D6 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2020Ayuda, a national nonprofit group that pro-
vides help to low-income immigrants.
But in June, when the killing of George
Floyd and the debate over racial justice
seized the nation’s attention, Ms. Velez, 29,
said she saw that the scale of a traditional
bake sale was inadequate to the cause. “It
will make us feel good, but it won’t do any-
thing to make real change,” she said. “We
had to go big.”
She went big. As of last week, Bakers
Against Racism, a global online bake sale
she started with two other chefs, had raised
almost $1.9 million for Black Lives Matter
chapters and hundreds of other groups
working for racial justice.
It’s a given in the hospitality business that
chefs show up for their communities in big
and small ways: feeding emergency medi-
cal workers, cooking at charity benefits, do-
nating dinners and sponsoring Little
League teams. Since Mr. Floyd’s death on
May 25, as protests against systemic racism
arose across the country, many chefs have
emptied their walk-in refrigerators to feed
protesters and medical workers, and
formed organizations like No Us Without
You, a Los Angeles group dedicated to food
security for undocumented restaurant
cooks.
But it is pastry chefs and bakers who have
been leading the industry into activism,
transforming bake sales into blockbuster
political fund-raisers for a variety of causes.
And in a part of the cooking world long domi-
nated at the top by white women (and white
men before them), the voices of Latinx,
Black and Asian women are rising — and
raising real money for the fight against rac-
ism.
Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice, a
new group started by three pastry chefs —
Lisa Marie Donovan in Nashville, Sarah
O’Brien in Atlanta and Cheryl Day in Savan-
nah, Ga. — raised $100,000 for Color of
Change, a racial-justice advocacy group,
with a Father’s Day bake sale.
On June 19 — Juneteenth — more than 50
Los Angeles-area chefs and bakers contrib-
uted to Pies for Justice, which raised
$36,000 before selling out just five minutes
after going live online. And in a global online
bake sale the next day, more than 2,000 peo-
ple contributed baked goods to Bakers
Against Racism, and raised $1.9 million in
donations.
Why bakers and pastry chefs? Many of
them say that in the restaurant world, pas-
try is still dismissed as women’s work.
Those who succeed — especially if they are
not white — are used to fighting to be heard;
for them, baking is a language of protest.
MALLORY CAYON,who helped create the
cult-favorite brunch recipes at Sunday in
Brooklyn, in Williamsburg, has remained
head pastry chef as the Sunday Hospitality
group grew to four restaurants: two in
Brooklyn and two in Los Angeles. She said
that for the first time since she entered the
profession, she is in a workplace where the
pastry operation (mostly staffed by women)
is on equal footing with the “savory” side of
the kitchen (mostly men).
“It starts in culinary school, because you
look around and all the bakers are girls,”
said Ms. Cayon, 30, who said she was sur-
prised at the time that gender imbalance in
the field remained so persistent, long after
most workplaces had become more inclu-
sive. “The men who do it are deemed less
masculine.”
Dianna Daohueng, the culinary director
at Black Seed Bagels in New York City, said
that working your way up in the restaurant
business as a woman, as a person of color or
as a first-generation American — or, in her
case, all three — means confronting preju-
dice every day.
“Just being a minority in the kitchen and
in life turns you into a natural activist,” said
Ms. Daohueng, 38, whose parents immigrat-
ed from Thailand before she was born.
Ms. Day, of Back in the Day Bakery in
Savannah, took a different path to protest
baking. She was raised in Los Angeles but
spent summers in Tuscaloosa, Ala., learning
to bake from her grandmother. “That was
my culinary school,” she said.
She also came to see how baking skills
have defined Black women’s lives, espe-
cially in the South. “My great-grandmother
was both enslaved and a pastry cook who
was famous for her biscuits and cakes,” she
said. “There is power in that.” (Ms. Day, 59,
has just completed a cookbook based on her
Southern lineage, to be published by Artisan
next year.)
Her grandmother taught her the biscuit
recipe she still uses, and to add apple cidervinegar to the crust for her signature hand
pies.
Bake sales for civil rights causes have a
long history among African-Americans. But
the current surge of public protest baking
started during the run-up to the 2016 presi-
dential election.
Social media posts about “stress baking”
and “anger baking” turned up a few years
earlier. But Tangerine Jones, a Black artist
in Brooklyn, began what she tagged “rage
baking” in 2015 to channel her anger about
the overt racism she saw in the Trump cam-
paign’s messaging. She gave her baked
goods away to friends and neighbors, and
went on to use the term to identify herself on
Instagram and Twitter. (In February, an an-
thology titled “Rage Baking,” edited by two
white women who did not credit Ms. Jones,
was widely criticized for appropriating her
idea and language.)
After the election, leading pastry chefs
began to speak out. In 2017, Natasha Pick-
owicz organized a high-profile ticketed bake
sale in New York, to raise money for
Planned Parenthood. It became an annual
event, with sales rising from $8,000 in 2017
to $100,000 in 2019. That same year, Los
Angeles-area pastry chefs led by the baker
Zoe Nathan formed Gather for Good, hold-
ing frequent outdoor bake sales to benefit
the American Civil Liberties Union and
other free-speech advocates.Last year’s marquee event was an all-
cake sale for Planned Parenthood, with or-
nate, outspoken creations decorated with fe-
male reproductive organs, coat hangers and
slogans like “Keep the Government Out of
My Vagina!”
“The election made people brave enough
to talk about immigration rights, envi-
ronmental rights, and racial justice,” said
Stephanie Chen of Sugarbear Bakes, in
Santa Monica, Calif., who contributed a“Mind Your Own Uterus” cake. (She is also a
founder of Pies for Justice.)
Ms. Chen, 36, was a global marketing ex-
ecutive for the Apple iPhone before leaving
the technology industry to bake full time.
From that marketing perspective, she noted
that bake sales — traditional, friendly,
sugarcoated — function not only as fund-
raisers, but also as dialogue openers with
people who otherwise might not engage
with the movement.
“It’s a way of bringing information that
isn’t about protest or violence,” she said.THE MIGRATION OF BAKE SALESto social me-
dia — especially Instagram, where beauty
shots of pastries and bread loaves draw
enormous attention — has transformed
them into even more powerful tools.
On June 4, Bakers Against Racism went
public on Instagram. Ms. Velez had pulled in
two other Washington-based founders: the
pastry chef Willa Pelini, and the chef and
baker Rob Rubba, who is also a graphic art-
ist. (“Cute but disruptive” is how Ms. Velez
described the group’s visual identity.)
They tweaked the bake-sale model in a
way that ultimately allowed it to go viral —
by not collecting any of the money that was
raised.
The organizers created the name and
hashtag, shared images and language that
bakers could use on social media in a Google
Doc, and suggested organizations to donate
to, though each baker was allowed to decide
where to direct the funds. Individual bakers
did the rest, connecting with their local com-
munities for orders and deliveries of every-
thing from brown-sugar pan dulce baked in
Seattle to calamansi lime crinkle cookies
(made in Chicago by the Filipino-American
baker Camelia Camara) to zucchini bread
(Mr. Rubba’s grandmother’s recipe).
“We didn’t want it to have to be slick and
sponsored,” Mr. Rubba said. “The bakers
and the buyers are equal participants in this
movement.”
More than 2,500 bakery owners, pastry
chefs and home bakers participated, includ-
ing clusters that materialized in Berlin,
Paris and London and as far afield as Aus-
tralia, Tanzania and Turkey.
“The bigger it got, the more afraid I was of
taking this huge stand,” said Ms. Velez, who
noted that chefs — especially in Washington
— are often advised to stay out of politics to
preserve a broad customer base. “But the
backlash never came.”
Though bake sales have been successful,
the outlook for bakers is not rosy.
“We are always the first department to
get cut,” Ms. Pelini said. Restaurant owners
know that they can easily resort to serving
ice cream or cookie plates instead of labor-
intensive desserts.
Almost every chef interviewed for this ar-
ticle had lost a job or closed a bakery, at least
temporarily, during the pandemic. The
kitchen assistants who worked for them,
many of them low-income immigrants, are
often ineligible for unemployment and lack
access to health care.
Most of the chefs say they are baking be-
cause it is currently the only practical action
they can take against chaos and injustice.
“I don’t know policy, I am not a lawyer
who can get people out of prison, but I can
make cookies,” Ms. Pelini said. “And maybe
if I sell someone cookies, it can open a con-
versation about why we are making them.”Bake Sales Power Up to Fight Injustice
CONTINUED FROM PAGE D1
JARED SOARESYOSSY AREFI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES (PHOTOGRAPHY AND STYLING)YOSSY AREFI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES (PHOTOGRAPHY AND STYLING)For chefs used to fighting
to be heard, baking is a
language of protest.Top, from left, Willa
Pelini, Paola Velez and
Rob Rubba worked
together on Bakers
Against Racism, an
online event that raised
almost $1.9 million for
racial and social justice
causes. Above, Daniella
Senior, left, and Ms.
Velez started holding
bake sales to benefit
immigrant workers
in the spring.ANDREW SEAVEYADAPTED FROM “BACK IN THE DAY BAKERY MADE
WITH LOVE” BY CHERYL AND GRIFFITH DAY (ARTISAN
BOOKS, 2015)
TIME: 15 MINUTES
YIELD: 2 (9-INCH) PIE CRUSTS, OR 1 DOUBLE CRUST
2½ cups/320 grams unbleached
all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder, preferably
aluminum-free
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
½ cup/120 milliliters ice water
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 cup/225 grams cold unsalted butter (2
sticks), cut into 1-inch cubes- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour,
sugar, baking powder and salt; set aside. - In a measuring cup or a small bowl, combine
the water and vinegar; set aside. - Gently toss the butter in the flour mixture
until coated, then use a pastry blender to cut
the butter into the flour. (You should have
pieces of butter that range from sandy patches
to pea-size chunks, with some larger bits as
well.)
- Drizzle in about half of the ice water mixture
and stir lightly with a fork until the flour is
evenly moistened and the dough starts to come
together. If the dough seems dry, add a little
more ice water, 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time.
The dough will still look a bit shaggy at this
point. If you grab a small piece of dough and
press it slightly with your hand, it should mostly
hold together. - Dump the dough out onto an unfloured work
surface and gather it together into a tight
mound. Using the heel of your hand, smear the
dough a little at a time, pushing it away from
you and working your way down the mass of
dough to create flat layers of flour and butter.
Gather the dough back together with a bench
scraper, layering the clumps of dough on top of
one another.- Repeat the process once or twice more; the
dough should still have some big pieces of
butter visible. - Cut the dough in half. Shape each piece into
a disk and flatten it. Wrap the disks in plastic
and put in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour, or
overnight, to rest. - The dough can be stored for 3 days in the
refrigerator or up to 1 month in the freezer. If
making the dough in advance to freeze: Roll
out the dough on a piece of parchment paper,
then carefully roll it up in the parchment. Write
the date on the parchment and pop into the
freezer to firm up, about 30 minutes. Then
wrap the crust securely in plastic wrap. Defrost
the dough in the refrigerator overnight or thaw
it on the kitchen counter for about 30 minutes
before using.) - Use the dough for double-crust pie recipes
or cut it into disks to prepare Berry Hand Pies.
EXTRA-FLAKY PIE CRUST
ADAPTED FROM “BACK IN THE DAY BAKERY MADE
WITH LOVE” BY CHERYL AND GRIFFITH DAY (ARTISAN
BOOKS, 2015)
TIME: 2¼ HOURS, PLUS CHILLING
YIELD: 8 HAND PIESFor the Dough:
All-purpose flour, for dusting
1 recipe Extra-Flaky Pie Crust
2 large eggs, lightly beaten with a pinch
of fine sea salt, for egg washFor the Filling:
2 cups mixed fresh berries (about 12
ounces/350 grams), such as sliced
strawberries or whole blackberries or
blueberries
½ cup/100 grams granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
plus 4 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt- Prepare the dough: On a floured surface, roll
out each disk of dough into a 10-inch square,
each about ⅛-inch thick. Using a 5-inch round
cookie cutter, cut out 4 disks from each piece
of dough. Transfer disks to a baking sheet (it’s
OK if they overlap slightly), cover and
refrigerate until firm, at least 10 minutes. - Prepare the berry filling: In a medium bowl,
combine the berries, sugar, cornstarch, lemon
zest and juice, and sea salt. Stir gently until
evenly coated, then set aside.
3. Remove the disks from the refrigerator and
lightly brush the edges of each disk with the
egg wash. Spoon about ¼ cup berry filling onto
each disk, leaving a 1-inch border around the
rim. (You might have some extra filling.)
4. Working with one disk at a time, leaving one
half of the dough on the baking sheet, gently
fold the other half of each round of dough over
the filling to make a half circle and press the
edges together with your fingers to seal. If any
of the filling is oozing out of the sides, remove a
few berries at a time until the hand pie seals
easily. Using a fork, crimp the rounded edge of
each hand pie. Repeat with remaining disks.
5. Cover the hand pies with plastic wrap and
refrigerate for 1 hour to set the crusts.
Refrigerate the remaining egg wash.
6. When you are ready to bake, position a rack
in the middle of the oven and heat the oven to
425 degrees. Line another baking sheet with
parchment paper.
7. Remove the hand pies from the refrigerator
and brush the tops with the remaining egg
wash. Using a paring knife, cut 3 small slits in
the top of each hand pie to create steam vents.
Transfer the hand pies to the lined baking
sheet. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the
hand pies are golden and the filling is bubbly.
Let cool for 10 minutes, then serve warm.
8. The hand pies can be cooled completely and
stored in an airtight container in the
refrigerator for up to 3 days.
BERRY HAND PIES