My name is Eva Longoria and I am mate remez Racon and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past and present through food. On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.
So make yourself at home, even broche.
Hi.
Everyone, Welcome back to Hungry for History. We're doing things a little bit differently today. We have a very special guest, Clements, salutes from the Santa Monica Bakery Petit Grand bou Lingerie.
Clements is a dear friend.
Not only is she a dear friend, she's a baker whose work reminds us that bread has always been about much more than just nourishment. Through her careful sourcing, meticulous process, and her presence in the community, she taps into Bread's long history of labor care and quiet revolution, and The New York Times said that eating one of her croissants felt like inhaling warm buttery aroma.
Welcome Clemons.
I'm so happy to be here. I miss you.
I miss you too.
I was seeing you so I wanted to talk to you because first of all, you're the best baker and just one of the best humans that I know. You're one of the first people that I met when I moved to LA and it's like, I see you and I just want to hug you, But I really wanted to talk to you about you know, because you're so passionate about what you do, and bread has always carried so much meaning far beyond the bakery, especially in moments of tension, of social tension, and we're living one of
these moments in the US now. It's the first week of February. We're in the midst of intense national unrest. On January thirtieth, which was just last Friday, there was a coordinated national strike, widespread protests around the country in response to everything that's going on with ICE, you know, Minneapolis, the fatal shootings, kidnappings, you know, no new processes, et cetera,
et cetera, like so much. Many businesses closed in solidarity, but Mariny small businesses stayed open with intention, and you were one of these businesses.
So so what did that look like to you?
What values guided this choice, and how did your community respond?
So it was not an easy decision to decide to stay open. I have a deep respect for bakeries like Proof who decided to close, and I can understand how they came to that decision, and I one hundred percent support everybody who did close and actually feel like it
was an incredibly brave and courageous thing to do. When I was thinking about what to do, I called a couple of other small business owners, all the bakery and restaurant owners, and then did some deep thinking about what it meant to strike, who we were striking against, how the strike was organized, and the reasons why, and then
how that would impact the community and our staff. Number One is, when I think about a strike, I'm thinking about striking against something that is like systematically unfair and unjust, and striking for the sake of striking, and not hitting an organization, a system, or a business that is harming people Like I wanted to be more intentional. If we were striking against a particular entity that was very specific,
it would have made a really big impact. But I felt like the small businesses of our community have taken the brunt of so much in the last eighteen months, between the fires and the economy and a variety of factors. It just felt like all of us small businesses who were deciding and kind of being pitted against by some trolls against each other for deciding to strike or not
to strike, to open, not to open. It just felt like, why are we taking the brunt of this when our workers are the most vulnerable were our owners are the most vulnerable owners economically speaking, And if we're closing, we are also closing the impact of conversation and the reason why we have hospitality. For me, hospitality is a deeply
political business. We are here to create discussion and community and treat people, make them feel good, and have them come in and understand our process, why we do it and why that's impactful. And I don't mean political as in red and blue. I mean political in the way that every business decision you make has a really deep impact, just like every customer's purchases have a really deep impact
on our society culturally, economically, and politically speaking. And so by staying open, I felt like I was staying really true to that. Meaning if we lost a really busy day,
that would impact our purchasing from the farmer's markets. And if we lost today, it would mean you know, I could have closed and paid the employee they're hourly wage, but I could not have afforded to pay them the twenty five percent of their income that they get from tips, and it just didn't feel fair to put that burden on our workers in la or in the business owners that are dealing with a shit time right now. To be perfectly honest, this is a very difficult climate to
be a small business owner in. And when we make, you know, donations to organizations, it's not like Walmart that's getting a massive tax break. We're doing this because it has, you know, a deep meaning and impact for us. And while it does affect our bottom line, I think it creates a conversation and a stance that our community can
get involved in. So by deciding to give away ten percent of gross sales, which is really our margins, to certain organizations, we were taking a stance and for me having a larger impact on taking part in writing some wrongs rather than closing and essentially closing the conversation.
I love the image that you posted on social media when you announced that you would be staying open. That was the fist holding the bread the baggat.
So I can't take credit for that image. There are a few of us other female business owners who were talking right before we all decided to stay open and crafted that image just to collaboratively with the wording to try to explain our reasons for staying open. And again, it wasn't easy, but but we were you know, we were so committed to getting the communities to understand why we were staying open in a really positive way. And
you know, I had a lot of trolls. We lost some customers really really uh huh yeah, oh wow.
Interesting.
But you know, you can't please everyone, and and you know, we can explain it all we can, but but in the end, you know, we we had to make decisions for our businesses and our staff and all of the vendors that are affected. You know, when you strike or when you close, or when there's fires and where there's emergencies, it's the reverberated effects that are really impactful, and it typically, you know, goes down to the most vulnerable people in
our communities. It's the people who are fixing our equipment, who are farming for our produce.
So that's where that came from. It's tied to the French resistance. I was like, oh, this is so common, So I love that. It's all you know, women that women bakers that you said that were that were this because it was like the women that marched into Versailles. And it's just like it's such a powerful image and it's so simple, like there's it's the hand and the
and the bread. We're not this was not just a financial decision, like we are angry and for us, sometimes resistance means like making economic choices that are very.
Very well thought through.
Yeah, yeah, you have this like this lineage right, this because you had your background also your family was in the hospitality business, wasn't right, And it's like so you have this like this resistance in your DNA this right, and it's like it's part, it's part. So you said that you lost some customers and you've had some trolls like if someone had never thought about bread as political, what would you want them to notice differently, Like what would you want them to learn from this?
I say, just turn it around.
Your purchasing decisions have a great deal of impact on the communities that you live in, and so if you're going to boycott a business and turn around and buy something on Amazon, then perhaps you should really think about like your everyday daily choices and how they affect labor, how they affect sourcing, how they affect the environment. Those are bigger conversations that we need to have as a
culture because they're all so impactful. And if we lost customers, oh well, you know, I think the overwhelming support and the fact that our sales went up and we were able to donate so much is more impactful than the people that we lost. But yeah, like when you buy bread, everyone listening, you are making a vote for the kind of economy and society that you may not realize you are participating in. So you know, when you're buying most of your food at a very large scale grocery store,
I just need you to understand a few things. Number one is the margins are very very tiny, very small, and the people who pay for that are the people who are making your food. So let's take a jar of salsa for example. When you buy a jar of salsa and it's on sale and it's two dollars off, it is not like a collaboration between the grocery store and like the coupon market. It is the producer of
the salsa that is paying for that. In addition to paying for that, they're paying for slotting fees, which are the fees that allow you to be more eye level and in the center of the display that you're seeing. And it is reverberated through lowering the cost of producing
that salsa. So it means if you are with a copacker, which is a company that manufactures your products for you so you can sell it at a very low price and take advantage of some production savings, it means that you're going to save a few cents per jar by switching to the supplier that they have made a deal with for say the the tomatoes that they are using in the salsa, or if they don't want things to separate in your salad dressing, it's the xanthem gum, which
is made from corn that is used to keep it from separating so that you don't have to shake the bottle well before using. These are all like reverberated things that affect the people who are growing your food, making your food, packing your food, and making the biggest business decisions in the food world.
You used to run the Gormandis School of Cooking school, and I used to teach there, so yes, I know, I loved I love that place, and I've been to the Santa Monica Farmer's Market with you, so I know firsthand you live and breathe this. I mean, this is how you you run your businesses, this is how you live your life. And the sourcing is just so important to you. You're so committed to this because you just explained it.
Just it's the it's the.
Whole ladder shopping at farmers' markets is It's not just like a fun, cool hipster thing that you know, it's kind of taken on, but it is a political statement and it is not convenient, and it does take time
out of your day, but it has an impact. Like when you know, I had kids really young, and I had wick and you know, like before this the EBT, the food stamp situation, and I remember feeling like I'm using this federal money that has been set aside by the farm bill to pay a farmer directly rather than
taking it to a big box grocery store. And that felt really impactful and that, you know, and nobody sort of wants to be in that position where they are wondering where to get like the best quality produce for your kids and doing the best that you can. But I think that we are lulled just in this false sense of everything should be easy and we have a right for everything to be so clean and simple and
convenient all the time. Like that's really I think lulled us into a false sense of complacency rather than activism.
So you have I remember walking through the farmer's market with you, and all of the farmers were like, hey, climak, everyone you knew, you knew everyone, and everyone came up to you, and it was so it was like such a community. I love it so And yeah, that I feel like that ends up in your menu, your relationship with you know, the farmer, with the with the miller, with that. You know, everything just ends up, you know,
ends up in that. And actually, and it also must be difficult, right, and in a sense is it?
Or maybe it's not. You're running your business harder or no.
It's just it's no, okay. So here's the story going back. So my grandparents had a restaurant with a little bit I was like in the middle of nowhere in France, and then my father ended up running it for a while and and so in the summers I would go and work with them, you know, like I was nine or ten or whatever, and like running the lice cream cart or you know, making cakes, and and I would
go outsourcing with my grandfather and then my dad. You know, we'd go down and get all our produce and you know, directly from the farmers or the growers. And then we went to go pick up goat cheese. One day and we went to this woman's farm where we source all our goat cheese from. And I remember we had just been to the big box store to pick up things like chocolate, and I remember seeing the prices of the
goat cheese. And then we went to her farm, and you know, I was probably in my early teens, and I was like, wow, cheese is so much more expensive. And He's like yeah, but you know, if we don't get cheese from her, like she will lose her farm and she will no longer be our neighbor. It was kind of one of those like eye opening things that I was like, oh, I okay, that makes sense. Yeah,
And that's how I feel about sourcing at the market. Like, yes, we drive a little out of the way or bike a little out of the way or whatever to get our stuff, but then people in our community who we love and we cherish get to stay in there and be a part of it and recirculate that money close by, rather than you know, going off to some li large conglomerate somewhere that we don't know their practices, or we do and we don't like it, but we feel like, oh,
it's easier, so let me just do this because it's easier. So shopping at the farmer's market has always been a part of sourcing for that reason, but also because of flavor. Right, Like when we shop at the market, like our berries were picked forty eight hours before and they were picked at their peak of ripeness. So I hear all the time like, yeah, it's a little more expensive. I'm like, well,
let's talk about strawberries. Right, So if you go to Costco and you get strawberries, I'd say like fifteen to twenty percent of that berry is white at the collar, it's picked way before it's ripe, it doesn't have any really high sugar content. But then you end up throwing away fifteen percent of that berry when you're hauling out the inside because you just want the flavor of it. Right, Like if I'm making jam, or if I'm using berries for garnish, but when I'm getting at a farmer's market,
it was picked at its peak of ripeness. So it might look more expensive upfront, but the flavor and the quality is just a mess.
Oh yeah, it's so interesting because it's so it's so obvious, right, Oh, if you go straight to the source and then that source, that person can then have a livelihood, and then yeah, I charge a little bit more, but then you know what's going into your body, and you don't have all sorts of GMOs or all sorts of whatever going into your body, and you're gonna be healthier because then you're not gonna end up having to see a doctor.
Blah blah blah. It's just it goes on and on. So so I love it.
I love talking to one of the millers that we work with, and for years it's like it's so hard to push whole grains on people, so I like, don't lead with that. I just say put it in their mouth and then they're like like why is this so good? And you're like it's got a whole grains, Like, oh I don't like holy flower. I'm like, okay, well it's because there's ten thousand different types of whole wheat in the world, and when you're at the grocery store, you're just tasting too, right, Is that true?
It's only two at the grocery store hard read.
When you buy bread flour, it's always made from a heart red wheat when you buy sorry, which it is, But when you're buying whole wheat flour, it just says whole wheat flour. And it's always like a hard red wheat, which is really lovely. It's really high in tannins, and it's really intense, and it's a very thirsty kind of grain, which means that your products are going to require more liquid or just be drier because you might not know to adjust. And it's really intense. It like a burgundy,
like a red wine. And when I'm playing with other kinds of whole grains, like my favorite is spelt, I think about different flavor profiles and the fact that spelt, for example, has just a slightly nutty flavor and it's not as thirsty, it's more extensible, it creates a more tender crumb, and it has a totally different flavor profile.
So I think that as we broaden our ideas and think less about maybe just taking things for granted and become more like slightly more critical thinkers or be more curious. That's when we experience the greatest amount of like, oh, you know, surprise too. I enjoyment.
So what responsibility do you think food businesses have right now, given climate change and inequality?
What would you say?
I think it's it's a little bit of unfair question. I would reframe it maybe because when I think about the responsibility, I feel like I want to put it on the consumer, because my responsibility is to make payroll and make rent and create a business that's economically sustainable so that even in hard months, like no employee has to get their hours cut, right, So it's about like
that's my responsibility as a business owner. On the flip side of that, I am a consumer as well, and so I try to model what I think that I need my customers to do, which is to favor purchasing directly and then like enjoying products as quickly as they
come out. Right. So I think when people are like, oh, your question is like it's so good and I'm really really proud of it, But I think it's because it has some whole grain flour in it, and people don't expect that, and they you know, they're like, I can't point to why I like it this way, and some people don't like it to be perfectly fair. But all
of that just comes from sourcing, right. So then my responsibility as a baker or like a creative is to make the best product possible, to get people to you know, have joy and want to come back and support it, and make it less price conscious, but more about the experience.
If bred was a revolutionary tool in seventeen eighty nine, what.
Is it today? Great question, I would say, yeah, wheat and corn products, because the French Revolution was really about taxation, right, and what do our tax dollars go more towards rather than the Defense Department? It is the Farm bill. And two really big, highly subsidized crops that are really important to our diet are wheat and corn. So corn, tortillas and bread.
Let's go okay, yeah, corn is in the news. Corns are in the news now.
Yeah, fullic acidermapolic acid, yeah, yeah, Okay, whole other conversation, We could have a whole other hour, whole other hour. Oh my gosh, so much to think about. Thank you so much, Clements always thank you, always so so eye opening to just to hear you speak and your passion. And I always learn so much from everything that you have to say. And every time that I have a conversation with you, I always change a little bit about what I of.
How I live, and what I do.
I love that and I think back to the classes that you taught just about the history of food and the trajectory of them, and I think to each one of those all the time. So thank you for opening my eyes. And those are the people that you reached. It's impactful.
Special thank you to my friend Clements from the Santa Monica Bakery, Pettit Grand Blingerie.
Thank you everyone who joined today.
See you all next week when you talk about the history of butter fig.
Hungary for History is a hyphen a media production in partnership with Iheart's Michael Bura podcast network.
For more of your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.