Bake Sum
Description
A stunningly photographed ode to pan-Asian flavors, this mouthwatering collection of over 75 recipes and drinks from Oakland's Bake Sum Bakery demystifies the techniques and flavors behind all your favorite desserts.
Organized by level of difficulty, the book guides readers through classic Asian puddings & jellies like Almond Jello, Mango Pudding, and Taho (sweet silken tofu), before moving on to the bakery's famous sesame-studded and matcha scented cookies, beautiful layer cakes, tarts and pies of all kinds-from an Egg Custard Tart to Miso Apple Turnovers-and eventually lands in bread, then laminated pastry. Learn the secrets of the bakery's NYT-lauded Croissubi, a spam musubi-croissant hybrid, how to make a perfect milk bread, and how to work with ingredients and flavors like yuzu, black sesame, ube, pandan, and hojicha.
Peppered amongst the desserts, snacks, and drinks are essays on the migration of culture and taste through food. Learn how the concha traveled from North America in the Gold Rush era to Hong Kong and became what's now known as a Chinese pineapple bun, plus recipes to make hybrid versions full of ube pastry cream and red beans that burst off the page.
Whether you come to Bake Sum with a deep nostalgia for its flavors, are curious to try a mooncake for the first time, or want to learn how to laminate a croissant at home, this is the book for you.
More details
Persons
Joyce Tang started her career in tech at Facebook, but left to enroll in culinary school in 2015. She began working in bakeries and restaurants all over the Bay Area and landed herself an externship at the three-Michelin-starred El Celler de Can Roca while three months pregnant. She counts herself as the first woman to have ever breastfed while working at the illustrious decades-old Catalonian establishment. Joyce founded Bake Sum as a pop-up bakery in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, and the bakery has since grown into a pink storefront in Oakland where she delights fans with her fluffy, colorful, and creative takes on pastry.
Soleil Ho is a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle and the newspaper's former restaurant critic. In 2022, they won a Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award from the James Beard Foundation. Previously, Ho worked as a freelance food and pop culture writer, as a host on the award-nominated podcast Racist Sandwich, and as a restaurant chef. With the chef Tu David Phu, they co-wrote the cookbook The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese American Recipes from Phú Qu?c, Oakland, and the Spaces Between.