Joanne Chang: 5 Cookbooks by the Pastry Chef

Joanne Chang is a Boston-based pastry chef and the co-owner of Flour Bakery (and its nine offshoots). Joanne is the child of Taiwanese immigrants and grew up in Texas and Oklahoma, where her family life revolved around food (but didn’t include much in the way of sugary American desserts). Even though she didn’t have sweets around her as a child, she had a huge sweet tooth and spent her free time dreaming of desserts and trying her hand at baking.

After college, Joanne landed a job at a prestigious management consulting firm in Cambridge. She spent her days making complex spreadsheets and her evenings and weekends cooking and baking for friends and colleagues. She also worked recruiting college seniors before graduation. As an icebreaker during the interview process, she asked prospective hires what they would do if they won the lottery. Hundreds of answers later, she turned the question around on herself. Her response? Bake.

So she left her job to work in restaurants, eventually opening Flour Bakery in 2000. Since then, she expanded the bakery to eight more locations, opened a Taiwanese-inspired restaurant, won a reality TV cooking competition and a James Beard Award, and wrote five cookbooks. Despite her long list of accolades, Joanne still delights in the alchemy of baking: simple ingredients that, when combined with the right techniques, transform into something magical.

Joanne may have come to pastry somewhat circuitously, but she’s since become a singular force in the industry.

• School days: After graduating as valedictorian of her high school, Joanne attended Harvard, where she initially majored in astrophysics before switching to Applied Mathematics and Economics. While at Harvard, she baked for her classmates, selling her classic chocolate chip cookies to the student-run dormitory grill.
• A career change: Joanne graduated in 1991 and took a job with a Cambridge-based consulting firm. At 24, she left her lucrative consulting job to try working in kitchens, thinking it would be a one-year experiment. With no formal culinary training, she instead wrote to several of Boston’s most well-known restaurants and asked if they’d be willing to take her on. She started as a bar-food cook before being promoted to garde-manger (someone who preps cold food) at Boston’s renowned Biba restaurant and quickly got hooked on restaurant culture. She worked her way up the ladder, honing her pastry skills, first at Bentonwood Bakery in Newton Center, Massachusetts, then later in Cambridge at Rialto restaurant (where she met her now-husband and business partner, Christopher Myers).
• Cake dreams: In the late 1990s, Joanne spent a year in New York City constructing cakes for the acclaimed restaurant Payard Patisserie and Bistro. When she returned to Boston, she followed through on a growing ambition: opening her own pastry shop.
• Flour Bakery: In 2000, Joanne opened Flour Bakery in Boston’s South End. The first year consisted of sleepless nights, long hours preparing for each morning’s bake, and constant doubt about whether she had done the right thing. But soon, Flour Bakery’s signature blend of precise technique and nostalgic flavors began to coalesce into a successful business with a devoted following.
• Expansion: Joanne and Christopher joined forces and expanded Flour Bakery, eventually opening eight more storefronts in Boston and Cambridge between 2007 and 2020.
• Myers+Chang: In 2007, Joanne and husband Christopher opened a sister restaurant, Myers+Chang, which earned four stars from The Boston Globe. That same year, Joanne appeared on Throwdown! With Bobby Flay, a reality cooking competition that aired on the Food Network, a cable channel from the United States. She successfully beat Flay in a battle of sticky buns.
• James Beard Award: In 2016, Joanne won a James Beard Award, an accolade honoring culinary professionals in the United States, for Outstanding Baker.

In addition to her career as a baker, chef, and restaurateur, Joanne is also the author of five popular cookbooks.

1. 1. Flour: Spectacular Recipes From Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe (2011): Joanne’s first book features some of Flour Bakery’s most beloved recipes, such as banana bread and sticky buns.
2. 2. Flour, Too: Indispensable Recipes for the Cafe’s Most Loved Sweets & Savories (2011): This followup to Flour includes recipes for savory dishes like buttermilk fried chicken and warm quinoa salad, alongside desserts, drinks, and party-ready snacks.
3. 3. Baking with Less Sugar: Recipes for Desserts Using Natural Sweeteners and Little-to-No White Sugar (2015): Joanne set herself up for the ultimate challenge with this baking book that eschews refined sugar in favor of natural sweeteners like maple syrup, honey, and fruit.
4. 4. Myers+Chang at Home: Recipes From the Beloved Boston Eatery (2017): Released on the restaurant’s tenth anniversary, this savory cookbook features some of the most popular dishes from Myers+Chang.
5. 5. Pastry Love: A Baker’s Journal of Favorite Recipes (2019): This cookbook is a comprehensive guide to her all-time favorite recipes and master techniques.

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