Joanne started as garde-manager cook at Boston’s renowned Biba restaurant, then worked as a pastry cook at Bentonwood Bakery in Newton, and in 1995 was hired as Pastry Chef at Rialto restaurant in Cambridge. Joanne moved to New York City in 1997 to work in the cake department of the critically acclaimed Payard Patisserie and Bistro. Returning to Boston a year later with dreams of opening up her own pastry shop, she brought her French and American training to Mistral where she was the Pastry Chef until summer of 2000.

In 2000, she opened Flour, a bakery and café, in Boston’s South End. In 2007 she and her husband and business partner Christopher Myers opened a second branch of Flour in the Fort Point Channel. They now operate 9 Flour bakeries in Boston/Cambridge in addition to a sister restaurant Myers+Chang, which earned 4 stars in the Boston. Flour and Myers+Chang have been featured in Gourmet, Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Inc. Magazine, O Magazine, and Boston Magazine and have received numerous Best of Boston awards. Flour was also featured on Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network in which Joanne’s sticky buns won over Chef Flay’s.

She is the author of five cookbooks: Flour, Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery+Cafe and Flour Too, Indispensable Recipes for the Cafe’s Most Loved Sweets and Savories, Baking with Less Sugar: Recipes for Dessert using Natural Sweeteners and Little-to-No White Sugar, Myers+Chang at Home: Recipes from the Beloved Boston Eatery, and most recently, Pastry Love, All my Favorite Recipes, which earned an International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Award in 2020.

Read more