February 13: Flour3

First an update on the book. Chronicle has the first galley and they are going through all of the suggestions Christie and I made and (hopefully) incorporating changes. I believe they are sending it back to us in a few weeks and at that point all major design elements will be complete and we’ll just be proofing it for simple text adjustments. It’s almost done! I can hardly believe it.

I’ve been keeping busy post book with the search for a location for Flour3. After looking at Kendall, Central, Fenway, Beacon Hill and a few other areas we’ve finally found the perfect place to put down roots again. We will be signing a lease for a space on Massachusetts Avenue between Central Square and MIT in the next few weeks and we hope to have Flour3 up and running by May or June.

It’s been quite a long process. Finding the space was easy- I contacted my friend Nick Zappia who owns The Blue Room in Kendall Square after hearing that he was planning on opening a wine store in Central Square. “Hey Nick in all of your searching did you ever come across a space that would work for Flour? 2000 square feet, =/-, and easy to ventilate so I can bake and cook on-site?” Lo and behold (this is one instance in which lo and behold truly fits) the space immediately next to his in the same building was 2000 square feet and amenable to venting. We kept looking at other places in the area (and looking and looking and looking) just in case this one fell through…and several times I actually feared it would fall through…but after much negotiating, several dozen emails, many phone calls and two long, draining, hair-pulling (my own by me, not the lawyers with each other- we were on the phone) conference calls with lawyers, we finally made the deal.

Whoowee! The next steps are simple but they need to happen quickly: after the lease is signed, I am signing up my contractor, designer, and architect so they can get right to work. My contractor, CAFCO (specifically Adam, Ed and hopefully Danny), knows exactly what needs to happen to this space to make it into Flour (they’ve built both Flour1 and Flour2). They’ll arrange for electricians, plumbers, HVAC (heating-ventilation-air-conditioning) workers, flooring people, carpenters, and a slew of other people to come in and start the build-out. My architect (Hacin+Co) has a fairly straightforward job since most of the work is so similar to F1 and F2-he will draw out plans for us to take to the City of Cambridge to get building permits and he’ll figure out a lighting plan so we can make sure there is adequate lighting in both the kitchen and the front. My designer (Kristin Irving of Koo de Kir) will work with me to determine the design elements we want to incorporate (chairs, decorative lighting, art work, tables, condiment and trash areas, etc.) to keep this Flour looking like the others while giving it its own individual stamp.

And in the meantime Nicole and Aaron and I will be busy hiring a whole new team of people. We will need chefs, pastry cooks, counter staff, managers. It’s going to be a very busy few months.

Assuming the landlord delivers the space to me with their work done in the next month or so, we will take about 2 months to do our build-out and open after that. Fingers crossed with everything going smoothly June 1 should be the latest.

We are so excited to come to Cambridge.

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February 2: Nice quote

First an update. F3 is still in the works…I’m in the middle of lease negotiations with the Landlord. We just want to get started! Ah but the business side of things all has to be worked out.

The book is back in Chronicle’s hands and I can’t wait to see it again. In the meantime I’m trying to come up with fun quotes to introduce each chapter. (We do a quote of the week at each Flour and thought this would be a nice way to start off each chapter.) So I’m looking for great quotes about the following topics: ingredients, techniques, equipment, breakfast pastries, cookies, cakes, tarts, desserts, breads.  Anyone have any good ones? Would love to hear from you all. One I like for ingredients is, “As for butter versus margarine I trust cows more than chemists.” So true!

But I write this post mainly because I’ve been holding onto a quote from a recent New Yorker article I tore out a few months back (I don’t even know what the article is about anymore-apologies to the author of this article for not being able to give proper author credit ) that I think does a terrific job summarizing how I feel our life is at Flour and M+C.  That basically we strive for perfection every single day, we never get there, but we never stop trying. Here it is:

“…The desire to go on desiring, the wanting to want, is what makes you turn the page….When you start to cook, as when you begin to live, you think that the point is to improve the technique until you end up with something perfect, and that the reason you haven’t been able to break the cycle of desire and disillusion is that you haven’t yet mastered the rules. Then you grow up, and you learn that’s the game.”

That’s us in a nutshell. Just playin’ the game best we can every day.

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January 10: Round one finished

I’m not sure how many rounds are in this game but the first galley has been mailed to me and I’ve marked it up and mailed it back so I feel like I can go back to fretting and worrying but not really doing anything more for the book right now…until they volley it back to me. It was pretty awesome to have it in my hands once again, with the manuscript this time looking somewhat like a book with the layout and color photos and such.

Christie and I were so happy with so much of it- we did have a list of about 15 various items, design and otherwise, that we hope Chronicle will take into consideration during this next round of edits. Mostly I want to make sure the book feels like it’s MINE. There’s a voice that comes out in the text, sure; as a designed book there is also a voice that comes out in the pictures, the color accents, the fonts. It’s hard to describe until you see a book that you’ve written designed in a way that in some places sounds like someone else. That’s not to say that I didn’t love it- I did- but parts of it did feel like it came from me in a foreign language.

My editor Bill went to his sales team yesterday to introduce the book to them and tell them a little about me and Flour so that they were excited to sell the book. In coming up with a few fun facts for him to share, I calculated that Flour sells about a quarter of a million cookies annually. A QUARTER MILLION! We sell about 48,000 sticky buns per year. And we see between 1500-1600 customers daily. Wow. Go Team Flour!

On other news, part of the reason I’ve been posting with less frequency is that much of my time is now spent planning Flour3. We are about 90% certain at this point that it will happen. We are looking at several spaces in the Central Square/MIT area and hoping to negotiate a lease within the next month. I met with Aaron our GM and Nicole our head pastry chef the other night to talk and plan and what really came out strongly to all of us is our intense desire to remain true to our missions as we get bigger. We not only want to spread more great pastry, amazing food, and warm service to another neighborhood, but we are also extremely committed to building another team with people who are happy to be at Flour and who take pride in their jobs and pleasure in their work and relationships with their co-workers. We want to still be the same personal dedicated little bakery-that-could that we were when we opened almost a decade ago with a dozen employees…and we want to maintain that same level of zeal and committment with a third location. If anyone can help me do it right, it’s those two.

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January 2: Happy New Year!

Happy 2010 to everyone! Ten years ago I was dreaming about someday somewhere opening up Flour, pining away over my long-time crush Christopher who is now my husband, wondering if I’d ever get anywhere in my professional or personal life.  Can’t wait to see what the next decade will bring.

The galley is strewn about on my dining room table at home. It’s over 300 pages and in full color and quite daunting. It’s really funny- I’ve read and reread this book from start to finish no fewer than a dozen times. Maybe it was two dozen times. In any case, for some reason now that it is laid out like a real book there are entire sections that I want to raze out and re-do. Unfortunately I’ve been told that stylistic changes are not possible; at this point I’m supposed to just make changes that clarify and solidify the text.

So I’ve got my red pen and I’m working away. First impression? It needs way more pictures. We spent a full day taking “atmosphere” shots with pics of the bakers and the customers and the counter…where are these pics? I also think it has a few cute design elements that could and should be expanded throughout the book. For example the “techniques” and “ingredients” and “equipment” sections are divided by a chalkboard page with some darling pictures and cursive script introducing the section heading. But when you get further into the book the “breakfast pastries” and “breads” and other chapters are just listed on a plain page. Huh?

I have a busy week ahead. I need to get this manuscript marked up and sent out by Thursday and I also need to respond to a potential Landlord for Flour3 who sent me a preliminary lease right before Christmas. Crazy how things plod along…and then boom it all happens at once. Thank goodness the staff at Flour and Myers+Chang are all so amazing. Both bakeries and the restaurant keep buzzing along and I feel so grateful to each of my staff. Wishing all of you a wonderful new year. It’s going to be a great one!

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December 18: Blurb wish list

The galley is in the mail! In a few days I’ll have a designed copy of the Flour book from start to finish. This is all I want for Christmas, truly. Well this and maybe a spa day (Christopher are you listening??).

As Chronicle is working on the galleys, they’ve asked me to start thinking about who I’d like to ask to blurb the book. You know, those quotes on the cover and back of the book from well-known personalities proclaiming it the book to buy for this holiday season, or whatever the compliment may be.  I know I want to ask Bobby Flay - after all his Throwdown show featuring our sticky buns pretty much put us on the map. Chef Flay has always been extremely gracious and complimentary towards all things Flour and I would be thrilled if he would consider taking a look at the book.

I’d also love to ask a chef I have worked with over the years at charity events and on his TV show: Ming Tsai. I really admire Ming not just for being a wonderful chef/TV personality/book author, but also for being a genuinely great guy. He stays true to himself and he remains close to his staff, customers, community. While that might not be directly relevant for a book blurb, it’s important to me.

Francois Payard, who is one of the best pastry chefs in the country, is also on my list. I helped him open Payard Patisserie (which has since closed) in NYC over a decade ago and working with him really changed my life. I’d never worked for a French pastry chef before and I learned so much under his tutelage.

I have a long wish list of other terrific chefs/pastry chefs that I hope to ask as well. I’ve admired Amy Scherber at Amy’s Breads in NYC for years and Rose Levy Berenbaum of The Cake Bible is a huge idol of mine. I’m an avid reader of famed pastry chef David Lebovitz’s blog and he’s such an engaging writer that I feel like I know him even though I’ve never met him. It’s exciting and a bit nervewracking to imagine my book in these people’s hands. I guess next year I’ll have to get used to this feeling a bit more when the book is published.

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December 10: Book update!

According to the publishing timeline I received from Chronicle a few months back, I was supposed to get a copy of the first galley of the book last week. Not really knowing what a galley was, I wasn’t quite sure what I was waiting for- Christie informed me that a galley is a fully designed and layed out copy of the book. Gulp. But when the week came and went and I didn’t receive anything I started to fret that they had decided that the book was not up to snuff and they had given up on laying it out and they wanted to scrap the whole project. (Yes I tend to think in extremes.)

Bill, my wonderful editor at Chronicle, called today to clear things up and settle me down. (How did he hear me hyperventilating in Boston out there in SF?) He told me that the reason they are late with the galley is that they’ve decided to re-design it and make it into a bigger more substantial book. Usually they find it pretty easy to cut and trim down manuscripts to size; with the Flour book they found so much great copy in it that they are keeping almost all of it…it will be more than 300 pages. He said that the buzz within the Chronicle walls about the book was steadily growing and that they are all super excited about it. The cover of the book (which you may recall has been somewhat of an iffy subject) will be similar to Tartine in that it will be a hardcover with a photo directly printed on it with no jacket. I’m still not sure if they’ve found the “right” picture for the cover but I was thrilled to hear that he was planning a hardcover-no-jacket format, which personally find really appealing.

WHOOPPEEEEEEE! That is just great news. The publishing date is still set for November 1 and I am getting a galley sent to me sometime next week.

In other Flour news, I have sent a term sheet to a landlord near Central Square in Cambridge for a potential lease we would like to sign to open up Flour3. If all goes well a Cambridge Flour will be open by spring. The bakery is humming with activity with all of the bakers getting ready for the Christmas holiday and our books are filling up with orders for buches de noel, pithiviers, butter Breton cakes and more! ‘Tis the season and we love it. Hope you are enjoying yours as well!

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November 24: Thanksgiving at Flour

By far our busiest week of the year is Tday week.  It’s the one holiday in the US that pretty much EVERYONE celebrates, regardless of race or religion or nationality.  And everyone celebrates it on the same day and it’s all centered around eating! We love it.

When Flour first opened our tiny group of bakers would basically work almost around the clock with me and another baker (usually Nicole) coming in at 2-3am and leaving around 10-11pm for the days leading up to Tday.  This year, with Flour1 going into its tenth and Flour2 its third holiday, we are amply staffed.  We still have the round-the-clock schedule going but it is divided among a much larger group of bakers so that people can actually go home and sleep and recharge. Ahhhhh!

It’s a  bit like running the marathon.  You train and prep and amp yourself up and then when the starting gun is fired it’s a matter of staying focused with your eye on the prize.  In this case the prize comes tomorrow evening around 6pm when we shut the doors finally and congratulate ourselves for getting all of the orders filled successfully without a hitch (hopefully!!).

I really miss being in the thick of things baking my heart out! But a rewarding trade-off is watching the baking team produce more pies, tarts, breads, cakes, etc., than I ever dreamed possible. Seeing how well the staff is working together, how jazzed everyone is to be a part of the holiday, how well the bakeries and staff are doing under pressure …all of it makes me really so proud.  I love this time of year, with all the demands and pressures of making it all work.

We have stuffing (two kinds!), soups, cornbread, biscuits, chocolate truffle tarts with candied oranges, pear-cranberry crostatas, lattice apple pies, brussels sprouts, green beans, country rolls…the list goes on and on.  I wish you all a bountiful holiday filled with thanks!

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November 12: Inching along

While this is technically a journal of the writing of the Flour baking book, we are at a point with the book where I just don’t gotta lot to say. It’s in the publisher’s hands and I am simply waiting to hear back from them and get another draft to go over. We’re still very much on track for a Fall 2010 release. Until then I’ve been happily keeping myself busy with catching up with all sorts of new cookbooks: Rose’s Heavenly Cakes is a true winner; My Bread by Jim Lahey on first glance seems terrific and I can’t wait to start it; I’m reading Monica Bhide’s Modern Spice after meeting her via Twitter thru a mutual friend and as a huge fan of her co-author Mark Bittman I’m loving every word; I plowed through both the Big Sur Baking book and Momofuku in one sitting each; I ordered the Grand Central Bakery book online because I heard that it was sort of like Flour.

While I wish reading cookbooks paid the bills, it doesn’t so I’ve also been scouring the city in search of a third location for Flour. We are currently looking at a terrific space near Central Square in Cambridge and tentative negotiations have started. Many people don’t realize the high cost of putting in a food-service business versus a “dry retail” store. With a clothing store, bookstore, bank you can pretty much just paint the walls and go. With food, however, there are so many requirements from gas service to water lines to kitchen exhaust….the list goes on and on. Typically the Landlord funds most or all of the basic infrastructure work and then the Tenant pays for the rest of the buildout to make it into their restaurant. Often people ask, why not put a restaurant here, or there? The answer is that the Landlord has to be willing, make that eager, to have a food-service business in their space because it’s more costly than dry retail. Many LLs simply prefer not to make the commitment. I’m crossing my fingers that this one will!

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October 24: Meeting Chronicle

I am finally able to write a bit about my wonderful week in SF with Christopher. The main reason for going was to attend a cousin’s wedding (Congrats Bern and David!) and introduce Christopher to family he still hadn’t met yet. (That’s what happens when you eschew having a traditional wedding and elope.)

The wedding itself was in Napa and since we were flying aaaaalllll they way out there anyway we decided to make a vacation of out it and spend some time in SF beforehand. That my publisher, Chronicle, is headquartered in SF just might have had a teeny tiny bit of influence on that decision as well.

So on a rainy monsoony Wednesday I met up with my co-author Christie (who lives in SF) to trek over the beautiful Chronicle headquarters and meet the team. Finally! After a year and a half of email and phone correspondence with my editor Bill, I finally got to meet him face-to-face. He was gracious and kind and I felt like I was meeting a pen pal. We made plans to meet for dinner that evening so that he could meet Christopher and so that we could get a chance to catch up more in person.

Then Christie and I met with the PR and Marketing team of Peter and David. They are incredible! So full of energy and ideas and really fun to work with. They explained how promotion for the book would generally go: there’s a book expo in NYC in May and a Fancy Food Show in July, both of which I will be attending. The book itself will actually be pretty much ready for printing in the Spring since they need to show it to Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc., to see how many copies they will want to order. It won’t however be printed and released until NOVEMBER. Wow. Really?? I forgot to bring a notebook to the meeting so I didn’t take notes and can’t remember all of the reasons. But it has something to do with timing it for the holidays. I think that’s what they said. Book tours no longer seem to be the thing so I probably won’t be traveling too much come Fall 10, which is just fine for this homebody-workaholic.

Anyway it was such a pleasure to meet them. I would have met Sarah who is Bill’s assistant editor and who has been working directly and diligently on the book but she was away getting married. More congrats are in order!

Bill, Christopher and I had dinner at Delfina that evening. First can I say that dinner was DELICIOUS. Of course it started out with the bread: Acme sourdough (a staple it seems in the SF restaurant world) and some amazing stuff from Tartine (which just happens to be a few doors down). We had sardines and calamari and pasta and chicken and fries and broccoli rabe and too many other things for me to remember. The service was charming and we even got a few tips for ourselves in terms of the service at Myers+Chang (which I promptly emailed to the M+C team later that evening). We skipped dessert in order to go a few doors down to Bi Rite Creamery, a well-known SF institution for ice cream. I had two flavors: creme fraiche and salted caramel. I much preferred the creme fraiche; I will probably be skewered for saying this since so many people raved about the salted caramel to me but I found it too sweet and I didn’t detect any salt.

Christopher had so many questions about the book and the book process and Bill patiently indulged both of our curiosities about how everything works in that world. A few things he said surprised me:
-He said that chef-driven books just don’t sell. At least not as much as they used to. (My guess is that every chef and his/her mother has written or is writing a book, thereby flooding the market.) The top selling books are by the Food Network stars: Giada, Rachel, Paula, and someone else whose name escapes me since I don’t watch much Food Network.
-He also said that had the book Tartine (published by Chronicle a few years ago and if you don’t own it stop reading right now and go order it) not done as well as it did they would have never bought the Flour cookbook. Tartine proved to them that a small artisanal bakery book could sell a boatload of books nationwide, which surprised them somewhat.
-This begged the next question, do you think that all of your books will be great? He definitely does (or else he wouldn’t have bought them in the first place) but at the same time he’s realistic about how many actual copies each book he buys will be able to sell.
-He said the very best way I could be promoting the book is to start a blog. He mentioned Michael Ruhlman as the king of social media for the food world (I agree) and he also mentioned the blog Chez Pim, whose author has published the Foodie Handbook (which Chronicle publishes) and who has made a name for herself primarily through her blogging. I may need to take this somewhat-hidden-and-out-of-the-way blog here and find it a better more prominent home. In the meantime I assured him that I was tweeting my butt off! (www.twitter.com/jbchang)

Bill was awesome. I know the book is in the best hands with him and his team. I can’t believe it’s a year away before the book comes out but I know it will be worth the wait.

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October 21: SF

I just got back from a week in San Francisco and it was, in a word, amazing. I got to finally meet my editor Bill from Chronicle and the PR and Marketing team of David and Peter who were terrific. I have so many great stories to tell but alas after a week off I have to devote my time to the office and the staff of Flour and M+C so these will have to wait…hopefully by this weekend.

In the meantime, let me just say that Tartine was everything I dreamed it would be and that I love my editor. I feel so lucky to be under the guidance of Bill and his team and am now more excited than ever for the book!

F3 update: we got what is called a “term sheet” from a potential Landlord which lists all of the things they are willing to do to the space before they had it over to me. While it was okay, there were a lot of basic needs missing. So my contractor, Ed from CAFCO, is doing what he always does: acting more like a partner than a contractor and meeting with the Landlord to find out what other items they might be willing to offer to me before they lease me the space. Think of it like renting an apartment. You assume you’ll get walls, floor, ceiling, air-conditioning, bathroom, etc., and then most likely you’ll have a fridge and basic kitchen stuff as well. In our case we would put in the kitchen but as a commercial tenant we do expect that the space will be outfitted and ready for us to use gas, electricity, and water before we can lease it from the LL. I hope they see our side!

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October 5: Gourmet closing

I think about posting something about the book, or F3, or funny/interesting goings-on at Flour, or what I’ve been baking lately almost every day…but something invariably comes up and sadly writing on this blog is usually what ends up being moved to the following day’s to do list.  My poor excuse for having been away from this for so long.

But reading the news today that Gourmet is closing shocked me enough to stop all I was doing and write about it. Gourmet for me has been in many ways like a food-obsessed wordly friend who visits every month or so.  I don’t get out to travel nearly as much as I’d like; I dream about pastries and dinner parties and street food and am thinking about my next meal before I’ve finished the one I’m eating.  My life revolves around food and Gourmet made me realize I was far from alone. Every issue was dog-eared and most had pages torn out of them with recipes that I would run over to the bakers at Flour or Chef at M+C and say, “Look at this, we have to make this!!”  People ask all the time where chefs come up with ideas; I for one gleaned innumerable mouth watering dishes, sauces, flavors from my monthy date with Gourmet.

This economy has beaten us all up in so many different ways. This latest casualty really makes me sad.

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September 18: Staff musings on Flour

The cookbook is humming along…it’s being edited and designed and layed out and all that good stuff! Christie and I are starting to think ahead about how to market the book and who we hope will be interested in talking it up. To that end we’ve got some great upcoming possible stories being written about the book (I’m not at liberty to say with whom unfortunately but I’m really excited) and we’re actively making connections to see what else is out there. Yes it’s early and the book doesn’t come out for another YEAR…but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this book process it’s that there’s lots of time there’s lots of time there’s lots of time and then BOOM there’s no time. So I’m getting a jump start.

(The other thing I’ve learned in this process is that metric rules.)

Anyway I thought I’d share some thoughts about Flour that staff have been sharing with me over the last many weeks. Not unsolicited, mind you. I sent an email to the entire staff updating them about the possibility of Flour3. (”What?? You mean the staff at Flour are not obsessive readers of this blog??” I know, I know, the thought astounds me just as much.)

This is an excerpt: “I want to know what each of you thinks of Flour. What is your goal when you come to work? What do you view as our primary mission? What drives you to work as hard as you do…and what frustrates you enough to keep you from doing so when you don’t? This isn’t just a plea for telling me what bugs you about Flour (although I want to hear all of that too). It’s even more an entreaty to each of you to tell me what makes Flour FLOUR. What can I or your managers or your co-workers or YOU do to make Flour continue to grow and flourish and be a place that makes everyone’s lives happier, not just our customers but yours and mine?”

The response has been overwhelming. Sure we’ve stirred up the pot a bit and frustrations that I didn’t know existed have been coming to the surface. But to me it’s like what Christopher says about customers who complain- they are among your best customers because you know exactly how they feel about your restaurant and you have the power to do something about it. It’s the same with the staff. When a staff member pushes through his/her discomfort and unease to tell me what bothers him/her, he/she is offering me something concrete to work on and improve for all of us. We’re taking the major complaints from staffers and as a team trying to deal with them one by one. We won’t change overnight but we are actively steering the ship back towards the right path.

The nice stuff has been pretty awesome to get too. In the words of a few staffers:

“I am no longer surprised to see customers sitting outside waiting for Flour to open in the morning. They are always there. It is obvious that they see Flour as a warm, inviting place where they can get great food and drinks and be welcomed and assisted by friendly staff.”

“What makes Flour so special to me is that I really, truly think that our food is so high quality and delicious (and that is of utmost importance to me, personally) and I’m very proud to be a part of creating some of it.”

“Flour is definitely more than just a job and I know that a lot of people feel the same way. …Flour’s primary mission as going the extra mile to be the best at what we do…. Everyone works really hard and it shows.”

“I don’t think it’s one or few particular flagship products (like the sticky bun) that sets the excellence bar. I strongly believe its a combination of all the little minuscule, detailed things that makes Flour excellent. On top of the pastries, it’s the commitment to a clean dining room, the big front doors, display, music, brewing techniques- just every single little thing we do really well or a little different/more gourmet than the norm.”

“The one thing that we do very well is becoming a part of the community. A big part. … It’s great to have doctors next to policemen/women, next to construction guys, next to artists, lawyers, etc.”

“Flour is a place where you will find an abundance of positivity and respect. Everyone that works at Flour can be confident that they will be treated respectfully, and are expected to treat others the same way. That respect reaches beyond the counter and extends to our customers. We are constantly reminded (in newsletters, board postings..) that our guests are our lifeline and to be grateful for their patronage; we would not be in business without the people that come in everyday.”

“The drive for excellence is what keeps me going day after day.  I always think that I can do just a little better than the day before, and I try to. I think that Flours popularity also relies on the interactions of the staff.  We all (generally) care about each other and that reflects out to the public.  A comfortable atmosphere is what determines success.”

“Flour is quality, exciting, forever changing, creating, learning, managing, challenging, self rewarding.”

“I want people, when they leave flour to have a smile on their face like the smile I have on when I walk in the door to come to work.”

“I see flour as creating a complete experience: living up to and surpassing all of the expectations a customer or employee might have about a small bakery.”

I feel so darned grateful to work with such a passionate caring wonderful crew of people!

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September 8: No news is good news?

I hope this is the case. Christopher asked me last night how the book was going and I didn’t really have a good answer for him. I *think* it’s going well? We turned in edits a while back and I know that we’re still waiting to hear final word about the cover photography, etc. Christie is visiting me this week at Flour so I”ll get more details (I hope) from her.

In the meantime the hunt for F3 goes on. It’s a long meandering less-than-direct process. It’s a matter of putting out dozens and dozens of feelers and following up on the ones that seem to bite. And that are worth biting back. We’re still hoping to find a place within easy biking/driving distance from the other 2 Flours that is close to public transportation as well and in a busy thriving neighborhood. Thanks to all for the suggestions! I only wish we had enough staff to open many at once. But overexpansion is something that I’ve always been extremely wary of so I’m not going there. At all.

I’ve reached out to my staff at both Flours to ask them what Flour means to them and what drives them and what they view as the mission of Flour. I’ve been so struck by the passion and sincerity in the responses so far. The theme that runs thru all of the messages is that Flour is all about overdelivering on what one might expect from a bakery-both from a customer and a staff point of view. That my staff feels this, believes it, breaths it, and lives it makes me so proud.

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August 30: Intern Interview

Mary Kate, one of my interns during the cookbook recipe testing phase, writes a truly delightful blog, www.kitchenbelle.com, and also writes for the alumni newsletter for the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts.  She recently asked me some questions about the whole process (which you can also read in the newsletter):

1.Congratulations again on the cookbook project! Your fans and patrons far and wide are very excited (as I am sure you are) for the completion of the book. Could you tell me a little bit about how it came to fruition? Was it your idea or did someone suggest it to you? My husband Christopher is friends with a food writer Christie Matheson.  They were talking one day and she asked him if I’d ever considered writing a cookbook.  I’ve been wanting to for forever but didn’t really know how to get started.  I met with Christie and was really struck by her enthusiasm for writing, baking, Flour, me! I knew that if I was ever going to write a book I’d need someone to help me along, simply because I already have so many other balls up in the air I didn’t think I could throw another one in there by myself.  She helped and guided me thru the process of writing a proposal, finding an agent, finding a publisher, etc.

2.What has been the most challenging part of the process so far? For me personally it has been really hard to be completely comfortable with sending out these recipes into the world.  I brought in interns, as you know, and I tested recipes and I had online testers testing recipes as well.  But when I was baking a small batch of scone or cookie or whatever I was struck by how much room for error exists in home baking.  Oven temperature, cup measurements, different brands of ingredients - all of these affect the outcome of a recipe.  I really want this book to be one that people pick up again and again and bake from all the time; in order for that to happen the recipes have to work consistently.  I found it so challenging to work and re-work the recipes so that someone at a home kitchen using a cup measurement would get the same result as I would in my professional kitchen with a scale.  In the Flour kitchen I can watch and guide and point out errors - at home with this book it’s just the reader and the page in front of them.  I tried to balance being detailed enough to lead them thru the recipe successfully versus not being so wordy as to confuse them.  That was so hard for me!

3.What has been the most exciting part of the process? Because of my feelings above in #2 the absolutely most exciting part has been when someone has made a recipe at home successfully and told me about it! I remember that you made the cupcakes; one of my other interns continues to make the coconut cake and raspberry crumb bars that she tested; my book editor has fallen in love with the fig newtons and celebration yellow cake.  It’s thrilling to know that these recipes are out there making other people happy.

4.What are your three favorite recipes that will be featured in the book? The fig newtons are to die for.  When I made them and bit into one I thought, if everyone makes this recipe the book will be a hit!  I love the fruit focaccia- we don’t make it at Flour and it’s one of my favorite things for breakfast or a simple light dessert.  And the pain aux raisins have been my favorite pastry since I learned how to make them about a decade ago.

5.Did you enjoy the recipe testing phase? (I sure did!) What did you like most/least about it? I loved the recipe testing phase because it got me back in the kitchen; my days these days are spent mostly in the office so I was so excited to be back baking. I enjoyed most what I’ve always enjoyed most about baking- the tactile satisfaction of taking a roster of very simple ingredients and converting them into something delicious and mouthwatering.  What I found least enjoyable was having to convert the recipes to cups which was tedious. I would measure out each recipe according to its metric weight measurement, then measure that into a cup measurer and make the recipe. Then I would re-write the recipe in cups and test it as written in cups to make sure it worked with cups.  Then I made it again with cups and re-weighed everything to ensure that the corresponding weight measurement was still correct.  It was a long process and it took some of the fun that comes out of baking because it was so deliberate.

6.How have you been able to keep up with Flour, Flour2, and Myers and Chang while working on this enormous project? I’m so fortunate to have an incredibly strong group of managers at Flour1 and 2 and at M+C.  I split my time equally among the three and while working on the book I simply scaled my time back a little. I also didn’t have a weekend  off for about a year, except for when my husband and I went on honeymoon! I spent every weekend writing and baking and writing some more!

7.Once the project is complete what will you do with all of that spare time? Ha! I wish I could sit still… we are hoping to open Flour3 early next year. We are currently looking around for a location.

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August 13: This is the hard part

Nothing new to report about the book- it’s back in the editor’s hands, we’re still not sure if they want us to reshoot the cover, I still feel somewhat sick to my stomach that all major changes are in and what you see is what you get. Gulp.

So in the meantime I’ve been keeping busy with the search for F3. As Ed, my contractor-advisor-handholder-counselor puts it this is the hard part. Once you find the right location everything pretty much happens step-by-step. But whatever decisions you make now about location pretty much influence everything about the potential success or failure of your gig.  No pressure right?

And all the while I’m wondering if we are really and truly ready for this next great big step. Will we be able to maintain our standards with food and service with a third location? Is our management structure strong enough, are we systematized enough to not have to re-invent the wheel with each decision, is it really possible to find and nurture and grow another passionate and devoted team of people who fully believe in the raison d’etre for Flour- make great food, offer it with warm and friendly service, and have fun doing it? Do we dilute ourselves and/or our message if we open another?  F2 is as wonderful and amazing and delicious and delightful and lovable as F1…is that a fluke, is it replicable again, is F2 ready to be the middle child? I know that it’s not a fluke- Sarah and Jeff and Jon and the rest of the staff work incredibly hard to maintain and further all we do at Flour. But maybe finding them was a fluke?

Picking the right location is the hard outside part. Figuring out how we will replicate without diluting is the hard inside part.  Knowing that there will be 3 sets of staffers who hopefully love their jobs, 3 sets of happy customers who hopefully love us, and 3 varied bountiful snack trays to visit every day will be the fun part!

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August 10: It’s the little things

Just a quick post bcse I’m really happy about a few itty bitty word changes that I think the editor is approving.  Warning: they are reeeeally little (hence the title of this post). Here are 2 examples of the level of minutia and detail we are going into with the wording in the book. And neither actually will affect the success of the recipe! But every time I read a recipe in the edited manuscript, the following lines looked as out of place to me as misplaced raspberry on a fruit tart:

1. In almost every recipe using an oven, the recipe was changed by the copy editor to read, “position a rack in the center of the oven, and heat to 350 (or another #) degrees.” It sounded to me like the reader was being asked to heat the rack. Obviously this wouldn’t have created any real confusion with readers, but I have asked that we change it to “and heat THE OVEN to xx degrees”. No dangling ovens or racks in this book!

2. In many recipes, the line “let cool on rack, then pop out…” read a little awkwardly to me. So I have asked that we change the wording to, “AND then pop out…”. I know I know it’s just an “and” but it reads nicer with it that without it. 

Yippee! Of course there are so many other things that we are going back and forth with in terms of the headings and the way the directions are worded. Maybe I just feel like any little victory is worth celebrating given my concern about the cover shoot. It’s still out there pending.  I’ve looked at all the pics one by one and I love almost all of them.  I hope they find something they love too.

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August 5: Main edit is in

It’s in! It’s in! The manuscript was returned to us about a month ago with more red ink on it than I’d ever seen in one document before. Our copy editor was meticulous, fanatically clear, obsessive about each detail and every word…in other words she’s terrific at her job. (She’d be a great pastry cook in fact!)  Christie and I each went over it 3 times back and forth…and now it’s back to Chronicle.  This is the final edit before it gets laid out for printing so essentially all of the work is done.  I think we can change a word here and there after this but not much more than that.  I feel relieved…and sick to my stomach.

From now on out then we’re focusing on the photography (the cover photo issue is still outstanding) and I’ll just be sitting here, waiting to see how they like this last re-write.

Well, maybe “sit and wait” isn’t really right. The search for a perfect Flour3 location continues!

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July 30: Cover?

We’re still trying to figure out if we need to add one more day to our already finished photo shoot to find a cover shot.  Because although we’re taught not to, we do judge a book by its cover. A cover can make or break a book so it’s key that we get the best shot possible.

On first glance our art director and editor didn’t think they found THE ONE so we are considering shooting more pics to see if we can capture that perfect shot.  We had a fruitful conference call today all together to see where we all stand. Before we jump into reshooting more pics we decided we would go back and look at the pics again and see if any of them had potential. If one or more is almost but not quite there, there’s a possibility that Joe our awesome photographer has other pics/angles/versions of it that could work out better.  I hope so!

Not that I’m against shooting again. I want more than anything that the cover and all the pics be the very best they can be and I’ll make and bake anything as many times as necessary to get the right shot. But practically speaking, more shooting costs more money and everyone is sensitive to budgets and all that so we have to be prudent.  Yuck I hate that word. I’m going to pour over the 500+ jpegs that Joe sent to Chronicle now and hope I can find that diamond in the rough.

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July 24: More photos and update on F3

No I don’t have more photos to post, rather I have more photos that need to be taken! Our art director from Chronicle emailed to say that she liked the pics we sent but she doesn’t see a cover shot among the 500+ photos. So I believe we are going to take a day and shoot as many different possibilities as we can. Any suggestions? Many people seem to think the sticky buns would be a good shot.

As for F3, I’ve made inquiries into several developers about available real estate. We have a few key needs:
1. We need at minimum 1800 square feet. Flour1 is around 1400 and we are busting out of the seams. Plus we rent extra space from the building for storage, etc. Flour2 is around 2200 square feet and those extra feet make a lot of difference.

2. We need to have venting so that we can cook with gas. Our ovens and stoves are gas powered (much better for baking and cooking) and if you have gas in your kitchen you need a hood. Hoods are not only expensive but also they are not always allowed by the Landlord. So we need to find someone who is open to allowing us to vent our kitchen exhaust.

3.The rent needs to be pretty reasonable. As in cheap. We’re not O Ya/Radius/No.9. We charge 1.50 for a cookie; 1.25 for a cup of coffee; 7.50 for a sandwich. The profit margin in restaurants is notoriously slim and in bakeries it’s even slimmer. Rent is one of the few fixed costs that we can control before opening and thus in order to survive (and hopefully flourish) we need our rent to be manageable. In order for me to pay a fair wage, offer benefits, etc., to my staff I have to first start with negotiating an affordable rent.

4. I want it to be in a neighborhood. Flour is all about being a part of a neighborhood and making friends with our customers and having personal connections with everyone who comes through our doors.

5. At the same time it needs to be close to a business district/hospital/museum/school. The steady stream of customers at breakfast and lunch from this type of clientele is what we depend upon for our bread and butter (no pun intended).

6. It needs to be relatively close to the other 2 Flours. I don’t want me or my managers to spend our work day driving around from place to place.  Boston traffic is tough so I’d prefer a third Flour to be reachable by bike, T, or very easy and short drive.

7. Other things we look for: is there parking? can we park a Flourmobile? is it accessible to public transportation so our staff can get to work easily? is there competition nearby? is it the right kind of competition? are there compelling reasons for people who don’t live or work in the neighborhood to come to that area?

So that’s my preliminary thought process. Just when I thought I would get a bit of my life back post-cookbook it looks like I might be giving it back to Flour again!

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July 21: A few more photos

Here are a few photos that I’m almost positive didn’t make the cut so I think I’m okay posting them here.  I think they are great but either we had better (which we sent along to Chronicle) or we re-shot and re-configured (so these were in the “junk” pile…even though they look quite lovely and amazing to me).

I just sent the re-edited Cake chapter back to Christie. Today and tomorrow I’m going to tackle Tarts, Other Pastries, and hopefully Breads (which will finish up the recipe editing).  Yes I’m saving the Big Bear for last: the Intro.  The recipes have been relatively easy to edit.  Mostly clarifying instructions, making sure all of the weights and such are consistent among all of the recipes, changing a word here or there (mostly “love” has been changed to “like” and I’ve gone back through and tried to slip “love” back in).  The Intro/Techniques/Ingredients sections, however, need lots and lots of work - lots of cleaning and fine-tuning and tightening up.  That is a weekend project for sure.

Anyway here are Fig Newton (rejected bcse it’s a bit too dull in color but I LOVE, er, I mean I’m crazy about how rustic and appealing these look), Lemon Pound Cake (again we re-shot with brighter, poppier colors- this one is still pretty to me) and Carrot Cake (we have similar shots of this on a more colorful background). Sense a theme?

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July 17: Photo

I figured out how to post pics onto this blog…finally! Here is one pic: black sesame lace cookie. I will post more in a bit….I’m in the middle of editing the manuscript and today is devoted to the Cake chapter. More to come…

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July 9: Copy and Line Edits

After I turned in the cookbook manuscript on May 15, I sort of let myself forget about it. It had taken up such a huge part of my mind and my life for such a long time that it was a relief to empty that part of my head out and let other things fill it. But I knew we weren’t done with it. First there was the photography, which was a blast and is now done as well. And then there was the editing.

I had no idea what to expect for an edit. Does the editor call me and do we talk about the tone, the word count, the stories? Do we chuck whole sections of the book, does he re-write sentences and paragraphs and rephrase everything? Or is it simply a matter of cleaning up the recipes and making the headings tighter?

I’m sure it’s different with every book but we just got our edited manuscript back and I’m not lying when I say that almost EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE has been tampered with. Tampered probably isn’t the right word to use; it implies an unwanted change. I haven’t read it entirely through yet but I know that these changes are helping make the whole thing read much much better. But still it’s somewhat of a shock to work on something so diligently and to turn it in thinking it’s about as great as you can make it…and then to have it come back to you all chopped up and marked in red. But that’s why they are editors and I’m a pastry chef, right?!?

So we have a few weeks now to read it through and either sign off on the changes or push back where we are not comfortable. I haven’t had a moment to sit with it yet (hopefully this weekend) and when I do I plan on reading it out loud to make sure it still sounds like me. Or someone who sounds like me but is clearer and more articulate! Already I’m having some trouble with one proposed change. The comments were that I use the word “love” too much, as in “I love brioche” and “I love chocolate chip cookies” and that it diminishes the power of the word. But what if I really do honestly love and crave these items? And want you to love and crave them enough to run to the kitchen and make them? How do I convey that? I’ve always been told that I should temper my effusiveness somewhat. But at what point do I then end up not sounding like me? I’m already thinking of synonyms that might work: adore, dream about, obsess about, delight in, be crazy about, live for, crave, like A LOT….

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June 29: Le Fin

Well it’s not really THE END because we still have much editing to do but 6 days of photography are finally over.  I had a fantastic time with Joe Keller of Keller+Keller and his assistant Isabelle and our prop stylist Denise and Christie with baby Ellie.  It was an intense week but a very rewarding one as well.  At the end of each day Joe sent me jpegs of the shots from that day and each dish was so beautifully photographed I couldn’t wait to get back and make more food for more pictures.  What I loved most about Joe is that he has that urge to try the same thing a million times with just the tiniest tweak in hopes of getting that one perfect shot in the same way that at Flour we try to make the same pastry a million times and each time hope to get it more perfect than the last.  In fact I’ll bet he would make a great baker (and maybe that means that someday I could learn how to take a decent picture!).He always was willing and eager to take just one more shot when I would move a crumb of chocolate brioche here or adjust a swoop of buttercream there. It was so gratifying to work with someone so passionate about his work.

The entire process was split into 5 days of food photography and one day of “atmosphere.”  Each day of food shots I bustled back and forth between the photo staging area we had set up at Flour2 and the kitchen where I was cranking out blueberry pies and pineapple upsidedown cakes.  The timing of the first day was off- I was never ready with a pastry right when I needed to be and we spent a lot of time waiting for me to finish something off.  But once I understood the flow it got a lot smoother and by the end I had pastries waiting in the wings for their time in the limelight as we moved from shot to shot. Every day ended with each person involved going home with a big box of pastries- whatever was left that is.  We did spend many moments eating the leftovers after a shot. I grew to really love watching Isabelle’s reaction as she would bite into something and pause and then say, “Oh. Wow. Wow.” It was again very gratifying to see someone so passionate- this time about the pastries from the book!

A small snafu in the beginning: we were somewhat unclear as to the precise art direction of the photoshoot. It turns out that Day 1 and Day 2 the colors we were using were more muted than what the art director at Chronicle was hoping for.  We made a quick adjustment Day 3 and brightened up our entire plate/cup/napkin/tablecloth palate and even re-shot about 6-7 different pastries, cramming them into Day 3, 4, and 5.  The shots are now lively, fun, modern, and clean.

The last day of atmosphere shots were taken at both Flour1 and Flour2.  Man it’s hard to find “atmosphere” when you are looking for it! Usually I feel like there’s tons of activity and cool baking projects and awesome looking things sliding in and out of the oven.  When Joe had his camera set up at either location it was challenging to find the right shots to show off the bakers and their work as well as the bakery.  But if anyone could do it, Joe could.

And it was funny, as I was remaking the recipes from the book for the pictures (I tried to make as many as I could straight from the manuscript versus just grabbing the pastry from the counter at Flour) I was finding areas here and there where I could adjust and tighten up the wording in the recipes.  It reminded me of how I felt immediately after turning in the manuscript - I wanted to retest all the recipes just one more time. That’s not really possible but I have a renewed goal of selectively going thru the book and retesting recipes just to make sure they are written as clearly and precisely as possible.

The staff at Flour deserves a huge shout out for their patience and help with the myriad of people, cameras, lights, etc., that cluttered up their already tight work space and dining area.  Thank you Flour peeps!

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June 22: Photoshoot

Tomorrow is the first of six days that we are spending on pictures for the book.  We are shooting onsite at Flour on Farnsworth Street; we have a goal of 36 total food shots along with 24 “atmosphere” shots. It’s quite amazing to me that so much of the art direction is up to…me.  I assumed that someone would swoop in and say, Make this and Use this plate and Add this much powdered sugar and BAM we’d be done.  But no, it turns out that we are given a general direction and then we (me, Christie, our food/prop stylist Denise, and Joe the photographer) all decide how to reach that artistic goal.  Not really my strength to be quite honest.  I’m good with a recipe and a scale and a plate of pastries. That’s about all! That’s truly the fun part. The hardest part was figuring out which pastries to feature and which ones to omit. They should all get a photo if you ask me.  Are you there Bill, oh fine editor o mine, are you listening? Can we include them all, please pretty please?

I’ll post after the shoot as I think it will be pretty non-stop for the next week or so.  Wish me luck! (ps You can follow our daily progress on our twitterfeed, www.twitter.com/jbchang)

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June 15: Flour3?

A quick update: we picked a cookbook photographer! I’ll post more about it once the details are finalized but for now we’re hoping to start shooting early next week. Whoowee!

In order to prepare myself (and the bakery) for the work I’d need to do for the book, I spent a fair amount of time starting over two years ago working really closely with Nicole, Flour’s head pastry chef, and Aaron, Flour’s general manager, teaching them on how to manage, lead, and guide their teams. Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to devote as much time as I had pre-book to baking and training staff, I entrusted the quality of pastries and customer service to their capable hands.  For over a year I spent most of my time either working on the book (or working at my newest business, Myers+Chang) and the amount of actual baking for Flour that I did dwindled. :(  I did make sure to spend as much time as I could at both Flours; I absolutely love being at the bakery and working with the staff and bakers was something that I couldn’t give up, no matter how much book/restaurant work I had. But my direct hands-on involvement with the day-to-day operations of the bakery was minimal.

As the book entered its final writing and testing phases a few months ago, I started to look ahead to how I’d fill my time once it was all over. I started to twitter (www.twitter.com/jbchang) and facebook (www.facebook.com/joannechangmyers) in hopes that it would allow me to make connections with other bakers and pastry lovers. Christopher and I made a vow to take a summer vacation. I may even go to the beach a few times this year! But with Nicole and Aaron completely in charge of the bakery (and doing an incredible job) my Flour responsibilities lately have been relegated mostly to the office with bills and payroll.  Not what I envisioned my bakery work to be.

So thoughts of opening a third Flour have inevitably started percolating in my head.  When I opened Flour 1 almost 9 years ago, I swore up and down to anyone who would listen that I would never ever open a second Flour.  But 7 years later, with the support and dedication of a terrific staff, I did and I love the second Flour as much as the first.  I liken it to having kids.  When you’re in childbirth you don’t think you’ll ever do it again (I don’t have kids but my friends who do say if you were to ask them during childbirth about more kids they would probably shoot you) and then you see the baby and you completely forget all the pain. When you’re struggling with your first baby, you can’t imagine how you could ever handle a second child. And then you have that second child and somehow it all works out. You wouldn’t change it for the world.That’s how we got to two Flours.

For me, watching Flour continue to grow and flourish is sort of like when you help your kid maneuver his/her first time on a bike with training wheels…and then without…and then you send them to kindergarten…and realize that he/she seems to need you less and less.  It’s liberating and heartbreaking at the same time. How can I turn back the clock to when I was on-site every day and had my hands literally on every single pastry?  Well I can’t, but I can think about opening a third Flour where I’d be back in the kitchen, helping to train and develop a new set of Flour bakers.

I passionately believe in everything we try to do at Flour. We focus on offering heartfelt friendly service, we work our hardest to make the best food and pastries possible, we give back as much as we can to the neighborhoods that have embraced us, and within Flour I work my tail off to ensure that we have a happy staff, a staff that looks forward to coming to work each day and that takes pride in being a part of Flour. I love building a team, helping people become stronger both at work and in life, creating a business that is healthy and that tries to do all the right things for customers and staff.  If we can replicate this in another great spot in Boston (preferably one in which I can get to by bike!) I’d love to spread Flour love, both to a new set of customers and a new team of Flour staffers.

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June 4: Photography

I’m woefully behind in posting.  And no longer do I have the excuse that I’m too busy testing recipes! No, instead I’ve been taking a bit of a break and focusing on a few other work-and-home-related items.  I’ve been working much more at my restaurant Myers+Chang (www.myersandchang.com). I’ve been attempting yoga which is awesome so far but it takes a LOT of time: each class is 90 minutes, there are many minutes of recovery afterward, there are many many more minutes of mental psyching-up beforehand …before I know it the afternoon is gone. Twitter has taken over my life too! (www.twitter.com/jbchang and www.twitter.com/myersandchang.)  And I’ve started reading again, finally, and have become completely engrossed in two books, one old and one new: The Sweet Life in Paris by pastry chef extraordinaire David Lebovitz (www.davidlebovitz.com) and The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman (www.ruhlman.com).  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m a huge fan of both bloggers and reading more of them in book format has been pure pleasure.  In fact right now I want to stop typing and go back to reading!  Not really…I miss blogging too.

So now we are in the photography phase.  We’ve reached out to three local food photographers and explained to them what we are looking for.  We want the pictures to be timeless, clean, inviting, warm, mouthwatering…and we want to shy away from too homey or too dreamy or too modern.  All photographers so far seem very interested in the project.  So now it’s a matter of Chronicle letting us know if they prefer one over the other.  And making sure each one offers a bid within budget. I always thought that once the book was written the publishing house would take over but there’s actually a fair amount of involvement that Christie and I have to determine the look of the book.  The photography will be done over the course of about a week and it will all be shot at Flour Fort Point, since we have ample space there and to avoid too much travel.  I love to travel; pastries don’t!

Along with picking a photographer we need to select which pastries to photograph.  I made a preliminary list of 20 items: pear and cranberry crostata, sticky sticky buns, mile high lemon meringue pie, raspberry rhubarb muffins, etc.  In an ideal world we’d take pics of each and every item! But alas I’m limited to about 30 food shots so already I’m stressing about what won’t get included. David Leite (www.leitesculinaria.com) told me to send Chronicle more pics than they want and if they are good enough they just might increase the number of pics in the book. Veeeeeery sneaky!  I’m totally going to do that, shhhhhhhh….

We hope to pick someone in the next week or so and then start photography by the middle to end of June.  I’ll be in heavy prep mode at that time to bake off all of the selected pastry winners. I have to admit I’m looking forward to making these recipes once again…and eating them!

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May 27: Twitter

I’ve been keeping busy post-manuscript with a last minute article request from Food & Wine magazine.  It all happened on Twitter: I answered a query from F&W about ethnic dishes that can be made with supermarket staples.  They liked the ideas I shared and asked me to send them recipes! Since I’ve spent the last year testing recipes, it was a breeze to test these- also they were mostly savory dishes so I didn’t need to be super exact.  I.e., they didn’t want weights of any of the ingredients (just cups and teaspoons) so I was golden.  Many of the dishes are menu items we make at my restaurant Myers+Chang already so tweaking them to make them magazine and supermarket friendly has been pretty easy…and delicious.

I’ve been wondering about blogging and tweeting and facebooking…all the time I spend doing it and whether or not I should be baking or managing or cooking instead.  It’s hard to find a good  balance.  I do like the feeling that I’m conversing with people who are interested in the restaurant, or the cookbook, or Flour.  I could talk about these all day long (just ask Christopher!).  Twitter allows me to channel some of that hyperactive energy I have in my head about my work.

See for yourself!  Follow me at www.twitter.com/jbchang for Flour and cookbook musings or at www.twitter.com/myersandchang for restaurant observations and info.  It’s fun and I’d love to hear from you!

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May 19: Bloggers

Now that I’ve had a chance to breath, I wanted to share with you all the books and blogs that I love in hopes that you’ll go out there and learn more about pastry and desserts and love it all even more.  Today I’ll share the three blogs that I check in with daily.

-Shuna Fish Lydon is an incredibly expressive, passionate, worldly pastry chef who blogs on her website www.eggbeater.typepad.com.  She fills her posts with gorgeous pictures and poetry; her musings on pastry and the restaurant biz are all must reads. I’ve forwarded more than one of her posts to my coterie of bakers and managers over the years. Plus she just seems like the nicest person ever.

-David Lebovitz at www.davidlebovitz.com is one of the best, most informed, FUNNIEST, most engaging food/pastry writers and pastry chefs I’ve ever read. I rarely read a blog without laughing out loud at least once and I always learn about pastries and Paris in every posting.  He’s incredibly articulate and a font of information about all things sweet.

-I adore reading Michael Ruhlman at www.ruhlman.com.  He is a food writer and an incredible cookbook author and a mentor for many.  His postings are always so smart and well thought out - I feel like each blog is like having a conversation with that college professor that always challenged you to be your best.  He’s taught me a lot about food writing just by being such a terrific example of how to do it well.

These inspire me each day and I hope they do the same for you.

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May 16: It’s in

This morning as I was riding my bike to work, the feeling that came over me (besides, *man* it’s cold, why is normal springtime weather so hard to come by in Boston??) was not unlike the feeling I used to get at the end of every school year: complete freedom.  Don’t get me wrong: I have loved every second of writing the book and testing the recipes AND the book is nowhere near being complete.  However for the last year or so every single morning I have woken up and somewhat neurotically planned out what and how to work on the book.  Should I test the Milky Way Tart or should I try to re-work the Pop Tarts and add flavor variations (yes! Brown Sugar-Apple and Chocolate Fudge are in there)?  Should I plop myself in front of the computer and crank out headnotes for Chausson aux Pommes (aka Apple Turnovers…which ended up, sniff, getting cut out of the book altogether) or should I work on explaining the importance of toasting nuts properly.  Should I try to take a break from writing and spend a little time reading various baking books to see what works and what doesn’t?  It got to the point where Christopher felt like we had a roommate - The Book.

Now that the manuscript is completely out of my hands for now and into the publisher’s hands, I realized this morning that while I COULD think about the book and probably WOULD think about the book, I didn’t HAVE to think about the book.  And that made it feel like summer to me, despite the chilly breeze.

i ended up taking out a few recipes that I liked but didn’t necessarily love, or that I felt would be pretty challenging after all to replicate at home, or that simply didn’t fit.  It was extremely hard.  At one point when I had the manuscript in hand and had to email it back to Christie with which recipes to save and which to delete, I typed “86″ (which is restaurant parlance for “no more”) and then deleted “86″ no fewer than a dozen times next to Boozy Rum Cake.  Each time I wrote it in I felt slightly sick; and then each time I erased it I felt better.  Word Count Restrictions be damned!  These recipes were all too good and too close to my heart to leave out and it would take a much stronger person than me to cut them out.

That stronger person’s name is Bill, and he is my editor.  I am eagerly - make that apprehensively, nervously, worriedly, yet eagerly - awaiting to see what he thinks of it and what he eventually deems not worthy.  Until then I will still think obsessively about the book… but only because I want to!

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March 14: Deadline Eve

Just a short breather from endlessly going over the manuscript.  We have to cut recipes and it makes me so sad!!  Follow me on twitter: www.twitter.com/jbchang or on facebook (Joanne Chang) for more up to date news on everything Flour and Cookbook.  Okay back to the script!

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May 10: Here’s to all moms!

Happy mother’s day to all moms and especially to the moms in my life: my mom-in-law Mary, my bestest friends Katie, Jenn and Ruthie, my GM’s wife Melissa, my writer Christie and my agent Stacey, and most most most especially to my best most wonderful Mama Chang.  I love you!

With one week to go my life has become somewhat frazzled.  I turned in what I think is the last recipe yesterday (Triple Cheese Pizza and all of the delicious variations) and am very busily editing and re-writing the various chapters, recipes, and introductory matter that Christie is sending back to me.  It sure feels weird after over a year of testing and writing to have it all come together like this.  Is every last piece of info really included in each recipe?  Have I remembered every story about each pastry that I’ve wanted to share?  Should I try that Yellow Birthday Cake just one more time?  (Okay I did…twice!)  Although Christie tells me that we will still be able to make changes once it comes back to us from Chronicle I want to be as thorough and perfect as I can this with this final draft.

If time permits, I am going to add 2 more recipes.  At Meredith’s suggestion (one of my interns), I want to include our recipe for Homemade Dog Biscuits that have been feeding the dogs and pups of the South End for nine years and Fort Point for two.  And I’d love to include one of my favorite sorbets from my Rialto days - Lime Basil.  It’s the perfect summer refreshing dessert.

6 days left!  Wish me luck!!

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