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sandra leung li: thanksfor joining us today for this talk. i am very excited to extend awarm welcome to chef joanne chang today. [applause] joanne chang: thank you. sandra leung li: so joanne is anhonors graduate of harvard college with a degreein applied mathematics and economics.

she left a career as amanagement consultant to enter the world of professionalcooking. before opening flour, shehoned her skills working various restaurants, includingthe department at payard in new york city, and waspreviously pastry chef at rialto and mistralhere in boston. in 2000, she opened flourbakery and cafe in the south end. since then, she's opened threeother locations, including

fort point channel, centralsquare, and back bay. in 2007, joanne opened a chineserestaurant in the south end, called myers andchang, with her husband, christopher myers. flour has been featured in"gourmet," "food and wine," "bon appetit," and "bostonmagazine," among other publications, and hasreceived numerous best of boston awards. also, you may have seen joanneprevail versus bobby flay in

the sticky bun "throwdown,"featured on the food network. and most recently, joanne wasawarded the 2013 share our strength chef of the year awardfor her involvement with the no kid hungry campaign. so congratulations, joanne, andthank you very much for joining us today. joanne chang: thankyou for having me. sandra leung li: you justreleased your new cookbook yesterday, actually, right?

joanne chang: mm hmm. sandra leung li: so you must beramping up for a very busy month of book touring. joanne chang: yes. when the first book came out,i actually did come here to google and you guys welcomed mejust as warmly last time, so thank you. when the first book came out, isaid to my publisher, so is there a book tour?

and they said, no, we don'treally do that anymore. i think with bloggers and foodnetwork and all of that, they really were putting all of theirenergies and monies in people who they knew wouldget a big audience. so they didn't book me anything,which is fine. and then i did a lot of stufflocally, and then i went to new york once. this time around, i don'tknow what has changed. i've never really askedthem what happened.

i think the success of thefirst book helped. i'm not really sure, actually. so this time, the book came outyesterday, and i'm going to the west coast, toronto, themidwest, and texas, all in the next couple of months, daytrips here and there, and then three and four-day trips andtaking advantage of being out on the west coast. i'm pretty excited. i've never really travelled forthe book, so i'm curious

to see what it will be like. when i come to boston, mostpeople know flour, and it's easy for me to talk about it,and people have questions that are all relevant to whati do every day. so i'm very curious to see whathappens when i go to a place where nobody's everheard of flour or me. and i'm hoping it's not threepeople and me, but we'll see. we'll see. sandra leung li: i thinkit'll be more.

joanne chang: i hope so. sandra leung li: what's yourfavorite city that you'll be going to? joanne chang: oh, that'sa good question. well, we're going to sanfrancisco, which i'm really excited about. i don't get there very often,so i am excited to go there. and then i'm going to dallas,which is where my parents are, so i'm excited to beable to do that.

sandra leung li: cool. so i imagine you have a lot offans that come out to see you. clearly, we have quitea few here at google. what is the oddest encounter youhave had from a fan at one of these events? joanne chang: oh, boy. sandra leung li: theremight be a weird encounter after this. i don't know.

joanne chang: exactly. if i'm describing youright now, i still think you're wonderful. so last night, i was actuallywellesley books. and when i came home, my husbandsaid, so how was it? and i said, this was the firstbook signing that i've done where there wasn't some crazyperson who came up to me. every now and then, there willbe somebody who is extremely enthusiastic about either meor sticky buns or pastry.

it could be anything. and i don't think it'spersonal to me. i think they just latched ontowhatever it is about me or the book that has resonatedwith them. and usually, at book signingsthat are kind of out in the world, versus here, where i feellike there's probably, hopefully, nobody that crazy,there's always somebody who will stay at the very end andstay at the table and want to talk for about three hours.

of course, i love talking topeople who love flour, i love talking about baking, and icould talk for three hours about the book. so it's not that talkativepeople are weird. it's just sometimes there arefans who get a little bit too intimate and want toknow details and-- sandra leung li: takenote, guys. joanne chang: i'm just not eversure how to graciously back away from that.

i had one woman who basicallyfollowed me from book signing to book signing thefirst time around. and every time, at the veryend, she waited until everybody left, and she spent alot of time stroking my arm and telling me how muchshe loved me. she was very, very sweet, andit was one of those things where i just felt bad, becausei didn't know how to-- it would be better if she werereally rude, because then i could say, i don't wantto deal with you.

but she was so nice,so what do you do? you're too nice? i didn't know what to say. sandra leung li: trythat next time. so why did you decide to comeout with your second cookbook? joanne chang: after writing thefirst one, i definitely knew i wanted towrite a second. i really loved the wholebook-writing process. but i thought that the secondcookbook would be "myers and

chang," which is the asianrestaurant i own with my husband in the south end. and in fact, i had alreadystarted testing recipes and was ready to write a proposalto send off to chronicle. and when the first book cameout, immediately readers were sending me emails or tweets andfacebook posts or whatever saying, i reallylove the book. i'm making such and such. what happened to this recipe?

what happened to that recipe? i thought the first book wasrelatively complete, until i started getting all of theseinquiries, and people were asking about the egg sandwich orthe brown sugar oat muffin or the lemon ginger mousse orother things that we do at the bakery that just, for whateverreason, had slipped my mind. so i started to get a number ofthese inquiries, and about the same time, my publisher,chronicle, reached out and said, we would like to doa second book with you.

i know you want to do "myersand chang," but we actually think there's an opportunitywith the second part of flour, basically the savory end. we originally had a savorychapter in the first flour book, but it got cut becausethe book was too big. and so we took out thatwhole chapter. so i was already one up onchapters for this potential second book, and then i hadthis list of emails with literally probably 20 inquiriesof different things

that people wanted from flour. so it became a natural nextbook, even though it wasn't what immediately came to mymind, to do "flour, too." sandra leung li: and it soundslike there could be a third book coming out too. joanne chang: well, again, ithink the third book should be "myers and chang,"but my publisher has a different idea. so i am signing a deal with themsome time this week to do

a low-sugar baking book,which is interesting. i know that everyone'skind of like, wow, where'd that come from? i don't know whereit came from. again, they reached out to me. this is how it works. at chronicle books, thefood/cookbook publisher, she is married to a doctor who iscolleagues with the guy who wrote the sugar is toxicarticle that was in the

"times" about six months ago. i don't know if you guys sawit, but it was a really interesting article. and for me, as somebody wholives in plying sugar to others, it was a little bitnerve-wracking to read that and think, oh, gosh,what's going to happen now to my business? it was the same fear i had whenwe first opened flour and atkins diet was a big thingand no gluten and all that

sort of stuff. anyway, the editor, she calledme and said, you know, we are really interested in thinkingabout what the future of baking might be. because they spend a lot oftime looking forward to trends, and so in order forthem to come out with a gluten-free baking book today ora paleo baking book today, they have to know that it'ssomething that's going to be popular like three orfour years ago.

she's anticipating thatlow-sugar will be something that will be interesting in twoor three years, and so she asked me if i would beinterested in considering it. and honestly, for me, i readthat article, the sugar is toxic, and i do know for myselfi eat a lot of sugar every day, and i know howit makes me feel. i get that sugar rush,i get really energized, and then i crash. and i've just gottenused to it.

it's just kind of what i do. but if i were trying to eat morehealthily, or if i were raising a family, and if i wasjust trying to be more thoughtful about how i eat,then i would want to reduce my sugar. and so i tested a bunch ofrecipes, because i didn't want to say, yes, i'll do this book,without knowing if it was even possible. and i tested two really popularrecipes from the first

baking book, the banana breadand the oatmeal raisin cookie. and i was able to successfullymake both of them with either a third or half the amountof sugar that's listed in the book. in fact, i made them for thebakers at the flour south end location, and most of thempreferred the new low-sugar version to the currentversion. so to me, that was a really goodsign that, one, it can be done and then, two, thatit would be fun.

i really enjoyed thewhole process. baking, it's fun and creativewhen you get to do things like this. when you're doing things everyday, it starts to get a little bit monotonous, and then youget thrown a challenge like this, and you're reminded ofwhy you got into it in the first place. so that's the next book. i did ask my publisher if i wasallowed to talk about it,

because at first we weren'tgoing to talk about it. and he said, yes, as longas we don't tell the publishing world. so i don't know if there'sanybody in here-- sandra leung li: it willbe on youtube. joanne chang: oh, i think theydon't want it in "publishers weekly." that's whati'm assuming. sandra leung li: all right. well, we'll make sure it'llstay in this room.

joanne chang: in the bubble. sandra leung li: so what isyour favorite recipe from "flour, too"? joanne chang: that'sa good question. gosh, favorite recipe. that's so hard. my favorite thing to eat fromthe "flour, too" book would be the kouign amann, which is thebutter breton cake, which is in the "party time" sectionof the book.

i first had butter bretoncake 15 or 20 years ago when i was in paris. it was before we opened flour,and i remember biting into it. it is basically a croissant thatis made with extra butter and extra sugar so that itbecomes really, really crispy and caramelized on the edge,and it's still flaky. you know what? you know this whole thingwith the cronut? i'm sure you guys allknow about it.

it's sort of like that. it's got the same thing that thecronut has going for it. it's got the crunchy onthe outside and the flaky on the inside. so when i first had it 15,20 years ago, i remember thinking, if i ever open my ownplace, we're going to make kouign amann. we opened flour, and ideveloped a recipe. but it was really difficult tomake on a day-to-day basis.

and so we offered only at theholidays for 11 years. then i started writing thisbook, and i wanted to put the recipe in the book. and i told my executive pastrychef, if it's in the book, we're going to have tooffer it every day. so about a year ago, we figuredout the production, and now we're offeringit every day. so i would say that's probablyone of my favorites. sandra leung li: thatsounds delicious.

and i am a big fanof the cronut. joanne chang: i haven'thad it yet. sandra leung li: i want to goback in time a bit and have you think back to the firsttime you ever baked. when was that? and what did you bake? joanne chang: the first time iever baked, i was probably 10. let me think about this. no, actually, the first time,i think i was about 7.

i remember this now. and it wasn't even baking. but for some reason, i thought,i'm going to make something with my friend. i can't remember hisname, like tim. we were little seven-year-olds,right? my parents both worked. and i remember, because my momgot really mad afterwards, i crossed the freeway so that icould get to the 7-eleven to

buy ingredients, and then wecrossed the freeway back. and we made-- this isn't really baking, but iassume this is kind of what you're going for-- little fruit kebabs. we bought whatever fruit you canbuy over at 7-eleven, and we cut it all up, and weput it on toothpicks. we put it in little baggies,and then we forgot about it for a day and brought it thenext day to our teachers, at

which point the bananas were allmushy and the apples were all yellowed. but we were so proud. and i do remember giving it tomy teacher and just being really excited that i had madesomething and given it to her because i loved her. so it wasn't really baking,but that was like my first time in the kitchen. sandra leung li: and wasthat the beginning of

what got you hooked? or when was the first moment? joanne chang: i've alwaysloved to be in the-- after that, i definitely spenttime in the kitchen. my mom was a working mom. and so i would come home fromschool, and she would often need help, basically, justputting together dinner. i got to be pretty adept inhelping her just prep stuff, so by the time she gothome, she could

just do a quick stir-fry. or i would put stuff in the ovenand get the rice ready, or whatever. so i'd always very comfortablein the kitchen. i think that the firsttime that i ever thought about it truly-- i thought about it professionally very, very late. it wasn't until after college.

but when i was in college,i did make chocolate chip cookies in the dormitorykitchen, and i sold them to the dormitory grill. and i sold them to the guys whoran the grill for $0.25 each, and they soldthem three for $1. i did it for two years, juniorand senior year. and i remember i guess everysemester they would write me a check for the proceeds, andit was like $60 or $70. and i would use the money to gobuy running shoes, because

i was a runner. so that was kind of my firstforay into making food that then people paid you for. but i certainly didn't thinkat that point, oh, great. now i'm going to goand open a bakery. at that point, it was away to kill some time. sandra leung li: so youmentioned running shoes. and i did read how you ran everysingle boston marathon from '91 to 2006.

was that your strategy, run amarathon, eat, [inaudible]. joanne chang: no. i don't run as much anymore,which is unfortunate, because i really do miss it. but i definitely think that whenyou're working all day in a kitchen and you're surroundedby food and you're eating food all day long,there's something that's just very relaxing. and for me, it's good formy mind to go out and

go for a long run. and so for years itwas my thing. i calmed myself down, and itwas my little zen thing. i'm not a speed runner. it took me like five orsix hours each time, just plodding along. but it's just something thatdefinitely helps balance the amount of eating thatyou do all day long. sandra leung li: you're aharvard graduate and former

management consultant turnedchef restaurant owner. i come from your stereotypicalasian household, so the first thing that i would like to knowis, what did your parents think when you quit yourmanagement consultant job to become a pastry chef? joanne chang: that'sa great question. when it happened, it wasn'tquite as black and white as that. i didn't say, i'm quitting anddropping everything and going

to do this. i was at the end of my secondyear as a management consultant. and at that time, that's whenpeople either went on to business school, or some peoplewere staying within the company, and they were going tojust kind of keep going up and up within in company. and i didn't wanteither of those. i didn't want to stay, and idefinitely didn't want to go

to business school so i was kindof stuck, and i didn't know what to do next. and i'd always loved to cook andto bake, and so i thought, you know what? i'll take a year off, and i'lltry cooking professionally and see if i can support myselffor at least a year. and then i'll figure outwhat i want to do. so that's kind of how isold it to my parents. i didn't have this planthat it was going

to be a career change. it was just taking carea year off to do something that i enjoyed. i think that for them was alittle bit easier to swallow than if i had said, i'm chuckingthe whole thing, and i'm going to go become a chef. they were cautiouslysupportive. i think they were definitelyvery nervous. i was 24.

and if you're 24, you thinkyou know everything. but if you're 50, like myparents were, you think that the 24-year-old knows nothing. and so they were just really,really nervous. how are you going tosupport yourself? you're leaving thisreally stable job. it's got a lot of benefits. you're not going to havehealth insurance. what are you going to do?

so i think they were moreconcerned about logistically how was i going tosurvive for year. and then when it became clearthat it was more than just a passing fancy, at thatpoint i think they saw how happy i was. and i was able to make itwork financially, so they were more accepting. then as i got pastry chef jobs,it seemed even a little bit more legitimatein their eyes.

and then when we opened thebakery, then it was a real thing, and so theywere ok with it. and now they love it. now they come all thetime, and they go to all the bakeries. in fact, they will always dokayak or whatever to find out what hotel they shouldstay in. and they'll send me an email andsay, ok, this hotel, how far is it away fromthe bakeries?

and i'm always like, mom, whatabout how far is it from me, the one you're comingto visit? they will come for a week, andi might see them three times, but all the staff will seethem dozens of times. sandra leung li: do youhave any siblings? joanne chang: i do. i have a younger brother, whowent to mit and studied-- mechanical engineering? some sort of engineering.

chemical? no-- engineering of some sort. he's brilliant, and he workedfor years for harrah's out in las vegas doing some of theirsomething, something computer-related. and then he just recently took ajob with darden corporation, which owns olive garden, redlobster, capital grille. so he's technically in the foodbusiness now, but he's

still on the computer end. he's assistant to thecfo, or something. i don't really know. sandra leung li: soundsreally smart. joanne chang: he's very smart. and he just-- sandra leung li: i wasgoing to say-- joanne chang: --gothis first patent. i was very proud.

sandra leung li: --if you havesiblings, maybe you could deflect some of the attention inthose early stages when you were trying to switch over, ifyour younger brother was doing something else. joanne chang: oh, no. because at that point, he washere at mit getting his mechanical engineeringdegree, i think. they were very proud of him,as they should have been. sandra leung li: you openedflour back in 2000.

what were your greatestchallenges in those early days? joanne chang: oh, man. something that i think i forgetabout-- and i don't know if it's just one of thosesurvival things that do-- is the entire first year of openingthe bakery, i wanted to close it. in fact, i have a diary that ikept at the time, and there's an entry about the 10th monthwhere i said, can't wait to

sell this place. mom says i should keepit at least a year. at that point, i'd told my momthis isn't really working out. i don't really think thiswas a good idea. and my mom was just like, justkeep it for a year, just to save face, to say that you atleast did it for a year. and then you can sell it. and the biggest challenges, forme, were that i have this vision of what i wantedthe bakery to be.

i had recipes. i had, in my head, all thesewonderful scenarios of customers coming in and getting great, friendly service. and the milk pitcher wasfull, so you could put milk in your coffee. then you get your beautifullypackaged pastry, and go home and enjoy it. you think about that when you'replanning a bakery.

then the reality is the customercomes in, and the staff member is busy talking totheir co-staff member, and the milk picture isn't full, andthey pack all the pastries smushed in a bag. and you get the email from thecustomer saying, i ordered all these pastries, i spent thismuch money, and here's the picture of how my pastrieslooked when i got home. i really struggled with takingthe vision that i had and then trying to disseminate thatamongst the staff and trying

to impart upon them the goalthat i was trying to do with flour and the missions thatwe were trying to do. that was the hardest part forthat whole first year is that i was only one person. and i had a hard time and areally steep learning curve on learning how to delegate,learning how to manage. i'd been a manager at thevarious pastry chef jobs i'd had, but that wasvery different. and all of a sudden, at thetime, it was 12 employees, all

of whom were great people-- i still keep in touch with manyof them-- but just had a different idea of whatflour should be on a day-to-day basis. and so that constant struggleof walking in and seeing the place be so different from whati had intended and what i had worked so hard to create,and then going home and coming back and having the samething happen every day. i kept trying toright the ship.

and i would go away for 15minutes, and the ship would go off that way. then i'd come back and right it,and it would go off again. and on top of that, in the wholefirst year, i didn't take a day off untilabout 10 months in. and then i was doingall of the baking. so that was coming in at 3:00in the morning and doing the bake off and then stayingthere all day long. also, again because i was asmall business, i was doing

all of the accounting, all ofthe payroll, all of that back office stuff. so that was happening late atnight, and then i'd go to bed and wake up again anddo the whole thing over starting at 3:00. so a couple months in, orhowever long, you just start to get really exhausted. and when the milk pitcher isn'tfilled, it just seems like, ok, this isn't worth it.

i should sell the place. sandra leung li: when did itstart to turn and pick up? joanne chang: definitely betweenthat 10th month and that first year where ihad vowed to sell it. the key where it started to turnwas i finally had staff that i trusted. not that previouslyi didn't trust. they were all verytrustworthy. but i finally had staff thatcould do what i did in the way

that i wanted them. for me, the big thingwas opening. it is being the first person toturn on the ovens, to take all the pastries that are readyto go, to put them in the ovens, mix the batters andget everything ready so that by 7:00 am you can have thepastry display ready for guests when they come in. around the 10th month,i trained somebody who's still with me.

she's my executivepastry chef. she's been made partner. and nicole learnedhow to open, and that gave me a breather. it gave me one day that i couldactually sleep in till probably 5:00 in the morning. it was just something thatgave me a little bit of perspective. it's just so hard when you'rejust doing it day in, day, in,

day in, day out. and so having that person whocould share a little bit of the responsibility was key. and then from that came a frontof the house manager. when we opened, we had a frontof the house manager, but he didn't end up working out. so then we didn't haveone for a long time. and by about in the end of thefirst year, we hired somebody who is really terrific, so thenshe could do all of the

hiring and training ofthe counter staff. the key was just getting a teamaround me that understood what we were trying to do. and once i felt that theyunderstood, then the mistakes became, not irrelevant, but theydidn't bother me as much. it's like, ok, we all makemistakes, right? so they would make a mistake,and it's like, that's ok, because i knew they wantedto do the right thing. it was in the beginning whennobody knew what i was trying

to do that when mistakes weremade they didn't understand, which was this constantstruggle. sandra leung li: i think a lotof folks in this room have similar entrepreneurial spiritand may strive to launch their own business some day. what advice would you giveto budding entrepreneurs? joanne chang: for me, definitelyit's about creating and developing a team of peoplethat surround you and who believe in what you do.

i remember in that first yearjust thinking, man, did i do this wrong. i should have gotten a littlekiosk that was just manned by me with a little commissarykitchen, where i would be the only one baking and then theonly one selling and then the only one washing dishes. because i was feeling likei'm the only one who can do this right. so for people who want to starttheir own businesses,

unless you're one-manshow, you need to rely on other people. and so the biggest advice that itell anybody, usually people come up to me and they say,i want to open a bakery. what do i do? and it is creating thoserelationships around you and developing people around youwho understand what you're trying to do and who believe init and who can help you get to where you're trying to go,because you really can't do

anything by yourself. when i was planning for thebakery, i was in new york city working at payard, and at theend of my stint at payard, i spent about three or four weekswith amy scherber of amy's breads. she was very generous and said,yep, you can come and hang out with us for a monthand learn what you want to learn about brand. and i asked her, in exchangefor my working for a month,

can i pick your brainfor an hour or so? so at the end of my monththere, i asked her the same question. i'm like, i want to goopen my business. what do i need to know? and she said, human resources. you need to find people. so i had ended my internship. my mom came to new yorkto pick me up.

i had two days in newyork with my mom. and the very next day, after mygoodbye interview with amy, she called me the next morningand said, is there any way you can do the whatever, whatevershift, because so-and-so just walked out. and i couldn't, because my momwas there with me, and we were getting ready to leave. but it just really hammered homethat, man, without people you can't do that much.

you can have a great idea. you can personallybe a great baker. you can be a great salesman. but unless you're willing to doevery single thing on your own, you're not goingto succeed. sandra leung li: yeah. great advice. so here at google, we are alwaystrying to innovate and stay ahead of the curve.

as a chef, how doyou innovate? because we have challenges inthat area, in that, for us, people who come tothe bakery-- i think at a certain point youhave to just decide what is your audience and what are youtrying to do and to be true to what you want to do. so we try to innovate. we try to add new sandwiches. we try to change things up.

we are physically limited bywhat we can produce to a set number, a rough number ofthings, so we can't just constantly add things. if we add something, we haveto take something away. and what we have found overthe years, especially as flour's gotten bigger andpeople associate us with certain things, it's reallydifficult for us to innovate without pissing offa lot of people. we tried last summer to changethe turkey sandwich.

i don't know if any of youguys are turkey sandwich aficionados, but my gosh, youwould've thought i stole people's first child. i got so many emails like,what did you do? why did you do this? what is wrong? for every person who was upset,we probably get 10 "what's wrong with you?" to1 "we really like the new sandwich." so we stuck it outfor, i think, six or eight

months, and then i wascontinuing to get the emails. and finally, we just said, ok,let's just switch back. so it's hard for us to try tocome up with new products. but in terms of innovating interms of how we run our business, we are constantlytrying to think of ways. you guys are an inspiration,what you guys do within the company to try to create goodworking environments and to foster creativity. i read all the articles aboutgoogle, and i think, oh, what

can we do from that to helpinspire the staff who work for me? we have a very differentgroup of employees. a lot of them, it's theirpart-time job because they're in school. or they've taken a year offfrom something, and then they're moving on. so there's definitely adifferent environment, but there's still the same capacityto inspire people to

take that moment that they'reworking for us at flour and be the best flour personthey can. so for us, we try to innovate interms of how do we energize them and get them excited andmake them understand that even though this is only yourpart-time job and you're only here for three months, it'sstill really important for us that you view this as if thisis your life goal, to be the best counter personor baker you can. we brainstorm a lot, and we justthink about what we can

do, what we can offer to thestaff to give them that environment. sandra leung li: very cool. how did you decide on thename flour bakery? joanne chang: flour camefrom my husband. i was in new york,and i called him. we weren't dating at the time. he was just a friend. and i called him, and isaid, i'm thinking of

coming back to boston. i want to open my own bakery. do you have any ideas? and he came up with a list ofnames, none of which i can really remember. flour was one of them, andi remember thinking, that doesn't work. there's a list of them, and ithought, that doesn't work, that doesn't work, thatdoesn't work.

none of them worked,basically. and then i think a week or solater, i was just looking at the list again, and iwas playing around with the word flour. it just seemed weird. why would you namea bakery flour? it just sounded so plainand uninspired. and then it kindof grew on me. and then i thought, it's likeanybody's first name.

if you have an unusual firstname, it sounds weird to people until theyget to know you. and after the fifth time, itjust becomes your name. so for me, flour was the same. flour sounded weird, and thenafter thinking about it, i thought, ok, this could work. and now it just seems like ano-brainer, and i'm very grateful for him forcoming up with it. sandra leung li: it sounds likehe inceptioned you or

hypnotized you in some way. joanne chang: that mighthave happened. sandra leung li: you mentionedin the early days you were waking up at 3:00 am. what is a typical daylike for you today? joanne chang: totallydifferent. if it weren't for the book,typically i try to go to two flour locations a day,morning at one, afternoon at the other.

and then three or four timesa week, i try to go to the restaurant in the evening. what i'm doing now is a littlebit of what i was talking about earlier. the innovation with the staff,which for me really is getting to know the staff, and so i comein and i taste products and i talk to everybody. and i just try toget a sense of-- they're in the middleof their day.

they're either serving coffee,or they're baking off cookies, or they're making soupor something. so i try not to interrupt theirday, but i do try to find good times within themorning that i'm there to stand next to certain staffpeople and just talk to them and find out what they're doingand how's this working and, hey, we just got thisnew piece of equipment. what do you think? or in the front of the house,wow, we just got

this new iced tea. how's it selling? so i spend a fair amount of timejust trying to actually just connect with the staff. because we have so many people,and i feel like if i don't stay connected with themnot that i'll forget what flour's all about but i willforget that connection of the staff to the customer. so it's really important forme to stay close to them.

and then i spend a lot of timein the office doing either managerial stuff. we have a lot of managermeetings. each location has its ownmanager meeting that i attend. and then i have a managermeeting with my director of operations, and with myexecutive pastry chef, and with my human resourcedirector. so there's a lot of meetings. and then from the meetings, ispend a lot of time in front

of the computer summarizingthe meetings and doing followups to the meetings. so it's just a lotof office work. sandra leung li: soundsa lot like google. you could be here. joanne chang: oh, really? sandra leung li: from the soundof it, it seems like you probably don't get a chanceto cook at home very much. joanne chang: i don't.

i miss that a lot. in fact-- where was i? oh, i was just driving down, idon't know the name of the street, but in downtown wherethere's a grocery store where used to go all the time. and i was just driving downthere last week, and i thought, man, i haven't been tothat grocery store in-- and then i start counting, and isaid-- six years since we

opened myers and chang. there's really no reasonfor me to cook. i enjoy it, but it's so easyjust to go to the restaurant to get take out andbring it home. so we do a lot of that. sandra leung li: and so you mustbe an expert, obviously, on all the dishes atmyers and chang-- joanne chang: oh, yeah. sandra leung li: --withthe take out.

what do you usually take out? joanne chang: let's see. we get the salmon. it's a pan-roasted,soy-glazed salmon. it's very, very simple. it's definitely not the dishthat i recommend when i'm trying to show off about whatmyers and chang is all about, but it's my favorite dish. it's really simpleand delicious.

we get the lamb belly. it's a lamb belly stir-fry withslippery glass noodles and leeks and sesame seeds. the spicy salmon and appletartare with sesame crisps is one of my favorites. we always get a vegetable. yeah. sandra leung li: sounds good. i want to leave a little timefor audience questions, but

just a few last fun questionsbefore we finish up. what would be your last meal? joanne chang: my lastmeal, i would have-- i love-- wow. ok. i would do lots of things. sandra leung li: that'scheating. is that really cheating?

it's your last meal-- sandra leung li: ok. go for it. joanne chang: --so youcould eat everything. sandra leung li: gobig or go home. joanne chang: yeah, i can'tthink of a composed last meal. i would probably go to oishiiand have omakase. and then i would save a littleroom, and i would go to picco and have a pizza.

and then i would go to the7-eleven and buy haagen-dazs coffee ice cream and eatthe whole thing. sandra leung li: thatis a healthy meal. what is on your musicplaylist? joanne chang: this is sad. i don't listen to music. in fact, last night driving outto wellesley, i thought, i should turn on the radio justto see, what are people listening to these days?

i don't even know whatplaylist means. i don't listen at all. i used to listen to a hip hopstation, pop station, kiss 108, because i used torun to headphones. and then my headphones gotstolen three years ago, and i just stopped listening. when i'm listening, if i were toever listen, i actually, at this point now, i feel like i'vegotten old, but i really do like classical music.

because my dad loves classical,so there's a lot of fond memories when i listento certain things. i have a couple cds thati'll stick in the thing, whatever it is. but i'm not reallya music person. sandra leung li: it soundslike we need to work on getting you headphones. what do you do for fun? joanne chang: i love goingout to eat with

christopher and friends. that's definitely something thati enjoy a lot and look forward to when we canschedule it in. i still run and exerciseevery day, which might sound not fun. but for me, it's very fun. i love to read. i don't have enough timeto just sit and relax. so my ideal is on sundaymornings to wake up and have

breakfast with christopher andthen just read the paper slowly over the courseof the day. those are the three thingsthat i like to do. i like to shop, but i don'tspend a lot of time shopping. sandra leung li: oh. and the last question, i noticedthe flour motto to "make life sweeter. eat dessert first." so do youreally eat dessert first? joanne chang: well, i'mkind of eating a

dessert all day long. so by the time i get to dinner,i actually feel like i need to eat some food. i'm very conscious of the factthat i don't eat real food usually until dinner time. but on days that i'm not atthe bakery, i think it's important to eat dessertfirst, because you might not have room. i've had plenty of dinners wherei've run out of room by

the end of the dinner. so if i can, i tryto sneak it in. it's a little odd. sandra leung li: lovethat strategy. joanne chang: sometimesthe servers are like, are you sure? but we've seen customers atmyers and chang do that. they'll order the nasi gorengand the arctic char roll and coconut cream pie.

and i'm always like,are you sure? and they're like, yeah, we wantto eat dessert as well. now i want to open it upto audience question. so if anybody has any questions,you guys can line up here so we can getyou on the mic. don't be shy. audience: i'll come up. audience: do i reallyhave to go? sandra leung li: yes, you do.

audience: oh. all right. just curious, so now you're infour locations around boston. how connected are you to thecommunities and the other restaurant owners andbakery owners? do you guys help each otherout and stay in touch? joanne chang: the restaurant andbakery community in boston and cambridge is extremelytight-knit. everybody knows everybody.

everybody sees everybody atevents and goes to everybody's restaurants. so yes, we're very connected. i feel very connected. in fact, we're looking fora sous-chef position at myers and chang. and i just this morning sent anemail out to all of my chef friends just saying, if you knowof anybody, or if there's anybody on your team that isready to move on and you don't

need them, send them our way. so we all feel very connected. i will reach out to maura atsofra on a periodic basis, or vice versa, if she needssomething or if i need something, her advice. the woman who runs tatte bakery,her pastry chef used to work for me as my pastrychef, and so kristin and i stay in touch. and then, all the chefs, theyjust all know each other.

we work really well together. audience: i was just wondering,i like to test around the kitchen as wellquite a bit, but i never actually remember the recipes. so i didn't know, when you gointo testing a new recipe, do you take down themeasurements? or what's your processfor doing that so you can remember it again? joanne chang: i definitelywrite it down first.

one of the things i tell peoplewhat i'm doing a demo, for example, is you know whenyou're watching on food tv, and they have all the littlecups with everything all measured out, and theygo, boom, boom, boom and it's done? that's actually how i bake. if i'm testing a recipe-- likeright now i'm in the middle of this low-sugar thing-- i write down a recipe that inmy head i think will work.

and then i go and i measureeverything out, and then i have my piece of paper witha pen next to me. and as i'm baking, if isee an adjustment-- i'll add a cup of milk andrealize ooh, it needs more liquid-- then i'll add it andi'll measure another quarter, and then i'll changethe recipe. for me, it's not like cooking. if i'm just cooking at home,i wouldn't think so much about it.

but because i need to replicateit, i have to be really careful about takingreally detailed notes. it can be a little bit less fun,because you're trying to just make something delicious,and then, aw, shoot, i got to remember to write this down. but i've gotten used to it overtesting these two books these past couple years. so it's definitely the bestway in order to be able to replicate it going forward.

audience: you have a fewsuccessful businesses that you've started. you've written a coupleof books. at this point, you said youmake it into some of your businesses some of the time,depending on what you can fit in the schedule. so they're obviously sustainingthemselves in ways that was not possibleat the beginning. how self-sustaining areyour businesses?

and what's next for you, giventhat you've been able to free up some of the timein your schedule? joanne chang: sure. the businesses, at this point,if i were to just drop off the face of the earth, there's acouple things that i do that i'm still the onlyone who does. but it wouldn't be hardto teach somebody. so for example payroll, whichhappens every other week, i have an hr person.

she runs payroll. she talks to all the managers tomake sure everybody's time clocks are correct. but i physically enter it intoour accounting system, because i want to see how much we'repaying everybody. that's easy enough. if i were to move to tahiti, icould just teach her how to do that part, and shecould do it. honestly, i think that'sthe only thing

that i do that i have-- and i field a lotof the email. we get a lot of emails, eithercomplaints or requests for information or charityrequests. and i tend to answer most ofthem, especially the complaint ones, just because they areimportant to me, and i want to stay on top of them all. but that, again, i could alsoeasily give that to my director of operations,who would gladly do

all of that for me. i think what would be missing,and it's one of the reasons why i don't want to not be atthe bakeries as much as i can, is the connection that i havewith the staff, trying to make them understand thestory of flour. and we're at this point wheresome people call us a chain. and i don't want it everto feel like that. we were talking earlierabout how google's gotten really big.

and i'm sure that whoever thebig people are wish it were still small. and so trying to maintain thatsmall company atmosphere, even though it's gotten bigger, issomething that i think i'm uniquely positioned todo, simply because i don't have a job title. my executive pastry chef, she'sin charge of pastry, so she spends all her time actuallyworking on pastries. and the hr person,she does hr.

but for me, i'm just owner. so what do i do? i try to make sure that theplace that they are working at is what i intended it to be. because i think it's very easy,without guidance, for it to, like i was saying earlier,just veer off, and not necessarily in a bad way, butjust in a way that's not what i intended. and so it's not that my way isthe right way, but i think

there's something to be saidfor running a business that has a clear vision. and if there's not one person orone group of people that's kind of setting the vision on adaily basis and having that be their focus, i think it'seasy for companies to lose their way. i don't know if that reallyanswers your question. it's not like a specific jobthing that i do conscious-- i do it consciously, but there'snot a list of things i

do to do that. it's just kind of how itry to stay connected to the various bakeries. audience: and what's next? joanne chang: oh,and what's next? writing the third book, and thenafter that the "myers and chang" book, definitely. [laughter] this time i made bill, mypublisher, commit to this.

i said, ok, so i'll dothis one, and then-- he actually had a good point. he said that with the timing ofit, if i do the "myers and chang" book, it will come outat myers and chang's 10th anniversary, which seems to makesense and works and feels good and all that. and after that, i honestlydon't know. even though i'm talking abouthow you have to have a clear vision, i haven't had aclear path about what

i want to do next. i don't want to open morebakeries, but i feel like i have to be carefulwhen i say that. because i'm pretty sure when icame here last time, when we only had the three bakeries, iprobably said the same thing. and yet, we opened a fourth. but what's stopping us this timefrom opening a fifth is that physically we are limitedwith how we're doing our production.

if we were to open a fifth,we would have to build a commissary kitchen, whichwe don't have now. and so, for me, if we were to gothat route, that's a huge, big next step. that just changes thebusiness model. because right now, i can still,in my head, convince myself that i just havefour little bakeries. but once you go commissary, thenyou become commissary. you're welcome.

audience: very interestingconnection with [inaudible]-- excuse me-- is how do youdefine yourself-- i didn't come for the beginning,so i might have missed something you said-- compared to the other bakeriesin the area? iggy's obviously has a differentbusiness model. audience: but the product hasa lot of similarities. hi-rise seems to be focused onhigh price, which applies to all of you.

how do you define yourself,compared to the other bakeries? joanne chang: one thing thatwe try to do is we try to spend a lot of time just stayingfocused on what we do and not spend a lot of timelooking at what the others do and how we relatevis-a-vis them. when i started flour13 years ago, it was a couple of things. it was, from a point of view,making sure that that was

always a priority. which it sounds obvious,you're opening a food business, so of course foodshould be obvious. but it's very easy for a foodbusiness, after a certain number of years, to just kindof go on automatic. and so we spend a lot of timereally working on-- even though the menu doesn'tchange much-- constantly trying to tweak therecipes and make them a little bit better or figure out howto do it a little bit

differently so that we'reinterested but the customers don't get upset that we'vechanged something. then, again, part of my missionstatement 13 years ago was trying to create anenvironment that, as a customer when you walkin, you feel like-- it's cheesy, but i always sayit's like "cheers"-- it's a home away from home. and that's what i wantflour to be. i want flour to be a placewhere people in the

neighborhood come to the bakeryand feel like it's their place. and in the south end,for example-- that's the first one-- we have a ton of regularswho we know on a very personal level. and they come in, andit is their bakery. they tell us what to change. they clean up for us.

and it's become a reallynice community. obviously, people flit in andflit out, but, for me, that's something that-- i don't even know if it sets usapart, because i don't know what the other bakeriesare trying to do. but i think all of thebakeries around us-- i love iggy's. but to me, they're wholesale. and i know they have the little

outpost i think on fawcett-- audience: every sunday. audience: that's wherei go every sunday. joanne chang: oh, ok. i think they're great. but they're focusing onwholesale, which is different. audience: that's why i saidabout the business model. joanne chang: i think theclosest to us, at this point-- hi-rise is very similarto us, to what we do.

but he doesn't do thefancy cakes, and so we have that focus. and then, tatte bakery i feellike recently has become similar to what we do. bread and butter, which justopened up in the north end, i haven't been yet, but i thinkit's similar to what we do. i think there's enough peopleout there to kind of be able to have numerous bakeries andjust each place be a little bit different, just based ontheir own personalities.

again, i'm not trying to definemyself vis-a-vis them. i just try to define myselfvis-a-vis what i'm trying to do. and to the earlier questionabout what would happen if i were to move or stop beinginvolved every day, i feel like that's what i'm alwaysdoing is just trying to set the tone of the place and thespirit, so that when you walk in it is clear that it's flourand not just one of the various bakeries thatyou can walk into.

audience: thank you. sandra leung li: i thinkwe have time for one more question. audience: so from the newcookbook, what one recipe would you say, oh, you'vegot to try this one? joanne chang: uhh-- audience: all of them. joanne chang: well, the bookis divided into breakfast, lunch, dinner, party, drinks.

give me a category, andthen i'll tell you. audience: party. joanne chang: ok. party time, i would say-- this isn't my answer, but i'mjust going to throw it out there, because wehave samples. the spectacular spice pecans,which don't look like much and aren't like a sexy treat tobring to an event like this, the reason why we brought themis that we did a book launch

party with this a couple weeksago and had this open house with snacks from the book, andthe spiced pecans are the one thing that everyone wrote aboutand said to me, oh my god, i love this. but if you were to makeone thing from that, i would say either-- i know i'm hedging here-- eitherthe pithivier or the croquembouche, simply becausei think they're both really dramatic and really beautiful.

they're both delicious. and i think they're the type ofdessert that if you want a project and you want to dosomething that's going to impress, i think those twowould do the trick. they're both desserts that weonly offer at christmastime, and i spent a lot of timeworking on the recipe to make it accessible to people. so they are a little bit long. but if you follow the recipestep by step, you'll get this

glorious dessert that you canpresent of friends, and it's pretty impressive. sandra leung li: thankyou very much, joanne, for coming today. joanne chang: thankyou so much.