So, this afternoon, I'm here in Made for you by Madeleine. It's a new bakery in the city, in Hamilton, that just opened a few weeks ago? Two weeks ago you had your grand opening? >> Yeah. >> And Joy is the, Joy is the owner and she's joining me today to talk a little bit about experimentation and a discussion, actually, of one of my students' projects. Let's talk about baking in the context of your day to day work here in your bakery, Joy. Have you experienced baking products where you're altering more than one variable at a time in order to achieve a certain goal? >> Oh, yes, definitely. Definitely. Every time we decide we want to you know, have a product that has a certain quality whether it's, you know, softness or sweetness something like that. We try to change something and then we often have to compensate in another area to to achieve that. >> Okay. >> So, an example would be for example, a cookie or oatmeal cookie. >> Yeah. >> Or molasses cookie but, say for example, an oatmeal cookie. If you wanted a sweeter cookie you might say, well I'll just add more sugar. The thing is that sugar helps products to brown more. So they caramelize and have other chemical reactions, so they, they tend to brown more quickly. So one thing we would say is we increase the sugar. We would say, well, we better check a little sooner to see if they're done. >> Oh, okay. >> They'll be browner. They'll be crisper. They may burn. So you would have to definitely compensate [CROSSTALK] so that's two, two things that you're looking at the same time. >> So that sugar amount and baking time. And so your objective then, is to create something that tastes the same. So if you altered sugar, you would vary baking time as well, in order to get the same outcome. >> Well, it wouldn't be then to, the outcome wouldn't be for taste. We would be altering the sugar because you wanted a sweeter cookie. >> Okay. >> But to get the similar look so it wouldn't be, or a look that you would want, you know, you would want the, suppose you had baked a cookie that had a certain look to it and you liked the look of the cookie. >> Yeah. >> But you said, you know, I just wanted it a little sweeter, so I'll just put more sugar in. Well, if you baked it for the same amount of time, what would happen was it would be sweeter, although it would also would be darker. So you would say to yourself, well, is this acceptable to me that it's darker or do I still want to have it as light as it was before I put back the sugar? Then you might say, I'll underbake it a little bit. >> In your commercial baking, what sort of outcome variables are you looking at? I would imagine the taste and appearance are two of them, but would there be others? >> I would say so. As far as other variables, we definitely look at shelf life, perishability, especially because all our ingredients are natural. We aren't using any preservatives. For example, we use buttermilk a lot in our in our product because there's an acidity there that helps to keep from staling >> Okay. >> Which a lot of people don't know. So a lot of the older recipes you'll see will have buttermilk or sour cream, something that has a keeping quality that gives a tenderness to the crumb. >> Oh, great. >> So that's a little tip at home. If you see a recipe that has milk and you see another recipe that has buttermilk, you can probably guess that, three days later, the one with the buttermilk is still going to be a little more tender. It's a good guess, a little practical hint. >> Nice. That's neat. >> So there's that. As you point about appearance and taste, I think some of that is subjective. Particularly with taste. I mean, you know, some people have a real sweet tooth and some people don't. And you have a sweet tooth? Okay. That's why you're hanging out with me. Okay. But as for the average, I guess North American perception, they say that about 20% sweet is about right. Sort of, this sort of general, you'll perceive it without being too cloying and it's not going to be too bland. However, that's still open to a huge range of personal preference. >> Salt similarly, you generally perceive it about 2% seems about right. Not too salty, but you perceive it as about what used to be, might going to be. >> Okay. >> Yeah, so that's taste. And as far as appearance professionally speaking, there are you know, desirable things in whatever product that you're making. And you know, there are, there are certainly in professional contests you got to be, you get judged and all. There's different things, so you can look up any number of criteria for any, any product you would want to make. I don't know where people get their ideas about what food should look like but some of it memory and some of it emotion. I think texture plays a lot into food more than people think. >> Right. >> So, I often consider that as much as flavour when I'm baking. >> Have you had situations where, in your work, you've used any form of experimentation to troubleshoot a problem? Something's changed and now it's not working out right, so you' using experimentation. >> Mm-hm (affirmative). >> What I would say and, and for learning about the system a bit more thoroughly. >> Yes, absolutely. It does happen quite a lot. Okay, a very straightforward example would be right now it's coming out to summer and you can feel it's very warm in here. >> Yeah. >> There's certainly a factor that melts butter faster. So how much are you going to whip something up? It's going to whip up much faster. So, when you said, you know you know, mix your sugar and your butter. Maybe, previously you might have whipped it at a higher speed for a longer time. And now you'd say, well, I'll start the butter colder and whip it for a shorter amount of time because the temperature's going to come up faster. >> Right. >> So, there's certain things that you just kind of intuitively start to compensate for. And so it's interesting that you're asking the question because it makes you think about something like that. >> Right. >> That becomes second nature over time because you know what you're looking for. And then, as I said with the example of the warm butter, it's like you can suitably compensate maybe in more than one direction. >> Right. Great. Thank you very much, Joy. >> You're welcome, thanks for coming over. >> Uh-huh. Thank you.