Conan Interviews Bread Expert Steven Kaplan - "Late Night With Conan O'Brien"

in pan you play heavy metal when you came here there's a lot to talk about first of all you teach history of French society at Cornell so how did you get into pan? How did that happen? Bread is at the center of the social experience. Yes. It's a communion. It's what keeps people together. It's what allows people to survive. So if you want to understand the mysteries of how a society can survive over a long period of time,

bread

is an excellent entry point.

bread

is a kind of place where we all come together as people, we all enjoy bread, we break bread and exchange bread and bread unites us, okay, literally, how long, sorry, it was cheap, how long have you been studying the bread, probably about 40 years, 40 years you've been studying bread, when did you sew?

In 1967, in the '60s, I went to do my thesis and discovered that to write convincingly about bread I needed to learn to be a baker, so I trained a little as a baker and what was fast. and it was that bread is a living substance that you make it every day and it's that its liveliness makes it difficult to control and making bread is very similar to a sexual act that implies, oh my God, it implies implies in some way is it So? one sexual inseminates the flower with a leavening agent one mounts the flower to need how do you make bread swell yes yes I mean, it mimics some of the breeding experience yes, so it's interesting yes, oh my goodness, it's okay, it's okay, so for you You realize that this is a sensual experience manipulating bread and stroking the bread and then you decided that I should know more about well, today we are going to taste some bread, it is that right and the tasting is important because We must not let tasting be the monopoly of snobs. wine drinkers, yes, sure, it's more democratic, but that doesn't mean that the bread shouldn't be given the same majesty of flavor, so I think we should know well, well, here it is eventually and this is the bread and it's Well, friends, that's good. so tell us now, yes, okay, this is actually, all the different types of breeders don't travel on airplanes with this, but yes, this will allow us to do some work, okay, and what are we going to want, try some bread we want. examine five qualities of bread the first the first disappearance bread has to be good for thinking before it is good to eat it has to have an architecture that is attractive that is not a line that makes us anxious it has to provoke a caress everything in trouble and it's bread this bread is this bread is disgusting that's why what's wrong with this bread this bread doesn't look that different from that one it doesn't have the indentation so the slices don't have the types of qualities of the crust right, it's nature golden so this bread looks horrible to you look at this let's get rid of this bread so this is even more bread this bread was baked too close to the bird next to it we call it breads that were copulating oh my god the police are looking for you because of the way you that the man has been exposing himself in the window of a bakery, the fellow primates, your bread is something we shouldn't talk about, yeah, well, you keep mentioning it, it's not that interesting, is it? we want to section the bread vertically oh dear, I want to avoid lacerating the structure of the crumb, yeah, there we go, that's when, in other words, you just cut the bread what we wanted, we wanted, we want to steal the rise of a geyser. of aromas that's good, that's good bread, okay, so you want to know what it smells like.

Professor X smells like bread, no, that's Dr. Donny's new tautology in which non-believers are locked into this smells this smells like it smells like butter okay, it's like it smells like hazelnut hazelnut smells smells like winter vegetables it even has a little caramel in it the crust is caramelized and the oldest of the crust migrates to the crumb this is a wonderful bread and look at the structure of a crumb it has these little memory sites these holes of different sizes what specifies a good fermentation it has a sensuality it is a chamber that is there it is not anorexic is fleshy is fleshy yes when you press it it comes back just when you push it this way it resonates yes it has attracts to the place attracts to the sound you feel it creak which gives you the number of restaurants that have been thrown away recently brings you the bread that you are poking, poking , riding and pushing yes, I have my bread in my briefcase if the bread is a piece, is Keith Oberman usually showing dirty cards? she raping the bread were we ever okay?

We have smelled the bread, we have pricked the bread, we have caressed the bread and caressed the bread, will we try some bread at some point? Well, if you recognize the fact that it's tactile, yes, and the fact that you don't need a fork, then we can give you a piece to try. I can have it? What you just rubbed. Okay, by your standards. You like this. Now you want me to eat that one. It's immunology. full of chronology, no theology so a Catholic shouldn't worry about it, very nice, ok, very nice mouthfeel, not offensive, doesn't attack too aggressively, has a nice nutty taste. this is a good piece no, it's good bread it's how much good you've eaten I eat bread I come out yes Wonder Bread, I imagine so suddenly you know like Wonder Bread eh, what's wrong with Wonder Bread?

It has no taste, it is tasteless, it has no interest. It has no crust, it has crumbs, let's load it with chemicals, why else should I like you? There's Wonder Bread, all the sponsors of this show, Jeff, you're insulting some of the best bread ever made, so do you eat a lot of bread? so you must when you are tasting the bread you must eat pounds and pounds of bread I don't, I don't, I spit, I keep it moist, I spit and there is in the great taxonomy of things, there are swallowers and there are spirits.

I guess that would make me a swallower. This segment airs to

night

. I will be very surprised. Well, the book seems innocent enough. It looks like it wouldn't need a brown wrapper on top. A consumable job. Yes, another sexual image. god, it's okay if you continue, I'm trying to get us out of here before the police show up, professor, the book is called a good bread, it's back and it's very entertaining to talk to you, Steven Kaplan, thank you very much.