- Duff Goldman, a Food Network star and pastry chef, shared his tips for spotting a worthy bakery.
- The TV host told Insider he usually gets a gut feeling about a bakery when he first walks in.
Celebrity pastry chef and television host Duff Goldman knows his way around a bakery. And when it comes to choosing the right one, he has a few criteria that the eatery needs to meet.
In an interview about his partnership with Sun-Maid, the "Ace of Cakes" star told Insider that spotting a good bakery — and similarly, knowing when to walk out of one — can be very simple. Just use your senses and know what to look out for, he said.
While these aren't hard and fast rules, they're just some of the red flags Goldman looks out for when shopping around himself.
Take a look around — is it clean?
"First and foremost, just look at the place," Goldman told Insider.
He mentioned how, generally, all bakeries are going to be relatively clean. But if you look past the overall cleanliness, do you see any missteps?
"Look at the bakery case," he said. "Are there some little crumbs, maybe in the corners, that they didn't quite get because they weren't paying attention?"
The professional said it's "little things like that" that can give you a look into true cleanliness.
Does it smell like baked goods or cleaning supplies?
"With any food establishment or anything, I go by the smell test," Goldman said. "When I walk in the door, it's the first thing I do. And I probably do it subconsciously at this point."
He says it's important to take a deep breath in when you enter and notice what you're smelling. If it smells yeasty and like freshly baked bread or cakes, and it warrants an innate reaction of "Oh yeah, that smells good," then you're probably in good shape and can tell that things are being baked on-site.
But if it's a little too sterile or you smell cleaning products or something else along those lines that's just not the baked goods, he says you should "be a little wary."
"I'd rather smell the food itself than the pine-scented floor cleaner," he said.
Are the items fresh or stale?
Goldman says to try and get samples. But if you can't, just look at everything. Just as you can tell if a fish is fresh by looking at how clear the eyes are, there are visual cues to pick up on for baked goods and their freshness. For a lot of baked goods, that's an out-of-place wrinkle.
"The longer they sit, they start to wrinkle," he said of many baked goods, like breads or other fluffy items. So if you're looking at any kind of baked good and see a weird wrinkle in it somewhere that you don't think it belongs, it might be turning stale.
He told Insider how, as you bake bread or cakes, the molecules take in moisture and grow, which makes the item expand. When it gets stale, he said, the moisture evaporates and then the molecules shrink back down, leaving the surface wrinkly.
If you buy that wrinkled item, he said, you'll likely get something that's a little mealy, a little gummy, and just not as fresh as it should be.
"When it comes to mandel bread, you want those things a little bit stale. They've got to sit around for a day or two before they're right," he said. "But when it comes to panettone or any kind of bun or anything softer like that, if you start to see them wrinkle a little, I think that's when you want to just be careful."
If you see the wrinkles, he suggests asking for a sample before you buy it.
Regardless, Goldman says that if you're at a bakery you already trust, things are likely going to be good. Ultimately, though, he says to just follow your instinct.
"You just kind of know," he said. "You get a feeling in your gut."