62. December 9th, 2010 Picture.

December 9th was a Thursday night, and Ratty and I made plans to visit the Harvard Bookstore in Harvard Square to hear Joanne Chang, a local bakery owner, talk about her new cookbook.

Joanne Chang has pretty much cornered the Boston bakery market with her infamous sticky buns, which were featured on an episode of ‘Throwdown with Bobby Flay’ during season two, in which Joanne actually beat Bobby.  They’ve been featured on foodnetwork.com, in numerous newspaper and magazine articles and her shops are practically Boston institutions.  She started with one bakery in the South End [sigh isn’t the South End just awesome?], followed by a store in South Boston and then in Cambridge, which obviously means I am partial to all 3 locations.  She also opened a Chinese restaurant called Myers + Chang wither her husband, who is obviously the Myers of the pair, and I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews.  I’ve yet to sample it, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I get over there.

She recently published a cookbook, in which she shares all her secrets for her delicious cookies, cupcakes and what she has dubbed ‘magical crispy frosting’.  She was speaking at the Harvard Bookstore about her new book, a background about her training, plus answering audience questions and signing copies of her book for anyone that bought it.  I love going to events like this, if only to hear a few interesting snippets about the authors life, so I immediately said yes when Ratty told me about it.  We met up after work and I drove into Harvard Square, battling meters for a parking spot before finally landing one down the street.  We popped into a restaurant along the way for a quick bite to eat before reaching our destination.  The event started at 7pm, and by the time we arrived there were no seats left.  The Harvard Bookstore is pretty small, so we were had assumed we’d be standing no matter what time we got there.  Joanne has such a following, I wouldn't be surprised it people camped out for this.  Okay, that might be embellishing a little bit, but she is uber popular.  


We got spots along the back wall and tuned in for a pretty interesting presentation.  Joanne talked about how she started out at Harvard, but never really wanted to work in Business, like her parents wanted her to, and how she started her first baking business in the dorms – she sold the cookies she’d bake to the dining halls.  After graduating from Harvard, she worked in Consulting, but ended up quitting her high profile job, to work as a pastry sous chef at a prestigious Boston restaurant.  She moved to NYC to work under the famous Francois Payard, a classically trained French pastry chef.  Here she told us the harrowing stories of working 20 hour days, 7 days a week, until she was completely burnt out she had to come home.  But in that short year, or really that long, tedious year, the way she described it, she learned an awful lot.

{Telling us all about baking!}

We listened to her stories about how she returned to Boston and worked up the ranks in varying establishments before breaking out on her own and opening Flour bakery in 2000.  While I know that Payard is apparently the end all and be all of pastry, I was most impressed that Joanne was the pastry chef at Rialto, a Cambridge restaurant owned by chef Jody Adams.  Chef Adams competed on the first season of Top Chef Masters, and Ratty and I actually attended the season premiere viewing party at Rialto, rubbing elbows with lots of local foodies and celebrities.  So yes, Jody Adams is incredibly impressive to me.


Joanne talked about how the process of trying to open her bakery almost broke her and that after a year she was ready to shut down shop and admit defeat.  She even stopped renting her apartment as a way to save money - she'd found that she was spending most nights sleeping in her shop anyway.  It's so interesting to learn her story and the history of the bakery, since by now it is a fledging success.  She answered audience questions, Ratty even jumped in and asked a few, while I'll just listened and admired.  The icing on the cake if you will [pun totally intended] was that she brought cookies from her bakery for the entire audience to sample.  They were obviously delicious.  We didn't buy her book, as I was in the throws of Christmas shopping and couldn't really splurge on any personal purchases, but I am sure that I'll be adding the book to my collection very soon! 

{Ratty poised to ask a question.  Maybe he'll comment and say what he asked, hint hint!}