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Dorie Greenspan Is On a Mission

Does Dorie Greenspan have a favorite dessert?

The award-winning author of numerous cookbooks, including Baking From My Home to Yours, Dorie’s Cookies, and, her newest cookbook just released earlier this month, Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty and Simple, hems and haws.

The problem?

She loves dessert so much she cannot decide. Chocolate pudding? That’s the first thing that comes to mind. But she adores cookies. Ice cream, too. Oh, and she loves cakes.

“So. Ahhhhh. I don’t have an answer. I don’t have an answer,” she says.

Then, she remembers that the day before our conversation, she baked cookies and she left a bag of them with her son Joshua, daughter-in-law Lingling Tao, and granddaughter Gemma.

“And this morning, we were having our morning Facetime. Gemma is 15 months old. They don’t give Gemma sweets,” she says. “And I am fine with that. But this morning, she had a cookie in her hand...it was just a little corner. A little corner of one of our chocolate chip cookies. So I got to see her have a cookie this morning. And she had a little bit of chocolate on her lip. And she reached out for more. I adore cookies. Joshua, our son loves them. And now we are looking at a third generation who loves cookies.”

For those of us who love cookies—and cakes, and pastries, and pies, and tarts, and cobblers, and crisps—Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty and Simple gives us much to celebrate as we reach for more of Greenspan’s recipes, guidance on techniques, and stories about her friends and family. In addition to the sweets, there also is a chapter on “satisfying suppers, sides, and more.” The book’s dedication? “For Gemma, of course.”

During our conversation, it’s clear that Greenspan’s dedication extends to everyone and anyone who might pick up one of her cookbooks. She’s on a mission.

“I just want people in the kitchen. I want everybody in the kitchen. Come on in. I want you in the kitchen. I want you to cook. I want you to bake. I want you to take pleasure in the process,” she says. “I want you to find pleasure in the process of baking and cooking. There’s just so much satisfaction and a sense of pride that comes with having made something and being able to share it.”

Greenspan will be discussing her new cookbook in a series of discussions including one with Priscilla Martel on Saturday, Nov. 6 at 4 p.m. on Zoom. Registration is required at www.youressexlibrary.org. Then, Thursday, Nov. 18 at 7 p.m., Greenspan will be featured during a book discussion over Zoom with R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, www.rjjulia.com.

Thirty Years

This, her 14th cookbook, marks her 30th anniversary as a cookbook writer. These include collaborations with Julia Child, French pastry chef Pierre Hermé, and acclaimed restaurateur Daniel Boulud. Other cookbooks she wrote serve as an homage to specific ingredients or dishes such as butter, waffles, or pancakes. Some are grounded in her love for her home in Paris and the small markets nearby. Others reflect her home in Westbrook with recipes made easily with ingredients from Stop & Shop, Big Y, and Bishop’s Orchards.

In the three decades she’s been writing about food and sharing recipes in a variety of national publications in addition to her cookbooks, much has changed about the way those recipes are shared.

“So it’s really been 30 years. It’s remarkable. Whoosh,” she says. “So, 30 years ago, my favorite cookbooks, and the books I had been using to teach myself to cook and bake, they didn’t have pictures.”

She says some cookbooks, including one of her favorites by Maida Heatter, did have some pictures, but only on the cover, and so Greenspan would flip back and forth between the recipe and the cover to see if what she was making did look like what it was supposed to look like. “We didn’t have visuals. So we had to follow the recipes through the words, and how the author described the taste and texture,” she says.

Also, way back when, it was common to offer recipes in a narrative form, with the ingredients in the recipe itself, rather than listed separately. Now most cookbooks offer lots of pictures and the easier-to-follow-along format.

Another thing that has changed over the decades is the ubiquity of just about any kind of recipe you might want to find online. Still, that has not dampened the enthusiasm of the public for new cookbooks. The increased emphasis of home cooking during the pandemic helped contribute to a 17 percent rise in cookbook sales from 2019 to 2020.

Decorating with Books

Greenspan is among those who enjoys paging through a cookbook when she does her cooking. She has shelves and shelves and shelves of cookbooks at her home in Westbrook. They recently renovated the house, and she donated hundreds (“that’s hundreds with an ‘s,’” she says) to the Clinton library.

“But I still have so many. I find it very comforting to have books in general. When I talk about decorating a house, that means building bookshelves,” she says. “Books are the decoration I love most.

Greenspan doesn’t usually bake from other people’s books while she’s developing a cookbook, but now that her newest is in print, she finds herself drawn to the work of cookbook author Zoë François and Claire Saffitz. She also finds herself frequently reaching for Myers+Chang at Home: Recipes from the Beloved Boston Eatery by Joanne Chang and Karen Akunowicz.

As we talk, she thinks of another difference between cookbooks written decades ago and those written now. There is a greater variety of cuisines featured, and a more personal touch.

“You get a sense of context, a sense of place, a sense of the person,” she says. “They’re less recipe books, one recipe after another divided by chapters, and more like the journals of the authors who write the books for us.”

One thing that has not changed is Greenspan’s laser focus on how to make recipes work for home bakers and home cooks.

“I’m always thinking about how I can translate what I’ve done in the kitchen into a language that makes sense to the reader. A recipe has to do a lot. It has to pull a reader in. It has to make a reader want to go out and buy ingredients, and want to spend time in the kitchen. It has to make a reader imagine what it will be like to make this recipe. And it has to work. You have to deliver,” she says. “I don’t think that has changed over the years.”

The Pleasure of Making, Sharing

When it comes to making those recipes work, Greenspan relies upon her decades of experience, her own hard work, and also upon a team she’s assembled over the years to help her make sure she gets everything just right.

Among those friends is Chester’s Priscilla Martel, who will be hosting the talk with Greenspan on Saturday, Nov. 6 at 4 p.m. on Zoom.

“I met Priscilla, I want to say, almost 30 years ago. So we know each other socially. I knew Restaurant du Village,” the renowned and beloved French restaurant in Chester owned by Martel and her husband Charlie van Over, Greenspan says. “She is just a good friend. She has all of the qualities that we hope chefs will have, that we hope the person who invites us to dinner will have. She’s generous. She’s giving. When she makes you something, you sense she made it just for you. She wants you to be happy. She’s remarkable...In Priscilla I found someone I could really talk with about food. About technique. About recipe flows and fixes.”

Mary Dodd, of Madison, is another valued member of Greenspan’s team. Dodd has worked as a recipe tester for Greenspan for about 15 years. In a recent newsletter, Greenspan explained how they met and how they started working together.

“I met Mary Dodd at a farmer’s market in Connecticut. She was there with her two then-little boys and she stopped me to say that she’d been a member of Tuesdays with Dorie, the online group that has baked through all of my books since Baking from My Home to Yours,” Greenspan wrote. “She told me that she lived nearby and said that if ever I needed anything, she’d be happy to lend a hand. Days later, just as I was about to begin shooting a long series of videos in my kitchen, someone called to say they couldn’t show up to help with the baking. Mary flew in to the rescue and we’ve been together ever since.”

Not long after the new book comes out, I run into Dodd at the supermarket, where she is on an errand related to her work with Greenspan. She is as excited about the new cookbook as Greenspan, and, as we head out to our cars, rattles off a list of recipes I simply must try. Among those on her “must-try” list and mine were chocolate chip cookies.

And the chocolate chip cookie recipes do look fabulous. There is a recipe for classic chocolate chip cookies, which are a little bit like Toll House chocolate chip cookies, but with a bit more salt and vanilla and a few other tweaks. There is the “One Big Break Apart Chipper,” which is a giant cookie perfect to share at a party (“Serve it with an after-dinner whiskey…” is among the tips in the book). Then also, “Peanut-Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, Paris Style,” and, the recipe I really can’t wait to try, “Mary Dodd’s Maple-Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies.” There are several more fabulous variations as well.

This variations-on-a-theme and encouragement to play around with recipes is a hallmark of Greenspan’s approach to cooking. There are several different kinds of shortbread. Numerous variations on meringue. Pies and tarts from savory to sweet. And, throughout the book, there are reminders to play with the recipes while baking and cooking.

Play, and the joy it brings, are central to Greenspan’s approach to cooking, and life.

“We need to find and we need to recognize and enjoy the joy in our lives,” she says. “We need to make joyful moments in our relationships. That’s what keeps us going…We don’t have to bake. Baking is extra. Yes, we have to get dinner on the table. But the rules don’t say we have to make a dessert. So we bake for the pleasure of making and sharing.”