856: Fall Baking with Carla Hall & Martin Sorge
The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters
This episode of The Splendid Table explores Southern and Midwestern baking traditions through conversations with Carla Hall and Martin Sorge. Carla Hall discusses her new baking book, 'Carla
Key takeaways
- Baking is not separate from savory cooking for Carla Hall—it's an extension of her personal story and Southern heritage.
- Carla Hall emphasizes the importance of preparation, using tools like kitchen scales, and embracing imperfection in both baking and life.
Main topics
- Southern and Midwestern baking traditions
- Carla Hall's new baking book 'Carla Bakes'
Notable quotes
"Baking for me is like casual Friday. I love to bake. It's also like crafting with food."
Conclusion
This episode celebrates the emotional and cultural depth behind baking, showing how recipes
Transcript preview
Speaker 4 (0:00) Support for this show comes from Feeding America. Great things are not built alone. They require the right pieces coming together for a purpose. And right now, as families face rising food costs, it's important to come together and end hunger, hand in hand. Farmers, advocates, donors, volunteers. When we connect our actions, we aren't just separating parts. We are a movement building a system that feeds millions. This Hunger Action Month assembly is required. You can give now, volunteer, or speak up at feedingamerica.org slash hungeractionmonth. Speaker 7 (0:39) I'm Ina Garten. On my new podcast, Happy Hour with Ina, I'm inviting really interesting guests to join me for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. I'll be getting personal with chefs, actors, comedians, musicians, and writers I admire. So grab a snack, pull up a chair, and join us. Subscribe to Happy Hour with Ina on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be available every Wednesday starting September 16th. I'm Speaker 6 (1:19) Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM American Public Media. Speaker 6 (1:33) You know, when I think of Midwestern baking, I think of pies for fruit and season. I think of winky breads. I think of resourcefulness and gratitude. Meanwhile, in the South, I think of featherlight biscuits made with soft wheat, hearty cornbread, and showy cakes. Well, today's episode kind of took all of that and shook it all up for me. It's a show about Southern and Midwestern baking, but in ways I'd never thought about before. Later on, we're going to talk with Martin Sorge, author of Great Bakes, modern classic bakes from the Midwest. We're going to start with the inimitable Carla Hall. Carla's an absolute favorite on our show. Always so fun and easy to talk to. And it's been just such a joy over the years watching her career evolve from being a caterer and top chef contestant to just an all-around culinary personality superstar. writing cookbooks, hosting talk shows, judging competitions, and her own food history show, which let her passion for traditional food shine. Well, her latest project is a book about bacon. While at first I figured it would be all about Southern classics, it's about so much more than that. Speaker 6 (2:51) Hey, Carla, it's great to see you. Speaker 1 (2:53) Francis, it is always so great to see you. Seriously. Speaker 2 (2:57) I am so happy for this. So we are here to talk about your new book, Carla Bakes. I am super excited about it. I was like salivating every page. But before we get to that, I want to talk to you because we haven't talked in a bit. And you're always a very busy lady. I'm sure you've had like three new TV series you've done since the last time we talked. But specifically. There was a thing you were working on last time that you've now really done. I want to hear about your one woman show. Speaker 1 (3:25) Yes. You know, it's so funny about that. Thank you for asking about it. I've been manifesting this or thinking about it for seven years and it finally happened. So it was at the Olney Theater Center in Olney, Maryland. And we were slated for four weeks. It was extended for another two weeks. So six weeks. I did 52 shows. And my co-writers. I mean, honestly, first of all. Okay, so let me just give a shout out to my co-writers who are Les Thomas and Laurie Kay and my director, Lillian Brown. And it was one of the hardest things I have ever done. And when I tell you it's one thing to dream about something. Speaker 2 (4:13) Yeah. Speaker 1 (4:14) And then it's another thing to actually execute it. But I at one point it was about a week before we were supposed to open. I was in the bathroom saying, what have I done? I can't do it. I absolutely can't do it. And and I was crying because I was like, well, maybe we can give the money back that people have gotten tickets. Speaker 1 (4:41) And I went back out. The rehearsal didn't go. The first run of the rehearsal didn't go well. And Lillian, the director, said, all right, let's do it again. And I was so mad. I was so mad. But it was like she looked into my soul and knew that I just needed to push through this feeling. And it was probably the most emotionally connected rehearsal that I had. And that was exactly what I needed. So I tell people I went. through a breakdown and a breakthrough on the same day. Speaker 6 (5:10) And Speaker 1 (5:10) then other actors were telling me, oh yeah, that's right, that's right, that tracks. I'm like, what? That's how we do this. It Speaker 2 (5:18) was Speaker 1 (5:18) pretty awesome. Speaker 2 (5:19) Everyone freaks out before the actual show happens. Speaker 1 (5:21) But Speaker 2 (5:21) tell us about the show. Are you singing? Are you dancing? Are you cooking? So I am Speaker 1 (5:27) cooking. I have a fictitious TV show called The Perfect Bite. It is about my life. And I am in the show and we go through flashbacks. So when I was my happy place, which is when I was 12 at theater camp, we go to when I was in college, when I majored in accounting, and then I worked at Pricewaterhouse. All of these are flashbacks to sort of tell my story when I had a really bad breakup with a boyfriend, when I was online meeting my husband. So it's autobiographical. It's autobiographical and there is a lot of interaction with the audience. One of the things that may scare people because you're not sure what somebody is going to do when it's live. But I love live. I love kind of not knowing. And I also love talking to people and I love playing off of people. So there are five instances where I'm able to play off of the audience, where I bring them on as characters in my story. And then I go out in the audience as Auntie Carla, you know, telling people exactly what I think and asking them questions. And I don't know what they're going to say. I tell you, there was one instance where I talk about how people are always wearing black. And, you know, Auntie Carla has three words for you, color, color and color. And I go to this one lady and she's like, well, I went to a funeral before I came here. Oh, you said, yes, you're covering your black. So this lady goes, I went to a funeral. I'm like, OK. And then the audience is like, oh, my gosh, that is so awkward. And I was like, look, nobody here is going to live forever. So we're all going to be going to a funeral. Somebody is going to be coming to our funeral. So I'm good. And then I talk to her and then I walk away. I'm like, OK, now let's see how else I can stick my foot in my mouth. OK, but I am I'm literally that raw, that present. And it is it's really fun. And there is. And one man said to me, you you are so confident you cannot get embarrassed. And it's not that it's just that. I want to take the audience on a journey and it doesn't serve them by being embarrassed. Do you know what I mean? Speaker 2 (7:34) Mm-hmm. Yeah. You were also famously a master of the deflection. I remember a few years ago when you were hosting the James Beard Awards and you took a tumble. And in my mind now, it's like a quadruple somersault. You know, you like danced and pirouetted and land back on your feet. But it was an iconic Carla Hall moment. And so, OK, so thank you. Tell me about the show. I know we're here to talk about the book. And actually, I do think it's connected in the sense that I kind of felt like this book is. been one I've always kind of knew you would write one day. Even you've written many books and this is your first baking book. But, you know, it's interesting. Most restaurant chefs are not bakers. Speaker 8 (8:16) But. Speaker 2 (8:18) I feel like for you, your culinary story, like baking has always been interwoven with your, you know, with your savory cooking. I don't think you think of Speaker 1 (8:26) it Speaker 2 (8:26) even as being so separate. It's like, oh, the savory cooking and the pastry cooking. I think for you, it's always been you're making food and part of it is tradition and traditions you came up in. And part of it is sort of weaving your tradition and telling your story. And so I've always just knew that one day you would do a baking book. But tell me about that. Speaker 1 (8:46) So baking for me is like casual Friday. I love to bake. It's also like crafting with food. Speaker 2 (8:54) You know, Speaker 1 (8:55) when I think about the first dessert that I always wanted to take to my customers when I had the lunch bunch was my granny's five flavor pound cake. And that was the cake that my grandmother made for us. you know, for all the special meals at our home, all of when we were in college, she would send it to her grandkids. So it was, it was really, and to your point, it is not separate. There's not a sweet side and a savory side. It's what is the story that I want to tell about sort of growing up or where I've been, people I've met, you know, it's sort of all comes together. And I wanted to do a baking book before soul food. I was ready. I was like, oh, I'm going to do a baking book. And the publisher was like, no, you're not. Speaker 1 (9:49) I mean, that's when soul food came out. And I love soul food. I really did. I love the process of soul food. So and interestingly enough, I think since then I've done more baking shows. And so it makes sense for me to do it now. So when I pitched it again and I initially I wanted to do a baking book from the perspective of a judge on baking shows. Right. Oh, Speaker 2 (10:14) interesting. Speaker 1 (10:14) You know what I'm tasting for, what gets me excited. Speaker 1 (10:20) You know, I am not I do not call myself a baker. I like to bake. So even in this book, I'm like, I'm trying some things that I've never tried before, but we're going to try them together. And I will have tested it and I'm giving it to you to share, to try it yourself. And I'm also very much OK with not knowing everything about everything, you know, but I love baking. I love I love how. exacting it is. I love how you can throw something together, but you can also do something that is sort of exacting and, you know, measuring. And let me just say, get a scale. Can we tell people to get a darn scale? Please. I wish my book came with a scale. You Speaker 2 (11:03) can play, but get a scale. Like, weigh your ingredients. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weigh Speaker 1 (11:07) your ingredients. Yes. Speaker 2 (11:08) Well, let me say this. I'm kind of glad that... you waited to write your baking book because when I read this book I feel very much a sense of pardon me for using this word because it feels like it's putting me in a sort of different place or whatever but I feel like there's a maturity in this book and the recipes in this book and the approach to recipes that maybe a younger you wouldn't have brought to it because I see your interest in heritage and history that we've seen you evolve with over the years and I see like an interest in using Whole grains, different kinds of grains, both for deliciousness, but also like nutrition. Like you write a bit about, you know, you're at a different age now and, you know, you are sort of more conscious about what you're putting in your body and you want to share that again in a delicious way. So I love all those elements of the book. So let's get to some of the recipes. And one that I do think kind of speaks to all this is your sorghum, the spice sorghum drop biscuits. Speaker 1 (12:09) Yes. Speaker 2 (12:10) Everyone knows you make a great biscuit, but here you are playing with it, with the spices and with the sorghum flour. Tell us about this recipe and how you came to it. Speaker 1 (12:19) So every book that I've done, there are biscuits, right? Every book that I've done, there's a pound cake. And the same way that you described, like in using different grains, there was a time where I was so into sorghum, especially when I did soul food and seeing the connection to sorghum and West Africa, that I wanted to be a part of the sorghum board. I really, I was like, where are the sorghum board people? Do they need to call me? Because I felt like... Speaker 1 (12:50) There's the pearl sorghum. There's the flour. There's the grain, you know, and this nuttiness. And it's just delicious. And I feel like there's so many people who are gluten-free or gluten intolerant. And I have a little bit of an intolerance. So I want to give them something as well. So it comes from. several places. It comes from a historical place where wanting to use these different grains from West Africa. It comes from a place of, you know, my body now, as I get older, it really likes less wheat flour. And then it comes from a place of flavor and what goes with it and getting people out of this one grain. Because if you're using sorghum, that means you can also try another grain, you know, and I want you to get used to using other grains. Speaker 6 (13:40) We'll be back in a minute with more from Carla Hall, author of Carla Bakes. I'm Francis Lam, and this is The Splendid Table from APM, American Public Media. Speaker 4 (13:53) Support for the show comes from Feeding America. Nothing great ever happens in isolation. It takes the right pieces and the right people coming together with a shared purpose. That's what makes the real difference. And right now, so many people are facing the pressures of rising grocery prices and tight budgets. But when we work together, small actions create a ripple effect in ending hunger. This September, for Hunger Action Month, the Feeding America Network is reminding people that assembly is required. To build a system that is strong enough to feed millions, individual efforts have to come together into a unified movement. From the farmers harvesting food, to the volunteers packing boxes at local pantries, to people listening right now.