure what it is. They're technically not celiac, but they maybe feel like they're not tolerant of certain types of proteins. And a lot of people, because there's no medical diagnosis, are trying to kind of figure out what diet is best for them. And I really am pleased with, first of all, the amount of clean label ingredients on the market that are healthy today. So we have access to all these tools that we can use to make better products.

Nicole (20:46): So I think you're going to see things that really are ... You know how black date is for folks who can't digest the lactose in milk as they can still enjoy milk? Well, think about having loaves of bread for people who actually can't digest certain components because we're going to be able to overcome that. So then we can have gut-friendly bread, not just to create a healthy microbiome, but just so that we can help give fiber to folks who normally have a hard time processing what is a really healthy ingredient. That's tremendously exciting to be able to do that.

Rick (21:16): And a lot of one's just general health does come from the gut. We've got our sister division AB Biotech. There's a lot in the space of human nutrition, animal nutrition, consumer alcohol, biofuel, but I've worked a lot on prebiotics, postbiotics, probiotics. It's incredible and it's not going away, but we're a similar age group, I would say. And growing up, remember you just walked on the shelf, you want white or wheat, that's what you got and you moved on. You want a light beer or a regular lager? There you go. You want raisin brand or you want cornflakes and just the proliferation of styles of food across the board are just phenomenal. And then look at the bread aisle. You mentioned the half loaves, you mentioned the different styles, you mentioned just the variety of things that people can pick up. It's kind of mind boggling, isn't it?

Nicole (22:00): It is. And so the nutrition and the value that you can get off the bakery aisle now, I really think it's unprecedented. And I think people are starting to learn and understand. So when you pick up some of these multi-grain loaves and you check out the types of grains that are in there and you see that there are at least six to seven different ones and you see that there are some healthy seeds in there as well. The amount of antioxidants, the amount of fiber, the amount of just intact nutrients that are there for you is incredible. And so really at no other time, I think in life after we had so many choices and so many products that are, let's face it, convenient to us to help us be healthier.

Rick (22:39): So let's turn the table on that. Do you think there's ever a time where people are going to get tired, where consumers get tired like enough. There was a famous marketing study about variety and choice where, and I may get the numbers wrong, the whole idea was you go into a grocery store and you want to buy some jam or jelly. And if you've got five or six different choices, yeah, you'll make a choice and you move on. But when the choices were a couple dozen varieties, it almost gets mind boggling and people tuned it out and were like, "Ah." And then they didn't make a decision at all. So there's no sale, lost sale, and they just moved on. Do you think there's ever a point where people get burned out on this stuff too? And just give me a few options and then I can move on.

Nicole (23:17): I think you're absolutely right. I think if you're standing in front of an aisle and there is an entire aisle and it's all cereal at a certain point, it's a lot to take in. But I'm not sure that's where people are making their new choices. And I think that's where it gets interesting. So if you think about where consumers get their information or find new products today, I mean, we're now back in the office, right, Rick? I've already shopped for like five new items from talking to people because they have them. They have this cool new food that now I have to try or they have brought this to my attention. Or we say it's social media, but just not on social media as much as others. But I can still use their intelligence that they have found. And then all of a sudden you have all these other networks, you just think about where we get the information and all of a sudden you go out and look for it and then you start another self-discovery.

Nicole (24:02): And it was just maybe one thing that was introduced to you. So it was not overwhelming. So yeah, in a sense, too much is too much, but I think now we get excited whenever someone introduces us to something we've never seen before. I remember when you had that flavor of Cliff Bar I had never seen in my whole life and it's hard to find and that was it. I had to go out and get it.

Rick (24:21): Well, then you came

Nicole (24:21): Back with the trail

Rick (24:22): Mix.

Nicole (24:23): I had

Rick (24:23): Not had that

Nicole (24:23): One. And that wasn't me sitting alone on the bar aisle just reading everything and going home with the same thing I always got because I was tired. You see

Rick (24:31): What I mean? Yeah, no, but people do have that impact on others, right? Right. If you hear it's more impactful than maybe a commercial sometimes. I like the discovery aspect, walking into a grocery store or a bakery and just exploring, right? Sometimes with, okay, I've got my list here, eggs are good, milk, I've got that, I've got bread. But don't you like to explore a little bit? I like to see new things that are just like, "Whoa, I didn't even know they had that. " Or different flavor or different variety, different pack size. Do you get excited about that?

Nicole (24:56): Yes, I do. And I love when I have time to just go down every aisle of the grocery store. I love taking my daughter with me and we will come out with things that we don't even know if we're going to like them, but we want to try them. And I really think that, I mean, having enough discretionary set aside to just do that is kind of like my field trip. I love it. And where you can find these things is just, it's not even just the grocery store. Sometimes it might be a quick serve restaurant you go to that is offering something that you've never had before and you're super excited to try it. I love road trips and going to convenience stores and gas stations. And man, there are just things in there that I didn't even know about that I have to try.

Rick (25:31): Have you found something really cool that you just want to share? And it could be within baking or not. Let me give you a couple examples on my side that we've found in the last couple years since the pandemic and one is called Dots Pretzels out of South Dakota and they were unbelievable. There's a seasoning that is just nonstop. And they just got bought out by Hershey. So they've done well. And then there's another one. So you've got Dot on one side and let's throw another name in there. Thelma, who's heard of Thelma's ice cream sandwiches, their cookies? They're soft as all when you get them out of the cold freezer and the variety is unbelievable. So I'm a fan of Dot and Thelma. What do you got?

Nicole (26:02): So during the pandemic, I started eating a lot more convenience products and we're a scratch only home, meaning I don't even own salad dressing. I make all my own salad dressings. This was a big deal for me to just kind of say, we're just going to kind of try some things. At one point, Trader Joe's had this, it was a white pizza, which I love and it was mushroom with truffle oil and garlic. Man, I was just buying loads of those, but it was just for a small period, then it was gone. It was a very nostalgic time. I started buying things I hadn't had since I was a kid and then letting my daughter try them. I was like buying tater tots and bringing them home. Oh, and then this was so fun. Right at this time, there were a lot of folks that make up recipes too that were sharing what you could do with some of these products.

Nicole (26:41): Have you ever heard of the Spanish torta where you actually try thin slices of potato and olive oil and then you put the eggs in and it makes like a little tortoise cut up as an appetizer? It

Rick (26:50): Sounds out.

Nicole (26:51): You can put saffron in it, you can put other things, but it is kind of laborious if you do this. It's almost like

Rick (26:55): The old potato skin, but without the skin, it's just like a thin-

Nicole (26:58): It's a very thinly slice and then the eggs go in and just kind of ... And you can have it with wine.

Rick (27:02): Why do we not have that right now in front of us?

Nicole (27:04): I'm sorry. I should have brought that. But the cool thing is that this writer was doing it with tater tots and it came out just as magnificent.

Rick (27:11): Wow.

Nicole (27:11): Can you imagine?

Rick (27:12): That is pretty cool.

Nicole (27:12): I mean, this was someone at Bone Appetit. So I mean, I think everyone got a little nostalgic, went back to foods they hadn't had in a while, was experimenting with them and then throwing them out there and you're like, "What? You used tater tots for that? " It was fun.

Rick (27:23): I feel like I'm adding pounds and I'm going to segue right back to softening. My belly is getting softer just hearing all this stuff here. So there you go. Okay. So before we go, any parting shots, anything that's important to you that you want to impart on our listeners about baking, about softening, about any other category or segment or baking application that you think is important that you got to get out there today?

Nicole (27:46): So one of the things I get on my soapbox about the health of plant foods and grains. And I think they've been extremely maligned and people forget that our grains can be not only a great source of protein and fiber, but antioxidants. The functionality of some of the specialized plant ingredients out there is only getting better and better. You've seen people using plant proteins for years in unique ways from making an eggless mayonnaise to just being a protein source. Keep your eye on that. And then look in the space in bakery. We're delving into functionalities in these products we've never seen before. So I'm extremely excited with the clean label synergies that we're finding out there with ingredients that are just friendly and natural for all of us. So yeah, that space is growing and come see us at IBIE because we've got a lot to share.

Rick (28:33): Awesome. Nicole, thank you so much. Appreciate you being on today's show. If you do have questions for Nicole, you can send us a note at theovenlight@abaury.com, the ovenlight@abmaury.com. Shoot us a note. We will feature and have featured a new A. B. Maori website in September before we get to IBIE. And as you mentioned, if you are in Las Vegas September 18th to the 21st, come by and see us. The 19th is a big day. We'll have Duff Goldman from the Food Network in our booth, and then his band will be playing later that night at the Rock and Pint Happy Hour. So that's enough for the Ovenlight and A. B. Maury at this point. Again, Nicole, thank you, and we look forward to having you on a future episode. And for now, the oven light is off. Turn the switch off. We'll see you next time.

Rick (29:20): 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.