Q&A with Boston pastry chef and restauranteur Joanne Chang

This year’s Hawaii Food & Wine Festival boasts more than 60 internationally renowned master chefs, culinary personalities and sommeliers.

And many of them this year are women.

In fact, the lineup includes an event showcasing the ladies of the culinary and agricultural worlds, including pastry chef Joanne Chang, owner of the wildly popular Flour Bakery + Café and Meyers + Chang in Boston.

We caught up with this management consultant-turned-pastry chef, who will be on Oahu this September and found out she can’t stop eating her own cookies.

HL: What was your motivation to become a baker?

JC: I have always loved to bake, ever since I was a little girl. I really get into the zen of making the perfect cookie or tart or peeling the perfect apple.

HL: What is your favorite thing to bake?

JC: I do love making laminated dough (as in puff pastry and croissants). It’s a challenge every time to get as many layers as you can and I’m always fascinated by how different the dough can be from one day to the next. Our newest items — butter Breton cakes — are my current favorite and I feature them in my upcoming book, “Flour,” too.

HL: What’s your vice?

JC: Eating the chocolate chunks out of our double chocolate and chocolate chunk cookies. I will eat three to four cookies like this and throw the rest away.

HL: What’s your guilty pleasure?

JC: Sleeping in on Sundays as late as I possibly can.

HL: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

JC: If it were easy, everyone would do it.

Hawaii Food & Wine Festival, Sept. 6 to 9, various locations and ticket prices, www.hawaiifoodandwinefestival.com.

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