Famous for her Bread-in-Five-Minutes-a-Day series, Minneapolis pastry chef, blogger, and author Zoë François shares the space where she bakes morning, noon, and night.

Text by Charles Miller

Ask Zoë François about her earliest baking memory and she’ll tell you, “I really liked blowing stuff up.” Of course, she isn’t talking about explosives but rather her lifelong fascination with how baked goods expand as they cook. Eight-year- old Zoë was mesmerized by the magic of, say, a fluffy soufflé rising up from its dish as she watched through the glass door of her mother’s oven. She’s no less obsessed today. Zoë has made a career out of her love for baked goods, doing everything from making ice cream cakes for Ben & Jerry’s to running her own cookie company, becoming a restaurant pastry chef, blogger, baking instructor, and currently, a food writer and cookbook author. In fact, her fifth book on bread-baking, The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (written with Jeff Hertzberg), is hot off the presses.

If you’ve made a homemade pizza on a weeknight, chances are you used Zoë’s and Jeff’s simple Make-Ahead Pizza Dough (you can use it to make thin or thick crusts.

To bake for a living, Zoë needed a spacious kitchen with plenty of storage and counter space. In this article, she’ll explain how she designed the space, including how a demolition discovery became a serendipitous cake-decorating nook.