A Chinese bakery is a magical place. Full moons of golden egg tarts, or dan tat, twinkle behind pastry cases. Hot dog buns fashioned into flowers and sprinkled with green onions bloom on display shelves. The air is heavy with the scent of sugar, butter, and perhaps garlic—as both savory and sweet breads are available for purchase.
Kristina Cho, the author of Mooncakes and Milkbread, has always been drawn to them. “There's something about Chinese bakeries that are really whimsical,” she says. In Cleveland, where Cho grew up in a Chinese restaurant family, there wasn’t a standalone Chinese bakery. This meant the hunt for Chinese pastries crept up on every family road trip to Chinatowns in larger cities—Toronto, Chicago, and DC, to name a few. “My parents, especially my dad, have such strong memories growing up in Hong Kong where they have incredible bakeries all over the place—so there’s a magical [quality] of finding something that brings back a childhood memory that I think makes Chinese bakeries really special.”
But it’s not just nostalgia. As a former architect, Cho finds Chinese bakeries visually impressive. “They normally have cases full of all these different buns with so many different flavor options and shapes and shiny fruit,” she says. “It’s so beautiful and visually stimulating.”
Although architecture and baking don’t necessarily seem like they would overlap, Cho finds parallels. “There’s a process driven thing that ties them both,” she explains. “The way I created the book may be different from other cookbook authors because there’s only one way I really know how to continue a project. If I was designing a space, what are the emotions or vibes I want to create?” For Cho, that meant lots of step-by-step process photos for her recipes and subtle design details that she kept in mind for visual learners like herself.
Baking bread is not an easy feat, but Cho hopes her debut cookbook will instill confidence in her readers and bring them the ability to enjoy a nostalgic favorite and teach something new about an ingredient or technique. For example, her matcha and black sesame milk bread recipe explores the dimension and versatility of milk bread. “It’s such a great canvas to include different flavors,” Cho says. “Once you have the dough down, it’s a really nice dough to handle.”
With that in mind, Cho reminds her readers that making a perfect loaf of milk bread requires time and patience. “There are different components for milk bread, like the tangzhong, which is just a mixture of milk and flour that you cook in like a small, soft pan. For a lot of people this is like an extra step, but it really takes two minutes to cook down and is the secret ingredient to making your bread very, very soft.”
The result will be rewarding: a subtly sweet loaf with a pillowy soft center. Plus, the journey of making the bread is all part of the experience. “What draws me to baking is the process-oriented aspect—taking things slowly and in the right order,” Cho says. “It’s satisfying to figure out the best ways to put butter and sugar together. Just trust the process.”
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Matcha Black Sesame Milk Bread Recipe From 'Mooncakes and Milk Bread' - Thrillist
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