Perfectly Golden | Angela Garbacz
Perfectly Golden
By Angela Garbacz
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Angela Garbacz: Hi, I'm Angela Garbacz, And my new cookbook is Perfectly Golden: Adaptable Recipes For Sweet and Simple Treats.
Suzy Chase: For more Cookery by the Book, you can follow me on Instagram. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend. I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book. Now, on with the show. Since opening in 2015, you have been recognized by Food and Wine Magazine, as one of the most innovative women in food and drink. You were named a Chef To Watch by Plate and ranked on Cherry Bomb Magazine's coveted 100 List of Inspiring and Creative Women. You're also the founder and head pastry chef at Goldenrod Pastries, an all-women run pastry shop located on a picturesque corner in Lincoln, Nebraska. Kick things off by talking a bit about leadership, how you were taught, and how you lead your team.
Angela Garbacz: That is great question. I was taught by a lot of different people in different kitchens, and everybody's leadership models were really different. And I have to say that when I started Goldenrod Pastries, one of the scariest things for me was defining my leadership style. And I knew that there were some things that had been taught to me in kitchens, in really great kitchens in New York, where I learned a lot, but there were a lot of techniques of fear, and a lot of aggression. And I knew that that was a leadership style that I didn't want to carry on.
And so I had to define a new leadership style for myself, and I knew that first and foremost, I wanted to have a very open and compassionate environment. I wanted to be open with my team about where we are as a group, where I am personally day to day, so that they can give me that same feedback. Because I feel like success for individuals and success for a team really rides on how each individual person is doing and living. And so, I really try to lead with compassion and understanding first and foremost, and teach people as much as I can along the way.
Suzy Chase: So this pandemic has upended so many businesses. How are you pivoting to take into account our new normal?
Angela Garbacz: Ooh yeah, a lot has changed. So I've shut down both of my stores on March 26th, and I took a few days to gather myself and figure out what we could do from there. And so we started selling online, and made an online storefront in, I think, 24 or 48 hours. And we were shipping our merchandise and cookies across the country, which is something that I always said we would never do, but it was the only way I could think to make money at that time, because I could keep my staff really small and not have customers coming in. And shortly after that, we pivoted to do flash sales and pre-orders through that same online store. So because as a food business, if I'm baking every day and I don't have a set number of customers coming in, or the usual customers coming in, I am wasting so much food, and I'm wasting so much labor.
And so, we started baking to order. And so we'd placed flash sales on the website on Tuesday, for example, and then you would come and pick them up on Wednesday. So when my one baker came in on Wednesday morning, she was baking exactly to order. So we've been doing that for the past eight weeks, nine weeks, and we're just now starting to do a takeout model. I also opened a second store in March, right before this happened.
Suzy Chase: Oh, no.
Angela Garbacz: Yeah, on March 9th, I opened. And we've been operating out of that new location, because it's a lot bigger and we have a lot of space for people to have their space around them. But we're just now starting to do takeout at my original location that's a lot smaller, and bringing people back.
Suzy Chase: So you emphasize inclusivity by developing recipes and baking for people who are dietary sensitive. Tell us a little bit about that.
Angela Garbacz: Yeah, so when I started my business, I really started it as a blog in 2014, and it was called the Goldenrod Pastries as well. And I started that because I have always been sensitive to dairy, but I really decided at that point, I just can't do this anymore. And I had been trained in French pastry, and worked in pastry with using butter, and cream, and milk for 15 plus years. And so, I needed to find a new way to make food, because I think that treats are very important, and it makes me very happy. So I needed to find a way to make food for myself. So I started Goldenrod Pastries as a blog to start chronicling my journey through that and sharing recipes.
And what I found very, very quickly is that there were so many people, who maybe it wasn't dairy for them, maybe it was eggs, or wheat, or soy. But they hadn't had a birthday cake for 10 years. Or, a 35-year-old guy came to me and he hadn't had a donut since he was six years old because of a gluten allergy. And I couldn't turn these people away, even though I didn't know how to bake for them, but I'm a chef first and foremost. And what we love to do is feed people. And so I found a way to make food for these people, even though I didn't really know how. And the orders just came flooding in as soon as I started saying yes to people. And a year later, I opened my store with that mindset of, we have to make food for as many people as possible, so that we can really invite more people to the conversation. The same is true with my book. With Perfectly Golden, I wanted to make a book that invited as many people to the table as possible.
Suzy Chase: That's so fascinating to me, because I grew up in Kansas City, where it's just like Nebraska. It's everything conservative, everything, "Traditional." So, I'm so curious to hear how your bakery was received in Nebraska.
Angela Garbacz: I'm very, very thankful that we've always been very busy. And I really think that one thing that's a cool measure of what we do at Goldenrod, is that our morning buns do have gluten in them, but otherwise everything is gluten-free, dairy-free, or gluten-free vegan. And most of our customers do not need those things. And so I think that that speaks volumes and a lot of people would never know. Right now we have these rhubarb strawberry shortbread bars, and those are gluten-free and vegan. If you are a person who needs that, then you see that called out on there. But if you aren't a person who needs that, then you just don't notice.
And so I think it's really important for me to make food that's good for everyone and anyone. My dad is a really great judge for me, because he's super sensitive to anything being a little different or weird. So when he tries something, and when I was getting started, I had them try our buns that are vegan. I had him try all kinds of things. And he's like, "Is there anything weird about this?" And I'm like, "Well, yeah. It's gluten-free and vegan." And he's like, "I don't know. I can't tell." And I'm like, "Okay, great. Then that's what we're going to keep doing," because I think it's important to include everybody, or as many people as possible. That means the people who have a traditional diet as well.
Suzy Chase: So you have little, you-do-you icons at the top of each recipe. Can you describe these?
Angela Garbacz: Oh yeah. I love this little section. So it's a little checklist at the beginning of each recipe. And so it says, "You do you. Make this vegan dairy-free, gluten-free, traditional," and there's little checkboxes. So I just opened the book, and I opened it to crumble bun, which is a bun that we make. It's swirled up, and filled with preserves or curd, and topped with strudel and glaze. And so all four of those boxes are checked. So you can make it vegan. You can make it dairy-free, gluten-free, or you can make it traditional. And in a lot of cases, that checklist is redundant, because pretty much all of the boxes are checked for all of the recipes. But for me, when I'm looking at a recipe, I just want to flip through a cookbook and know if this recipe is going to work for me or not, if I can make it dairy-free or not. It was really important to me to have that called out for people, because you really have to try hard in a lot of cookbooks to find if it works for you, and I wanted this to be just a really simple roadmap for people.
Suzy Chase: So one piece of advice you've gotten along your journey is other women are not the competition. Personally, I find in the food world and with what I'm doing, I received my fair share of aloofness from women in the industry. But I'm not going to talk about that. Can you talk a little bit about the article, your friend Elizabeth shared with you about this topic?
Angela Garbacz: There's always been women's rights movements, our great movements, but what we are experiencing now in terms of female empowerment is very different than it was in 2012. I feel like it was just different then, and different when I was growing up. And I read this and it was like, "There's there's room for more than one of us at the top. Because you think about it, and for a long time, if you saw one woman at the top and you're like, "Well, she already did it. I guess, that's it. She's already the best female baker, so I guess I'm done. There's nothing else for me to do," or, "She's a great food media professional, so there's no room for me." And I think that it's a very easy mindset to slip into. And this article was just talking about how that's not the case, and there's room for more than one woman at the top. And to me, that was like a revolutionary mindset.
And there were these series of events that kept building up for me. Like, I went to a blogging workshop where somebody said, "You don't have to be who you've always been. You can choose who the future you is." And I was like, "Oh man, that's a really crazy thing to think about." And realizing for myself, there's room for more than one woman at the top. These were all things that kept building for me. And I was like, "That's right." Even if I've had not great relationships with women in the past, or they haven't helped to make me feel empowered, that doesn't matter. I can forge my own path, and I can still be strong for myself, and be strong for other women. And I mean, you already said this yourself, we've all experienced this, the aloofness or the, "Well, I'm going to ignore that she's doing that, because it's similar to what I'm doing."
Suzy Chase: Yes.
Angela Garbacz: So if I give her praise for it, then that means that I'm not doing well. Yeah.
Suzy Chase: Exactly.
Angela Garbacz: I think the more that we build each other up, the better we all are.
Suzy Chase: Amen.
Angela Garbacz: It's a lot easier, too.
Suzy Chase: I know. And then we all win.
Angela Garbacz: Especially with everything else going on in the world. Just support each other. It's a lot easier. It takes a lot less time.
Suzy Chase: What bit of advice would you give someone with a baking blog who wants to start her own bakery in the post-COVID world?
Angela Garbacz: In the post-COVID world, oh my gosh. It's just crazy how fast everything has changed. There's been a lot of women who have started their businesses similarly to mine. And we chat. They come into the bakery. We talk about things, and I'm always happy to help them figure out what equipment to buy and everything. But I think that moving forward, it's going to be more like, how can you partner with brands, and do things from your home? And how can you do mail order? I think that it's going to take a long time, personally. And sadly, I haven't thought about this, but it's going to take a while for new businesses in the food world to pop up again.
Suzy Chase: Talk a little bit about how the future of food is being mindful of the ways people choose or need to eat.
Angela Garbacz: I just think that the more inclusive we can be, the better. And it might be an allergy, but I just know that I don't feel well when I eat something. And I feel like a lot of times in restaurants, in bakeries, I feel like I have to say, "I have an allergy," for people to take me seriously. In my world, in my Goldenrod world, I don't really care if it's a serious allergy. I don't care if you prefer not to eat it. I just want to make food that makes you feel good. And I hope that the food industry as a whole will move over to the mindset of, "How can we just serve our customers better? How can we serve our community better?" Because it's not up us, how people choose to eat. Our job is to make food that makes them happy, and I think that's kind of the most important thing.
Suzy Chase: How did you choose the name of your bakery, Goldenrod?
Angela Garbacz: That's a great question. So Goldenrod is the Nebraska state flower, and I use a lot of gold in the things that I make. I feel like yellow and gold are things that I was always drawn to. And so I played with a lot of names that had gold in it, and they were just a little floofy and frilly for me. And I moved away, and worked in New York, and went to school in New York. And my husband went to culinary school in Oregon, and we both made the choice to come back to Nebraska. And I wanted to signify that in some way, and include this state, and where we chose to be as part of this journey.
Suzy Chase: Tell us about Empower Through Flower.
Angela Garbacz: Yes. Empower Through Flower is my annual Women's History Month campaign. I started it three years ago, and we partner with nonprofits that help to empower young women. We work with pastry chefs, restaurant owners, bakery, any female identifying people in the food industry, influencers, otherwise who can make a product, or whatever that looks like for their platform. And a portion of the proceeds from everything that they sell, or any money that they generate from that product goes back to the nonprofit that we work with. And we've had exponential growth every year with the number of people participating and the amount of money that we've made. Unfortunately this year, it was going to be our biggest year yet. We had great publicity on the today show. It was going to be a great, great year for Empower Through Flower, but Women's History Month is in March, so that got shut down pretty fast.
Suzy Chase: Oh, man.
Angela Garbacz: Yeah. But there will be a next year.
Suzy Chase: Yes.
Angela Garbacz: It's a cool thing for me. I started it because I just felt like we had to do something to give back. I love doing that. And then it grew into, there were all of these pastry chefs and female chefs in the world and the country who I really idolized. And I thought they were incredible. And I was like, "Well, this is a way that I can connect with them other than just commenting on their Instagram posts." And one of those people is Caroline Schiff, who's an incredible pastry chef at Gage & Tollner in Brooklyn. And I just admired her so much, and I loved her work, and I thought she seemed like a really cool person. And she actually came on as a co-founder with me this year, and now runs Empower Through Flower with me. And we connected through her being a participant. And now she's one of my greatest friends in the industry, and runs Empower Through Flower with me.
Suzy Chase: So the other day, I made your recipe for Confetti Cake with Vanilla Buttercream on page 200. This is one of your most popular cakes at the bakery. Can you describe this recipe?
Angela Garbacz: You don't cream any fat or sugar. It's just eggs, and sugar, and oil at the beginning, and you beat that until it's nice and fluffy, and add in your dry ingredients, and stream in some milk, and vanilla, or almond extract, if you like that kind of confetti cake, and add a bunch of sprinkles. I love the texture of this cake. It's not super sweet, which sometimes confetti cake can be. The frosting makes it extra sweet, but it's just a really nice cake that's easy to make if you don't have a mixer at home as well.
Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called My Favorite Cookbook. What is your all-time favorite cookbook, and why?
Angela Garbacz: I got to go with this, my Grandma Garbacz's Betty Crocker cookbook that she gifted to me that had her yeast roll dough, her sweet roll dough in it, and it was circled, and she just had star asterisks next to it. That's one of my most prized possessions.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web, social media, and in Lincoln, Nebraska?
Angela Garbacz: So, you can follow me on Instagram, @AngelaGabacz_, with an underscore at the end. You can follow my business @GoldenRodPastries on Instagram as well, and on Facebook. And we sell copies of Perfectly Golden as well at shopgoldenrod.com, but you can also buy it wherever fine books are sold. And Goldenrod Pastries is at two locations in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Suzy Chase: Awesome. Well, thanks Angela for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.
Angela Garbacz: Thank you so much.
