Photo by Sarah Kieffer
Zoë François
Dough? D’oh! “It costs 50 cents to bake a loaf of bread at home,” François says of our current moment. “It’s a task for people to do.”
Normally, visiting the stylish and well-equipped Lowry Hill kitchen of Zoë François would mean a glass of bubbles and some throwback ’90s hip-hop beats shaking the stools. But there’s no flour in the air during my latest chat with the local baking star. Today, over Zoom, her kitchen in the background appears quiet, and we are both drinking water. François’s ebullient gray curls rest in a topknot.
Even in the time of social distancing, however, François lights up the screen with gut-busting laughter and makes you feel like everything will turn out fine. This is only part of the reason that she has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram, a new book coming out, and possibly a TV show in the works.
François didn’t get here just by snapping pretty photos and declaring herself an Instagram influencer. “Of my social media baking peers, I am clearly the oldest,” François says.
Courtesy of Zoë François
New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book cover
One of Zoë François’s seven no-knead dough books. (They made a lot of bread.)
Go far enough back, and François can talk about her early-1990s pastry chef gigs for notable local chefs like Steven Brown and Andrew Zimmern. If we go further back still, we could talk about how she grew up on a commune in Vermont and renamed herself Donna for a while. (That has less to do with baking, however: We’ll let Donna/Zoë get to it on her TV show.)
François began to get national props with her first book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, written with Dr. Jeff Hertzberg, in 2007. A bestseller, it helped define the no-knead bread category and inspired a slew of readers to tackle the idea of home bread baking. No fewer than six books followed in that series, applying the easy-rise method to holiday breads, gluten-free breads, and pizza doughs.
As a career path, book writing gave her the time to raise her two boys. But she kept up with her old kitchen crews, writing the dessert menus for Brown’s Tilia when it opened. And she kept widening her circle, traveling to Ireland with Kerrygold butter and writing for Cherry Bombe magazine.
François’s next book, focusing on cakes and slated for Ten Speed Press, will be the first one written on her own, without Hertzberg. It follows the attention she’s received from her fairly massive Instagram following. In daily stories and weekly posts, she artfully constructs beautiful cakes towering with spikes of candied carrot peels. And her delicate pavlovas have fascinated a new baking generation.
“I thought the bread-book chapter was kind of done,” she says. “But now here we are.”
Zoë François Desserts
Left: François lights up Instagram with this blood-orange creamsicle semifreddo, and other desserts. Right: Treats like this boozy cherry pavlova are the subject of François’s upcoming baking book—her first solo effort.
Here we are, indeed. Her no-knead books have been selling out again, while the artisanal bread website has seen a dramatic increase in traffic. National news stories have reported a run on yeast and flour that has created brief shortages. François is not so surprised that in the time of quarantines, people want to bake some bread. “I mean, it costs 50 cents to bake a loaf of bread at home. It’s a task for people to do.”
She adds, “I don’t think any of us were ready for the idea of what it really meant to have an entire country be in their homes and not be able to go out. I did an Instagram Live demo for bread, and that went insane.”
Our anxious moment reminds François of 2008, when the recession hit and the DIY food culture really got going. But social media has changed the social dynamic. “We never had the back-and-forth like we do now, and I never knew what they looked like. I never saw what they were actually doing. But now, I’m in it with them. I see their kids and their kitchens. I love Instagram for that. It’s about connection and creativity. It’s still a joyful sharing thing.”
It’s really hard to have to work on a book when all I want to do is get in front of a camera to connect and bake with people!
For those who are cake-obsessed, don’t worry. François isn’t giving up her sweets. “I’m trying to be sensitive to the fact that maybe people don’t have access to as many things right now,” she says. “And you can make a loaf of bread with four ingredients. Plus I’m getting a lot of requests for recipes for one or two people and more healthy things.”
Zoë François torching meringue
Now we’re cooking with gas: No one likes undercooked meringues!
Offline, François is currently working on the cake-book manuscript. But that work feels somehow less essential. “It’s really hard to have to work on a book when all I want to do is get in front of a camera to connect and bake with people!” she says. “In a time that’s so stressful, it’s a hundred percent where I go.” The still-untitled book should come out next March—once she knuckles down and finishes it.
Another essential distraction to writing? She’s been working for the better part of a year with Zimmern’s broadcast production company, Intuitive Content, to come up with a food-and-cooking- show project. They’d finally started making real progress when the pandemic waylaid all of our expectations about what lies ahead.
The good news? While we are Zooming, François receives a text with an important note. Apparently, plenty of her projects are still moving! François breaks into her signature wide grin and does a little dance. She can’t predict exactly what a show would entail. “They might as well call it Zoë’s Weird-Ass Life!” she says.
