Pastry Love

June 17, 2019
Chang, a Harvard graduate with a degree in math and economics, grew up in a dessert-free home but has recovered nicely by founding Boston’s Flour bakeries and writing this delectable collection. Recipes are organized into chapters, some with slightly cryptic titles (“I Made This for You”), and most are on the sweet side, naturally; a few savory dishes include biscuits stuffed with bacon, eggs, and cheese, and a bread chapter includes the likes of monkey bread loaded with garlic, shredded fontina, and dried thyme. There are ingenious creations, including a cross between kouign-amann (a Breton cake) and a sticky bun. Chang covers the international bases with panettone, Japanese milk bread, and Australian lamingtons (squares of butter cake). Headnotes are chatty and often funny: when Chang hosted a Swedish baking show, she was excited to display the Swedish language she’d learned as a high school exchange student but could call up only the word for strawberry. Instructions are impeccable, but occasionally she casts too wide a net, with items such as a vegan take on packaged Hostess cupcakes and gluten-free takes on lemon chia seed muffins and focaccia. Home cooks will find lots of go-to dishes in this ultimately solid baking book.

September 1, 2019

Chang (Flour) has written a new cookbook that features recipes popular in her bakery and new ones more suitable for other occasions. In the introduction, Chang details her journey into becoming a pastry chef and bakery owner. She provides tips and information about baking techniques and ingredients best suited for the recipes; one of these recommendations is not to use salted butter. The book is divided into eight chapters, covering breakfast items, breads, cookies and bars, pies, cakes, and more, as well as a chapter on pastries and fillings essential to baking many of these recipes. Recipes featured include lemon sugar cookies, Irish soda bread, a variation on the famous sticky buns with apple cider, and fresh peach crostatas. Chang has also included several vegan or gluten-free recipes that are as dazzling as the rest. VERDICT An excellent volume of recipes that will work for bakers at any level.--Holly Skir, Broward Cty. Lib., FL

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2019
There's nothing like an author's enthusiasm (and expertise!) to transform a book into a treasure. Eight Boston bakeries and four cookbooks into her career, award-winning baker Chang still manages to infuse excitement into the requisite flour-sugar-butter trio that comprises familiar and new treats. The 125 pastries are not necessarily easy to emulate; many take up more than a page and some require a whole day of concentrated baking to produce a worthwhile edible. Yet every recipe is seductive: savory country feta pies, hot-cross buns, chocolate-caramel Oreos, s'mores pie, brioche buns, or sticky bun popcorn. In many instances, step-by-step photographs will help the home p�tissier. What will make the baking less taxing is following her baker's dozen rules, like clean as you go and use salt; ensure the completion of master techniques (buttering and flouring pans is mandatory), and purchase the highest-quality ingredients. Though she doesn't explicitly say it, kudos to Chang's staff are another form of pastry love: almost all items give credit to a current/former baker and his/her ingenuity. This delectable baking book lives up to its name.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)