Stunning bakes with standout Asian flavors, welcome to Bake Sum!
A stunningly photographed ode to all the flavors of Asian Americana, this collection of 75 recipes and drinks from Oakland’s Bake Sum bakery demystifies the techniques and flavors behind all your favorite desserts.
Bake Sum guides readers through classic Asian puddings & jellies like Almond Jello, Mango Pudding, and Taho (sweet silken tofu), before moving on to sesame-studded and matcha scented cookies, beautiful layer cakes, breads, the bakery’s famous laminated pastries, and tarts and pies of all kinds―from an Egg Custard Tart to Miso Apple Turnovers. Learn the secrets of the bakery’s New York Times-lauded Croissubi, a spam musubi-croissant hybrid, how to make perfect milk bread, and how to work with ingredients and flavors like yuzu, black sesame, ube, pandan, and hojicha.
Between the bakes are thoughtful essays on culture—learn how the Chinese pineapple bun is actually a relative of the concha, and how Shokupan evolved from American-style white bread and became the cottony milk bread that we know today.
Whether you come to Bake Sum with a deep nostalgia for its flavors, are curious to try a mooncake for the first time or want to learn how to laminate a croissant at home, this is the book for you.
75 Recipes for All Skill Levels: Whether you're a first-time baker or ready to laminate your own croissants, Bake Sum meets you where you are.
Step-By-Step Photography and Technique Breakdowns: Clear instructions and photos make even advanced bakes approachable.
Heartfelt and Interesting Essays: Short essays trace the fascinating beginnings of beloved bakes, as well as Joyce’s journey to pastry chef and bakery owner
Hardcover
Joyce Tang started her career in tech at Facebook, but left to enroll in culinary school in 2015. She began working in bakeries and restaurants all over the Bay Area and landed herself an externship at the three-Michelin-starred El Celler de Can Roca while three months pregnant. She counts herself as the first woman to have ever breastfed while working at the illustrious decades-old Catalonian establishment. Joyce founded Bake Sum as a pop-up bakery in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, and the bakery has since grown into a pink storefront in Oakland where she delights fans with her fluffy, colorful, and creative takes on pastry.
Soleil Ho is an award-winning food and culture writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2019, they became The San Francisco Chronicle’s restaurant critic, going on to win the James Beard Foundation’s Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award in 2022. In 2025, they co-founded the COYOTE Media Collective, a worker-owned news outlet for the Bay Area. Their diverse writing portfolio includes restaurant reviews, opinion columns, and investigative journalism, while their published works include the graphic novel Meal, contributions to several anthologies, and the 2024 cookbook The Memory of Taste, co-authored with Oakland-raised chef Tu David Phu. Other contributions include behind-the-scenes work on books including Our South (2024) and the forthcoming The Ice Cream Queen (2026).
