"This might be overkill," said baker and author Joanne Chang as she waved a large rolling pin over a tiny lump of dough on the table beneath her, "but when you're rolling dough, you don't want to be tentative." With that, she spun and rolled the lump into a finely wrought pate brisee before an audience of students, faculty, alums and Federal Hill chefs last night at the Brown Faculty Club.
The pastry chef visited Brown to demonstrate how to prepare homemade pop-tarts and to promote her latest book, "Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston's Flour Bakery and Cafe," as part of an event jointly organized by the Year of China, the Brown Faculty Club and the Brown Bookstore.
After graduating from Harvard in 1991 with a degree in applied mathematics and economics, Chang took a job with the consulting firm Monitor Group. After two years, she decided neither continuing with the company nor enrolling in business school was right for her.
"I wanted to pursue something I knew I had loved all along — cooking, eating, baking, being in the kitchen," she said.
That pursuit took her to the back of a string of restaurant kitchens and bakeries in New England, where she continued to build her skills as a pastry chef with masters in the field, including renowned restaurateur Jody Adams '79.
Eventually, Chang had a chance to make the "pipe dream" of opening her own bakery a reality and opened Flour in 2000. She now operates three Flour bakeries in Boston with her husband, in addition to a Chinese restaurant, Meyers and Chang. The latter specializes in dishes Chang recalls from her upbringing in a Taiwanese household.
But it wasn't easy at the start, she said. "I went from the whole American Dream, all of that, to working 4 p.m. to 1 or 2 a.m. cleaning a Fryolator," she said, acknowledging that her parents were "tentatively supportive" but "very concerned" with her decision to embark on a new career.
Reflecting on the experience of operating a bakery, Chang said, "There's a very vulnerable sense you get when you make all these pastries, put them on a platter … and decide to say, ‘okay, I think you should pay me $2.50 for that.'"
Chang said baking is a "joy" that she still loves to practice at home, but the decision to turn it into a business required "chutzpah."
When she opened the first Flour restaurant, Chang said she recalled working days from 3 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. for many months. It was exhausting but what sustained her along the way was the certainty that she loved everything about working in restaurants and bakeries, down to scrubbing the tables and floor after closing, she said.
Chang said though it's true that all she has at her fingertips are butter, flour, sugar, eggs, chocolate and fruit, she does not feel limited. When she sits down to develop new recipes, she finds it helpful to start with particular flavors and textures she has in mind — "usually something sweet" — study similar recipes and then use her years of experience to "mesh all the bits and elements together."
Now, she said, the most rewarding part of her job is seeing people sending photos and Tweets to tell her the success they've found with the recipes in "Flour."
Chang's next book, expected in the coming year, will be titled "Flour Power," she said.
