Joanne Chang

Joanne Chang (born in Houston, Texas) is an American chef and restaurant owner. She is the owner of Flour Bakery in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts and James Beard Foundation Award winner for Outstanding Baker, 2016. In announcing the award, Devra First of the Boston Globe wrote that Chang was "on her way to becoming the Susan Lucci of the Beards." She is known for her sticky buns.

Chang is of Taiwanese descent; her parents were immigrants who met while studying in Houston. She was born in Houston circa 1971. As a child, she grew up in Oklahoma and Texas and enjoyed cooking and baking. Her family consumed a diet of "traditional Chinese cuisine at home" and preferred to avoid sugary sweets. However, she enjoyed baking chocolate chip cookies with her mother. Chang was the valedictorian of her high school class.

Chang is an honors graduate of Harvard College, class of 1991, with a degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics. While studying at Harvard, she initially studied astrophysics before switching to applied math. In college, she began selling chocolate chip cookies and became known as the "Chocolate Chip Cookie Girl."

After graduation, Chang worked as a consultant at the Monitor Group. While working at the company, she created a business plan for a company called Joanne's Kitchen and prepared cakes and cookies for her co-workers. Instead of her initial plan to apply to business school, she applied to work as a chef, despite having limited culinary experience.

Chang began her professional cooking career as a garde-manger cook at Boston's Biba restaurant (she was initially hired to run the bar-food program but was soon promoted by Lydia Shire to making appetizers and salads), followed by stints as the pastry cook at Bentonwood Bakery in Newton, and in 1995, the Pastry Chef at Rialto restaurant in Cambridge. In 1997, she began working at the cake department of Payard Patisserie in New York City, following a schedule of working from "4 a.m. to midnight, six days a week." Chang returned to Boston to work at Mistral and opened the first outpost of Flour in 2000.

In 2007, Chang appeared on Food Network's "Throwdown with Bobby Flay" and became "nationally known" for beating him. In 2015, she created a frozen yogurt flavor for Pinkberry. She teaches cooking courses.

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