Toward a regenerative baking cookbook
And how you can help!
Hey, baking buds. I turn 29 on Thursday and am thinking about ~the future~, so I thought I’d do something different today and tell you what this newsletter dreams of becoming.
I didn’t just launch Pale Blue Tart to share stories and recipes about climate-era dessert. I also started it to build a community around the idea of regenerative baking, and eventually, I hope, to write a collaborative cookbook.
When I dream, visions of one of two things dances in my head: sugar plums, or, if I’ve had too much coffee to enter a REM cycle, climate cuisine.
I think of climate cuisine as an entire way of eating—or more likely, many ways of eating, since we all come from different food cultures—that’s lower-carbon, more resilient and biodiverse, kinder to the people involved in food production, and able to bring us closer to new ideas and each other.
After working in climate media and then going to pastry school, I’ve realized that climate-friendly dinner is popping off (mushrooms are cool! low-waste restaurants become Best New Restaurants!), but dessert is nearly always forgotten.
And that’s dumb. Because what, I ask you, is more inspiring than dessert? What could possibly yank us by our taste buds toward a better food system more effectively than a slice of cake, a concha, or an espresso-soaked tiramisu?
Even if people don’t talk about the idea of regenerative dessert much, the good news is that it’s already unfolding in bakeries, restaurants, and home kitchens all around us.
is veganizing French classics; somehow finds time to share plant-based recipes like panna cotta and pumpkin donuts when she’s not writing a book or teaching gastronomy. , Natasha Pickowicz, Roxana Jullapat, and Kate Lebo are baking with a kaleidoscope of grains that adds equal parts flavor and biodiversity to the dessert zeitgeist. Low-waste treats are all over Instagram; and the Internet Cake Club’s has an unerring devotion to regional, in-season ingredients sourced from farms that are gentle on people and the earth.
I think all of these delicious ideas, when mixed together, constitute regenerative baking. And in the not-too-distant future, I think this could be a collaborative cookbook — one that combines recipes and tips from bakers and chefs across America.
When I profile bakers like Kaitlin Guerin of Lagniappe Baking and
, it’s because in my sugariest dreams, ideas like theirs would appear in the pages of this cookbook. When I write about Kernza and moringa and buckwheat, it’s because perhaps those ingredients would appear in the “climate baking pantry” section of this cookbook. And when I share recipes like Mei and Irene Li’s citrus cake, or plant-based key lime pie, or The Red Truck Bakery’s paw-paw pie, or Beth Dooley’s perennial toffee bars, it’s because they’re glimpses of principles that might run through the cookbook: low-waste, plant-forward, biodiverse, perennial.
I started this newsletter because it felt like the right small first step toward this cookbook. It’s a central place to write about climate x dessert, to build a community of people who are also preposterously interested in this mashup, and a space to keep learning and wrestling with big questions. (I find myself asking: How geographically specific does a cookbook like this need to be? What are the handful of regenerative baking principles that would function as the book’s philosophy? And what talented bakers are already making climate-era desserts?)
I’m excited to grow this community. I want to find and meet and write about the chefs making sustainable desserts, the home bakers who’d be happy to use up their leftovers or make the occasional plant-milk substitution, and the climate nerds who want to extend their activism from solar panels to cake.
And I would love your help. I bet you know folks who meet those descriptions. I’d love it if you reached out to three people today and told them to subscribe and join this sugar-addled crew.
You can forward them this post, or share a story you liked (maybe Kernza’s underdog story, or this gazillion-grain cake menu).
I’m so grateful for your help and for the dessert fanaticism that unites us. There’s just no better cult than the cult of clasping hands and dancing in a circle around an 8-inch layer cake under a full moon. That’s the correct way to celebrate a birthday, right?
Hark, paid subscriptions are here!
A milestone! I turned on ~completely optional~ paid subscriptions today so that if you’d like, you can chip into this newsletter and cookbook dream.
I was able to start this newsletter and all it entails (research, interviewing, writing, fact-checking, editing, test-baking any recipe I re-publish, original recipe development, original art, and more) because I got a bit of startup funding through a writing residency. But to keep it going—and I must, because I think of nothing else—I need to make it sustainable. So if you’ve been enjoying Pale Blue Tart and want to see it become a cookbook one day, I’d love it if you upgraded to a voluntary paid subscription.
But if you can’t swing it, no sweat, because I’m not paywalling anything. My top priority is building a community around regenerative baking, and keeping the weekly stories free makes it easy to join.
Sign me up to submit a recipe! Possibly Kernza sourdough crêpes, or something in that vein ;)
What a great idea!