In Shondaland’s Joy Makers series, we spotlight creative curators who operate behind the scenes to inspire moments of elation. Their handiwork illuminates pathways to delightfulness, and their one-of-a-kind insights help us find happiness in our own lives. In this month’s installment, we explore the joy of details.
Known for her famous sticky buns and other decadent treats perched atop pastel-colored pedestals, pastry chef and Flour Bakery + Cafe co-owner Joanne Chang isn’t merely interested in the finished goodness that emerges from her ovens. She’s built an empire out of thoughtfully creating joyful experiences beyond taste. “The whole point of Flour is that I want people to be happy,” the cookbook author and James Beard Award winner says. “I want people to feel important.”
Opened in 2000 by Chang and her husband, Christopher Myers, in Boston’s South End, Flour now boasts nine locations and a “breadquarters” in the Boston and Cambridge metropolitan area. The local Massachusetts bakery chain has risen to fame and received acclaim for both its ooey-gooey, addictive treats — Chang’s sticky buns beat out Bobby Flay’s rendition on the Food Network’s Throwdown With Bobby Flay — as well as exceptional customer service and an irresistibly inviting atmosphere.
“It’s about the overarching experience you’re giving to somebody,” Chang explains, “meaning that the moment somebody walks in the door, I want them to feel welcomed. When they sit down and enjoy whatever wonderful food that they’re eating, I want it to be in an atmosphere that is pleasant and embracing and warm. I want every interaction to be genuine.”
Chang wasn’t always working with dough — at least not the kind that may first come to mind. After graduating from Harvard College with a degree in applied mathematics and economics, she took a job as a management consultant. While recruiting prospective employees at college fairs, she’d probe nervous students on what they would do if they won the lottery to put them at ease. After asking the same question for two years, she realized she might change a few things about her own life. “I wasn’t super-unhappy,” Chang recalls. “I was actually learning a lot. I just thought, ‘Maybe I should get into something that makes me excited to go to work every day?’”
Like many kids, Chang spent her childhood dreaming outside. “You know when you’re a little kid, and you’ve got dirt and water, and you mix it all together and make mud patties or whatever?” she reminisces. “Once I became old enough to actually bake with real ingredients, I realized it is a little bit like magic.”
Chang marveled at how a handful of ingredients, depending on how you combine, heat, and portion them, can make an array of different desserts. “You can take your hands, flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and — boom! — you have a croissant. You have palmiers. You have sugar cookies. You have pâte à choux. You have everything.”
Once she decided to pivot, Chang fervently applied to positions in the restaurant industry, which led to her first cooking job at Boston’s beloved Biba restaurant, before she trained and worked as a pastry chef at lauded bakeries and bistros. Eventually, Chang was inspired to take the plunge and open her own bakery and eatery.
“For me, Flour was my way of trying to connect with the world in a way that I felt I could do best,” Chang says. The pastry chef spent the second act of her culinary career encouraging her team to treat their fresh, handmade baked goods with care and adoration. Chang calls this wholehearted approach “Pastry Love,” a term she coined during the early days of the bakery that was later the name of her fifth cookbook. “For us at Flour, Pastry Love is a verb,” she says. “We call it P-Love.”
The idea of Pastry Love is to give your full love and attention to whatever it is you’re doing. At the first Flour location, Chang recalls perfectly positioning cookies, ensuring every plate was physically filled and bountiful, cutting the crostata in a way that was pleasing to the eye, and going over the edges of every cake plate to tidy up overflowing frosting. “Once we opened the second bakery, I couldn’t be in two places at once,” Chang says. “Rather than go through the litany of things, it was just ‘Have you done Pastry Love?’ That became a tag phrase for all of us that we still use. … It’s paying attention and giving care.”
Chang’s husband, who is her business partner and the co-owner of Flour’s sister restaurant, Myers + Chang, was an enormous source of inspiration when it came to developing this practice. “Christopher loves decorating the table, getting flowers, and making sure that the place settings are all nice. I’m always like, ‘Wow.’ I think when you’re baking, you should do the same thing: Find a beautiful platter, and make sure you arrange your cookies nicely, and take the time to make the cake frosting look special.”
At Flour, customers never receive a crumbling cookie or broken brownie. Chang calls it the mom test. “If you wouldn’t give it to your mom, then we don’t put it on the counter,” she says. “Somebody else is going to maybe receive these pastries as a gift, so let’s make it as wonderful as we can.”
The pastry chef believes that human beings are primarily visual in nature. Part of what makes baking so special, she says, is ogling the intentional gorgeousness of the finished product. “Whatever it is you’re making, don’t just throw it into a bag and say, ‘Here you go.’ Make it as important as it is. It’s something that you spent time creating. Give it the importance that it’s due, that you’re due. Offer it up with all of the love and joy and care that you’ve put into it.”
While an appetizing aesthetic is nice, the real essence of P-Love extends beyond the beautification of the glass cases and counters in the store. At its core, it’s about treating the entire baking process with attentiveness. For Chang, the joy found in baking comes from this sense of groundedness. “I love the sounds, smells, and knowing that I’m hopefully creating something delicious,” she says.
Chang is also a testament to the power of leadership. Where many leaders show up and make sure operations are running smoothly, she’s deeply interested in how people can — and deserve to — grow. Chang is currently finding excitement and meaning in how her 450-person team is evolving as individuals. “My focus,” she says, “is trying to make their experience as special as it can be.”
The pastry chef wants her customers to feel important, but she feels the same way about her team. “I want them to feel valued because, for many of them, it’s their first job,” Chang explains. “I really want them to have that good base so that when they go off into their other jobs or whatever field that they’re studying, they have an understanding of what it’s like to work in a place that respects you and is pushing you and holding you accountable. I think it’s all part of just trying to create a better world.”
Ultimately, Chang is committed to making life sweet for others in more ways than one. “When you go to a restaurant or a coffee shop, you just see ‘guy in the green hat’ and ‘woman in the red shirt’ and ‘little kid’ and ‘mom’ and ‘businessperson.’ But if you really peel back the layers, each one of those people is dealing with great things and really hard things.” Her hope is that one simple exchange within Flour’s walls encourages people to move through their day a little easier, and that everyone leaves a little happier.
“I feel strongly,” Chang says, “that we all walk through this world with a sign on our forehead that says, ‘Make me feel important.’ We all want to feel important. We spend our lives trying to find that place again where we feel important. Anything you can do to give that to other people is so rewarding [and] meaningful. It will help you, yourself, feel more important if you make other people feel important.”
When she’s in her bakeries, Chang usually parks herself in the dining room with her laptop or phone. She watches as toddlers gawk at frosting and older couples enjoy a quiet moment of bliss over croissants. “At this point now, we’re 22 years old,” she says. “We’ve fed people who were babies when we opened that have grown up eating our pastries and now are in college.” The idea that she and her team can be a positive part of someone’s day — or life — is what keeps her excited to go to work every day.
“I just wanted to do something that would help people handle life,” Chang says, “and this was the way that I knew how: a little bit of sweets, smiles, a nice environment, good teamwork, and something as simple as a hello and smile.”
Joanne Chang’s Three Tips for Practicing Pastry Love at Home
Give yourself time
“A lot of times, people don’t bake pie crust enough, and then it’s gummy. That’s one of the first things I notice when I eat somebody’s pies. Did they take that extra 10 minutes to bring out all of the flavors of the pie crust?”
Follow the recipe
“People will skip the steps and end up with a warm ingredient and a cold ingredient, and then the batter firms up and seizes, and it’s not good. Those are some things to really pay attention to if you’re baking.”
Revel in the process
“The idea of P-Love is paying attention to the whole process. Sometimes, life is too busy, and you have to rush, but when you can, know that you’re taking time to make something homemade. That’s a big deal these days.”
Mia Brabham is a staff writer at Shondaland. Follow her on Twitter at @hotmessmia.
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