110 NOVEMBER 2019
JOANNE CHANG was 18 years old when she tried her first home-
made pumpkin pie. There had been cafeteria pie in middle
school, but that version was thick and gluey—nothing like the
one Chang tasted at her best friend’s house, where she cele-
brated Thanksgiving during her freshman year of college. Chang
grew up in a traditional Taiwanese household, with parents
who emigrated from Taiwan when they were in their 20s. “We
celebrated Thanksgiving-ish,” Chang says. “We knew it was a
day to have lots of food. We would have a huge feast that featured
duck.” Dessert might have been fresh fruit or egg tarts, but it
was never a big part of the meal. That’s why, as Chang sat with
her friend’s family—watching a parade of cakes and pies fill the
table—she was mesmerized by the idea that dessert could be
the star of the show.
Since that dessert conversion, Chang has built a career as a
pastry chef. In 2000, she opened Flour Bakery & Cafe in Boston’s
South End, winning acclaim for her elevated take on homestyle
baking. She has since opened seven outposts of Flour throughout
Boston (as well as an Asian restaurant called Myers + Chang),
won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Baker in 2016, and
written four cookbooks. Chang’s fifth cookbook, Pastry Love,
comes out this November. Filled with recipes that are intended
to be baked and eaten at home, Pastry Love is a sort of baker’s
diary, a chronicle of Chang’s obsessions—ice cream perfected
in small batches, maple meringue doughnuts that are best very
fresh—that Chang wouldn’t be able to serve at Flour but reflect
her love of home baking.
“When you’re baking at home, knowing that somebody is
going to eat what you make within the next hour or couple of
minutes gives you so much more flexibility with temperature
and texture,” Chang says.
Chang returns to the roots of her passion for pastry with the
recipes she shares here. Desserts like Pecan-Pumpkin Cream Pie
(above, which layers two Thanksgiving desserts into one buttery
piecrust, recipe p. 124) and Apple-Rum Spice Cake (layered with a
boozy, fruity compote and ginger–cream cheese frosting, recipe p.
112) feature new twists on the classic flavors that first drew Chang
into a sweet career. “I’ve come full circle,” she says. —NINA FRIEND FOOD STYLING: TORIE COX; PROP STYLING: HEATHER CHADDUCK HILLEGAS
