Joy the Baker: Baking, Blogging, and the Life-Changing Magic of it All

TRANSCRIPT

Kirk Bachmann: Hi everyone, I’m Kirk Bachmann, and welcome back to The Ultimate Dish. Today, we have a truly special guest who’s been sweetening the lives of home bakers everywhere. I’m thrilled to introduce Joy Wilson, also known as Joy the Baker – or as my wife says, “Joy the Baker!!!”

As the Founder and ‘Chief Sweet Tooth’ behind the beloved blog joythebaker.com, Joy has been indulging us with her daily adventures in butter and sugar – doesn’t that just sound nice? I’m going to say that again – with her daily adventures in butter and sugar since 2008. And with a dedicated community of over half a million followers on Instagram, it’s clear that her influence extends far beyond the mixing bowl.

Joy isn’t just a blogger; she’s a three-time cookbook author, the editor-in-chief of the bi-annual Joy the Baker Magazine, and the creative force behind Camp Joy—a zine born from her viral backyard camping and cooking video series.
Her contributions to the culinary world have earned her numerous accolades, including Savuer’s “Best Baking Blog” and recognition as one of the Top 50 Food Blogs by The London Times.

Get ready! Joy’s work has been featured on Food52, NYMag, TheKitchn, Better Homes and Gardens, Sunset Magazine, The Washington Post, PEOPLE magazine, and Country Living, just to name a few. She’s also collaborated with Williams Sonoma on her own line of baking and breakfast mixes. She may have forgotten that!

We’re in for a treat today as we dive into the world of baking with the one and the only Joy the Baker!

There she is!

Joy the Baker: Oh my goodness!

Kirk Bachmann: A little exhausting there. A little exhausting, but such a pleasure to meet you, and see you, and come into your home! Speaking of which, beautiful! I’m guessing, from Instagram, that you are in a very, very old home there in Texas.

Joy the Baker: Yes. I live in small-town Texas now, a little town called Bellville, population about eight thousand, and I bought one of the oldest houses in town. It dates back to 1888. It’s just a giant Victorian house that needs a lot of love and care. It needs some bookshelves as well.

Kirk Bachmann: It does! Be careful with the bookshelves. It just dawned on me; you welcome people into your home. My wife would rent another home. Is that exciting? Is it stressful? Does it raise the anxiety? You seem like it’s just what you do very naturally.

Joy the Baker: Yeah. It does feel very natural to me. I started this – welcoming people into my home – in New Orleans when I had the Bakehouse in New Orleans. I would have classes just about every weekend. People would come over, and I’d have baking classes in my kitchen. People were always like, “Do you live here?” And I was like, “Yeah. Yes, I do.”

Bored on the Back

Kirk Bachmann: Isn’t that great? You just reminded me, too. One time I got out in front of my wife. I was on your Insta, as my kids say, and I see the house in Texas on the knoll. Because other than being obsessed with you, she’s also obsessed with New Orleans. She was like, “Wait, wait, wait! She’s not in New Orleans?” I was like, “Ha-ha! It’s not the norm. She’s in Texas.”

I mostly interview folks that are in this business. They’re either cooking, or they’re in the front of the house, or they just love food and all of that. It’s really interesting with chefs because you always end up segueing to music or motorcycles. I read somewhere that motorcycles are a part of your life, so I need to know how, what size, what brand. Yeah, let’s go.

Joy the Baker: Are you a motorcycle guy?

Kirk Bachmann: I am. My wife is going to watch this, and she’s going to talk about how my BMW 650GS sits beautifully in the garage. And sits in the garage. And sits in the garage. But yes, I love motorcycles, and I love my 650GS.

Joy the Baker: Oh my God! How exciting! I feel like we should ride together because Colorado is some beautiful riding. I obviously choose motorcycles. I started riding three years ago. When I was forty years old, I said, “You know what? –

Kirk Bachmann: Wow! Wow!

Joy the Baker: I know! I got tired of sitting on the back of my boyfriend’s bike. I got bored back there.

Kirk Bachmann: It’s scary back there, too. You don’t have control. You’re hugging on.

Joy the Baker: I never felt scared back there because my boyfriend is a great rider, and he’s been riding forever. But I did get very bored. I took a motorcycle class. The Harley motorcycle safety class.

Kirk Bachmann: Legit. Wow.

Joy the Baker: And I started riding, at first riding in parking lots. I was riding a little Triumph, probably an 850 Triumph, and I dropped that thing more times than I could make a circle around the parking lot because riding in parking lots is actually really hard.

Kirk Bachmann: Yeah. Tight corners. That’s typically when you get your license. The instructor just comes out and says, “Do a figure eight.” I’m like, “What?”

Joy the Baker: It’s hard.

Kirk Bachmann: Have me ride around the block!

Joy the Baker: Yes. Going fast is definitely easier than going slow. Right now I ride an 1100 Harley Sportster.

Kirk Bachmann: Nice.

Joy the Baker: I love to ride. It’s my favorite thing to do. Mine doesn’t just sit in the garage.

Kirk Bachmann: Good. You’re getting me in trouble.

Can I just say, the Triumph 800 series – Cafe Racer, big fan. The big gas tank. You’ve got to really sit up, though, on the Triumphs. The handlebars are low. I just love it. I follow a lot of motorcycle blogs or Instagram feeds and such. Anyway, I just had to bring that up. I love it. Be careful. Wear a helmet.

Joy the Baker: Yes. I’ve never not ridden with a helmet, all the gear, all the time. Doesn’t matter how hot it is. I’m in those slide resistant pants because it’s a wild thing to do, but I love it so much.

From a Food Family

Kirk Bachmann: I’m glad. I’m glad.

Well, let’s talk about you. Obviously, we have done a lot of research, even more research than Gretchen gave me. Passion comes to mind when I think about you baking from a young age. Can you talk a little bit about your upbringing in California, maybe even how your family or someone specific influenced you with regard to baking?

Joy the Baker: Yeah. I was talking about this with a friend yesterday. I was saying that I just come from a food family. All of our gatherings are based around food. I know that’s probably very familiar for everyone in the food world. We’re just a food family; if there’s not good food, we’re not doing it.

Both my parents worked at the post office for their entire careers, but they had passions in the kitchen outside of that. My dad is a great baker. My mom, back in the day, had a side hustle of cake decorating. She would decorate cakes for people at work and sell them. That’s the kitchen that I grew up in. We were always baking something sweet.

It was also funny because my family was – I call them “early adopters” – health food enthusiasts. We’re talking 1970s, 1980s health food. A lot of weird rices. It was just a little aggressive. But the loophole in our family was if you could make it from scratch, you could have it. I was highly motivated to be a baker because I had such a sweet tooth. There was no Chips Ahoy! There were no Oreos.

Kirk Bachmann: Thank God.

Joy the Baker: I know!

Kirk Bachmann: No offense, although I love Oreos.

Joy the Baker: I do love.

Kirk Bachmann: I jotted a couple things down. I want to expand on that a little bit. I love the food family and the baking and cakes. If your parents were life-long post office workers, they knew everyone, right?

Joy the Baker: They knew everyone and all their business.

Kirk Bachmann: They knew their address and who was mailing them, and who’s coming and going. Did they get those calls, “Hey, can you make me a cake? Can you do this? Can you do that?”

Joy the Baker: Yeah. They were getting the calls.

Kirk Bachmann: Was that a small community, too?

Joy the Baker: Oh no. I grew up in Los Angeles. The opposite.

Working Through School, Starting a Blog

Kirk Bachmann: Okay. They knew a lot of people. Yeah. I love it.

Fast forward from there to your college years. I think English Lit was what you focused on. I think you were working in the busy restaurant scene. Again, because I know a big part of our audience is students who try to figure out every single day how to balance it all. Here’s their passion. I’ve got to be in school X amount of hours a day, a week, a month, a year. But I also have to work. What was your experience like trying to get your degree, working in restaurants, working in bakeries, how did you balance it all, and did you ever think about going to culinary school at any point?

Joy the Baker: It was so hard to balance it all, mostly financially. I went to school in Seattle. This was years and years ago. It was a little bit more affordable to live in Seattle then. I went to the University of Washington for English literature. I was working in coffee shops and in restaurants. I was working at the Cheesecake Factory, of all places, waiting tables.

Kirk Bachmann: Which was a busy place if you’re going to wait tables. Let me just set the tone, to interrupt just for one second. I got a chill when you said you’re a Husky because you may not know, I’m a Duck.

Joy the Baker: You are!

Kirk Bachmann: I am an Oregon Duck. We technically don’t like each other.

Joy the Baker: Technically, but…. We can set that aside.

Kirk Bachmann: Beautiful campus though. Seattle is gorgeous. Love U of Dub. I do, I do, I do. I’ve got a Duck daughter. I’ve got a Beaver daughter from Corvallis. We love the Northwest. Anyway. Had to jump in there.

So you’re at U of Dub. Where did you work in Seattle?

Joy the Baker: I worked at the Cheesecake Factory.

Kirk Bachmann: Oh yeah, that’s right. That’s right.

Joy the Baker: In downtown Seattle.

Kirk Bachmann: Busy, busy, busy, busy.

Joy the Baker: Busy, and that was great, right? You don’t want to work at a dead restaurant. That was great. I remember I’d work really hard at the restaurant and in school, and then I would have to take a semester off of school because I couldn’t afford it. Then I’d work really hard that semester off, save up my money, and then be able to pay for the next semester of school. It took me a long time to finish college because I had to take breaks to afford it. I was also living on my own with a roommate. I also didn’t have a car. It was just like I was young and really trying to pay for my life. It is a grind in the early 20s. Luckily, you have the energy for it. But that’s how I got through school: a semester on, a semester off with working really hard in between.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s super strategic. I like that. You said something really important there. “Luckily we had the energy for it.” I too worked in a restaurant going to school. You wonder sometimes how you do it. That was a grind. I worked at a busy restaurant as well. You’re working for tips, and somehow you go into the bar on the way home.

Joy the Baker: Always.

Kirk Bachmann: Did your degree, did your studying ignite your passion to start a blog? Because you started this a long time ago. I want to say you were probably one of the first, right? To be in this.

Joy the Baker: It feels like it.

Kirk Bachmann: Walk us through that whole point. I’d love to hear how you got through college, where you landed then. You launched your blog, Joy the Baker, in 2008. Many years ago. Walk us through how that all came to be. I know a lot of students. I should say, Joy, that I would never assume for one minute that there wasn’t unbelievable amounts of work that went into that. A lot of young people listen to this and [are like] “Oh, she went to school, and then she started a blog.” There’s so much work. So much heartbreak. So much optimism. So [many] late nights. All of that. Please know that we appreciate that. How’d it all come together?

Joy the Baker: After the University of Washington, I came back to Los Angeles, and I started working in a bakery and in a restaurant because you have to have more than one job when you work in the restaurant industry often. You don’t just have the one; you have to have several. I had my degree, but I didn’t really know what to do with it. I thought maybe I could go back and get my Master’s and teach, but I was so tired of school and paying for school that I was like, “I can’t do that. What I am doing and what I have done is work in food, and I love that. Here we are. Let me just keep doing that.”

So I got this job in a bakery. I was definitely out of my depth. I don’t know why they hired me, essentially. I knew that I was a great home baker, but working in a bakery is different. I hadn’t gone to culinary school. I didn’t lie about anything; they gave me this job, but I felt out of my depth.

I started the blog for two reasons. First, I thought of it as a way to experiment with the recipes that I was working with, to share them and share what I was learning, what I was teaching myself. The second thing that I thought I might do was start a wholesale baking business for coffee shops and things like that, and like a cake business. Maybe I would do wedding cakes. Maybe I would make scones for coffee shops. That’s the direction the blog was going for a little while. It was just a site for people to come and see what I was offering.

I will tell you: I made two wedding cakes. I was like, “I’m not a wedding cake maker.”

Kirk Bachmann: That’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work.

Joy the Baker: No, it’s so stressful because you make the cake, and then you have to drive the cake across. The tears that I cried making those two wedding cakes! My mom was like, “Maybe this isn’t for you.”

Kirk Bachmann: And you’re on stage maybe even more than the bride and groom. Everyone wants to see the cake, taste the cake.

Joy the Baker: In that 2008 time, there was a lot of figuring out what was for me and what wasn’t for me. I tried a lot of different things. I didn’t start the blog and think, “Okay, here we go. Here’s my career.”

Kirk Bachmann: I’m off and running.

Joy the Baker: I thought it was going to be so many other things. I went down so many different roads a couple of steps and then was like, Nope, back it up. Let’s try a different one. For years, I was doing that.

Showing Up for the Community

Kirk Bachmann: I’m curious. I think we interviewed Gaby some time ago. I don’t remember the exact date, but she started her blog around the same time. I’m curious. I have two questions around that. Number one: How important is consistency as you start a blog? I remember when our son was born, Gretchen was going to start a blog. She started it. It was called, “Good Morning, Joseph Henry.” She had absolutely one blog post and ran out of ideas. Consistency is important. I wonder, was there a mentor? There were so few of you doing this. What was your bar? How did you know how to measure your performance at that time?

Joy the Baker: Yeah. I always looked to Ree the Pioneer Woman and Deb from Smitten Kitchen. They started a little bit before me. I just loved what they were doing and thought, Okay, these are good women to look to. They still are. They are still incredible. I was looking to them and their work.

The blog didn’t take off right away, but there was a core group of people that would come to the blog. When I say core group, I’m talking about twenty or fifty people. They would leave comments. We would comment back and forth on the blog. People don’t do this any more. It became a very small but sweet and thick-as-thieves kind of community. I felt like I didn’t want to let them down even though it was just twenty or fifty people. I wanted to show up for them in the way that they were showing up for me. Consistency was a big, big part of that.

Man, working two jobs and trying to be consistent on the blog! I would get off of work. Everyone would go to the bar, and I’d be like, “I’ve got to go home and write a blog post.” My friends in food would make fun of me so much. “I don’t know. I know. I want to go out, but I’ve got to go home and do this stupid thing that twenty people are going to read.” Oh, they would make fun of me! But who’s laughing now?

Kirk Bachmann: Exactly. I love your comment about you “wanted to show up for them.” My goodness! What I was going to ask was what shifts have you seen in the business? Cultural changes, whatever, in blogging since you started. But hearing you make those comments about how important it was to have this little group, how did you feel back then? Were you excited that this could really be something because you were impacting this small group? It’s fascinating to me.

Joy the Baker: I know. It’s also hard to remember what I thought back then because this was even before my site or most blogs were monetized at all. It wasn’t even like I was thinking about clicks and money and ad revenue. That wasn’t even a thing.

Also, I remember, I wasn’t writing like I was an authority on anything. I wasn’t an authority on baking, really. I was just trying to figure things out. It felt like we were all trying to figure it out together. We bought a Dorie Greenspan baking book, me and several other people who read my blog. “Baking with Dorie.” A great book. I remember at the time it was an expensive book for me to buy. It was $40. I was like, “Hmmm!” But someone started a baking group called Baking with Dorie, Tuesdays with Dorie. Every Tuesday, everyone in this group would post a recipe from this book. That was our community. In some ways, it feels similar to how now there are cookbook clubs.

It does seem like it has transitioned off the blog a little bit and now it’s on social media. All of that community has gathered in a different place, but it’s still there. It’s bigger now. It’s still just as important for me, wanting to show up for people.

Kirk Bachmann: I saw how you lit up when you talked about this group that you impacted. This is mostly for the students. Are there some aspects of your business, Joy, that light you up? That’s what you think about when you go to sleep at night. Conversely, are there some areas that you shy away from a little bit?

Joy the Baker: Yeah, definitely.

Kirk Bachmann: Full disclosure.

Joy the Baker: Yeah. Now, the business, there are so many parts to the business now, which honestly amazes me. The things that light me up are the things that did in the beginning: recipe development, experimentation in the kitchen, sharing those recipes, really nailing it, and then sharing that recipe and seeing other people bake it. That’s just the best.

The things that I [shy from], my weaknesses are like, “Okay, I wrote a cookbook, and now I have to convince people to buy it? No.” I wrote it. I wrote it! That’s enough. Everyone on my team is like, “Yeah, but now you have to tell people you wrote it.” I’m like, “They’ll find it or they won’t.” The promotion of everything, the salesmanship of some of the things that I do. Oh, Lord! I’m terrible at it.

A Classic Foundation

Kirk Bachmann: Pun intended, that’s super sweet of you to say. It’s not a weakness, in my perspective, it’s humility. That comes out in your personality.

Coming back to recipes that you just mentioned and your inspiration when you’re creating recipes. I’m just curious, how do you balance being innovative with your techniques, thinking about the end consumer, modern trends, with classical, traditional, Baking-With-Dorie techniques that built up your foundation? Not easy, is it?

Joy the Baker: No, it’s not. It’s not. Everyone is putting cookie dough on croissants, and it’s like…. Are we really? Alright.

Kirk Bachmann: Let’s not edit that, ladies and gentleman. We will not edit that.

Joy the Baker: Actually, that’s an old trend. Good, good. I skew more towards classical stuff. I think that baking is all about proportions of ingredients together. When I’m developing new recipes, I really try to stay true to the method and the proportions. The proportions of a cookie. The proportions of a muffin. I won’t be able to have a repetition of what that is because I think that it makes you a better baker. That’s what I want for people, to be comfortable in the kitchen and become better bakers. That comes through the repetition of doing things the right way. So that’s how I structure all of my recipes. Here’s how you really do it. Once you know how to really do it, then you can play around. The fundamentals are so important.

Kirk Bachmann: I love that. I don’t know that I shared or not. I grew up in my father’s and mother’s bakery, fourth generation. In the German system, my father is a Master Baker. I grew up in their Chicago bakery. I was the only kid who didn’t have a Hunt’s Snack Pack or a Twinkie. I had a Dobos Torte or a croissant coming out of my [lunchbox]. I had rye bread with pate on it for lunch. It was different then, but I appreciate it now.

I’ll never forget the one day. I was always on the cuisine side of the restaurant when my father and I had a restaurant. He was on the baking bench. I remember one day taking an apple strudel, which he worked really hard on, always. I was like, “Hey, Dad, what if I cut it in half and shingle it up on the plate.” He walked out of the kitchen. “Alright Dad. We’ll talk later. I won’t do that to the apple strudel.” I do appreciate – and so does Auguste Escoffier – your commitment to traditional techniques.

But you have a whole team working for you now. I know that changes things a lot. Was the growth slow and steady, or was it overnight?

Joy the Baker: Oh gosh! The growth is slow. And. Steady. My goodness. There is still room to grow. There is a team of people now, thank goodness. The way that I grow is quite painful. I get to a place where I just can’t do it all myself, and then I’ll bring someone one. And then I grow to the next place where I am at my max, and then I bring someone on. I don’t know if I recommend it, but when I reach my real pain point where there [are] just not enough hours in the day, that’s when I reach for help.

I have a photographer and recipe tester, an editor for the blog, and then a whole team of people that make me talk about the things that I do.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s scaling in a smart way. You’re still very close to the business and super involved. As you got to those milestones and you knew that you needed help, how hard was it to make those hires? Did you know what you needed for the next level?

Joy the Baker: Yeah. I did think that I knew what I needed. Yeah. It felt like it came to a point where I needed this very specific person. Let me go find them. It wasn’t a mystery.

A Strategic Seasonal Approach

Kirk Bachmann: So I’m curious. Again. Pivoting. Such a great conversation. What did a typical day look like ten years ago, and what does a typical day look like today?

Joy the Baker: Wow! What was I doing ten years ago? Living in New Orleans. I think I had just moved to New Orleans. I was living in the French Quarter. My team was much smaller. I would wake up and bake something and photograph it. Clean up. Make dinner, and then at night, write my blog post. It felt much more linear at that time.

Kirk Bachmann: Like a baker. Like a baker.

Joy the Baker: Yes. Now, with this growth that has been so amazing, I feel like I’m working so much further ahead now. I wake up and I’m developing recipes right now for Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Simultaneously, I’m planning my actual family Thanksgiving meal. What the heck! This summer, I was working on a holiday magazine. This summer I was cooking Thanksgiving turkeys and making Christmas cookies.

Kirk Bachmann: It makes sense. Yeah.

Joy the Baker: Things are far less linear. Now, also, I have this big beautiful house to take care of, and an old house needs a lot of attention. I spend several hours in the morning – I know it doesn’t look like it –

Kirk Bachmann: Attending to your home.

Joy the Baker: Attending to the house.

Kirk Bachmann: I love that.

Joy the Baker: I notice that in the summertime, people aren’t baking. People don’t want to bake. They’re busy with their kids doing something. Maybe they want a little project, but no one is super motivated to turn on their ovens. I was still pushing out a lot of content a lot of summers ago, realizing that it just wasn’t hitting for people. So I took a step back and realized that I was getting a lot of traction in the fall and winter. I thought, “That’s when I want to be baking, too. That’s when I’m most curious about different recipes and experimentation.” My community told me without having to tell me.

Cliff Notes

Kirk Bachmann: And Mother Nature’s natural rhythm plays into that beautifully. The fall, you have these beautiful fruits and apples and such.

You mentioned notes. I love Cliff Notes on your blog, by the way. Again, it’s brilliant. I just thought I was old because that’s how I got through college. I went and bought those CliffsNotes, the little yellow thing, scrambled on the way to class and figured out what that piece of literature was all about. Did college inspire you to do that, or is it just an easier way for you to track?

Joy the Baker: Gosh! Cliff Notes is a series. First of all, I don’t even know if the youth know about CliffsNotes. They just have the internet now. God bless. God bless. Gosh, Cliff Notes. Cliff Notes is a series that my dad writes. It just so happens that his name is Cliff.

Kirk Bachmann: I was just going to say, that’s brilliant. Even if it’s not, tell me it’s Cliff.

Joy the Baker: He’s a Clifford.

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh.

Joy the Baker: My dad is the most thorough baker that I have ever met. He just loves research, and he loves to get down to his version of the very, very best of a recipe. And he’s also a great writer. Amazing writer. I asked him to write notes about either old family recipes that he has that our family has, where they came from. He has an amazing chocolate chip cookie. I asked him to write a Cliff Note about his chocolate chip cookie. He went into the history of chocolate chip cookies. He’s just such a hoot. I love having his voice on my site.

Kirk Bachmann: I love it. I love it. From what we’ve gathered from other guests, bloggers and such that we’ve had on the show, almost everyone has spoken – you already started to touch on it – on community. Their big why or purpose, if you will. Would you say it’s the same case for you that your community is unbelievably important, and it sort of informs the decisions you make?

Joy the Baker: Definitely. Definitely. I feel like I’m always thinking about how to be of service to them. How, in my small way, I can be a part of their lives and make their lives either more delicious, sweeter, more fun, easier. If we all tried to do that for each other, wow!

The Importance of Authenticity

Kirk Bachmann: I was going to ask another way, too. It’s interesting today. I’m a little bit older, but I absolutely love social media, and I love it for a lot of reasons. Not political reasons. Anything other than sharing information with our students, with our family of what’s going on in life. I was just in France for a couple of weeks. What an amazingly quick way to say, “Hey, look at me! I’m in Nice.” And yadda, yadda, yadda.

On the other hand, I have a lot of friends who are just overwhelmed by social medias. Maybe not enough self-discipline to know when and when not to and all of that. You’ve really created this honest and yet vibrant community. It’s a tough question, but in your words, Joy, what is the key? Is it one word? Is it truthfulness? Is it genuine? That helps you connect with your audience in such a meaningful way? What’s the secret? I won’t tell anyone if you tell me.

Joy the Baker: It’s true. It’s got to be authenticity is the word.

Kirk Bachmann: Great word.

Joy the Baker: You just have to very much be yourself whoever that self is. It sounds easy. It sounds simple, but I feel like it is sometimes not easy. We find ourselves on these social media platforms intaking so much of what other people have for us. That intake can affect your output. It can affect your authenticity, making you feel you have to do a certain thing, be a certain way, present yourself in a certain way. That’s just not the case. That’s not true. You can show up as you are.

I think that TikTok now is showing us that. Instagram was not showing us that, but TikTok now you can show up as you are and go viral. That’s so exciting.

Kirk Bachmann: And it’s funny and it’s sad and it’s emotional. You can move through it. I absolutely love [it]. I have to say, we’ve had well over a hundred guests on this show over the years. If I had to pick one word, Joy – one word – and I believe every one of those guests are amazing people, otherwise they wouldn’t be on the show, but if I had to pick one word that is very consistent, the common denominator when I ask a similar question, it’s the word authentic. I love it. You just validated it again.

Joy the Baker: It’s true.

Kirk Bachmann: It is. It is.

Outside of the blog, I know that you made this move from New Orleans before my wife knew because I was swiping right. Why Texas? That house would suck me in, too, but I’m curious why because New Orleans is pretty fantastic, too.

Joy the Baker: Yeah, New Orleans is fantastic. New Orleans is a very special place, and if you move, you’ll always miss it. I spent ten years there. It felt like it was time to move on. There is something about the city – and I feel the same about New York – the city is a character in itself. New Orleans is very much like that. And in that way, New Orleans will tell you when it’s time to go.

Kirk Bachmann: You’re so right! Gosh. Well said. New York yells it at you. Does New Orleans kind of whisper it to you a little bit?

Joy the Baker: Yes. New Orleans starts with a whisper, but she will hit you over the head if she needs to.

A Beautiful Baking Book

Kirk Bachmann: Okay, I love that.

I have to talk about the book. I have to talk about the book. Available next week, the twenty-fourth. “The Life-Changing Magic of Baking.” You co-authored this with your father. Sharing memories that you’ve shared with us already today. Chocolate chip cookies are in there. I think something about your first job interview is in there. Can you tell us about this emotional journey, and how it came to be, and why you did this book?

Joy the Baker: Yeah. My dad and I have always wanted to work on a book project together. He’s an incredible writer. He taught me how to bake, so “The Life-Changing Magic of…” is actually a series of books from a British publisher. They asked me to write the baking series on this. I was like, “I would like to write about it, but I can’t do it. I literally can’t do it without my dad.” They were like, “Yeah, write the book together.”

We put together such a beautiful book. It’s for six-to-twelve-year-olds, so a little bit older, and in it, we talk about all of the life lessons that come from the kitchen, that come from baking. The idea that you can experiment. The idea that you can make mistakes and try again. The idea that you can do things together, and you work better as a team, like in the kitchen. It was just such a fun project to work on with my dad. It came out so beautifully illustrated. We’re really proud of it.

Kirk Bachmann: I’m so happy for that. I have three girls and a boy. My youngest, Grayson is eleven. She’s taken an interest in being at the stove with me and such. I’ve got it ordered for her. She’s eleven, so it will be perfect. Congratulations to you and Cliff on that. Really, really exciting.

I’m going to go back to what I said earlier, Joy, about understanding and appreciating the hard work. You just make it look easy. Students will be, “How do I do that? That’s what I want to do. How do I want to do that?” Any advice for those who might want to create a presence online? Authenticity is important, consistency is important, but anything straight from the heart?

Joy the Baker: I was doing this for a long time when no one was looking. You have to want to do it whether someone’s looking or not. You have to do it when no one is looking. Listen. Sometimes it feels like, relatively, I’m not getting the traction I want online or on social media, but I’m still going to do it. I’m still going to do it. I’m compelled. Yeah, that’s my advice.

Kirk Bachmann: It’s okay to say this – is some of that for you? I’m doing this for me. Fulfillment. Joy. Joy.

Joy the Baker: Exactly.

Joy the Baker’s Ultimate Dish

Kirk Bachmann: Pun intended.

Well, Joy the Baker, we are getting close to taking up enough of your time, but before I let you get back to sorting out the things in your beautiful home, built in the 1800s, the name of the podcast is The Ultimate Dish. I can’t let you go. I think we’ve covered everything, but I can’t let you go until you tell us what the ultimate dish is in your world.

Joy the Baker: The ultimate dish in my world is pretty simple. It’s a center-cut warm cinnamon roll.

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh! I just literally got a chill. We have not had that one. Just the way you said it, everyone can taste it.

Joy the Baker: Yes. Yes.

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my goodness!

Joy the Baker: Like a double-smear of cream cheese frosting.

Kirk Bachmann: Double-smear. Alright. Get that Noelle. Don’t edit that. Get that. Double-smear.

Joy the Baker: And a cup of hot black coffee.

Kirk Bachmann: No cream, nothing. Just black. Oh, I’m there.

Joy the Baker, you have brought so much joy to our day today. I can’t thank you enough. I wish you continued success. I’ll keep swiping. I’ll keep arguing with my wife about what I see before she sees. Thank you for joining us on The Ultimate Dish.

Joy the Baker: Thank you so much. And be sure to take that motorcycle out.

Kirk Bachmann: All right. There you go. Now it’s live. I will get it out. I’ll think about you when I get it out.

Joy the Baker: Thank you. This fall, it’s going to be beautiful.

Kirk Bachmann: You’re right. You’re right. I’ll go to a farm. Absolutely. I’ve got to do it.

Joy the Baker: Send me a picture.

Kirk Bachmann: And thank you for listening to the Ultimate Dish podcast, brought to you by Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. Visit escoffier.edu/podcast, where you’ll find any materials mentioned during the podcast, including notes, links and other resources. And if you can, please leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify, and subscribe to support our show. This helps us to reach more aspiring individuals ready to take the next step toward their dream careers. Thanks for listening.