Flour's Joanne Chang to Author Second Cookbook

Building off the success of her first book of recipes, Flour Bakery owner Joanne Chang has agreed to write a second collection for publication in the spring of 2013.

The second book will feature recipes from the Flour kitchen, including soups, sandwiches, dinner specials and party desserts, Chang announced on her blog.

“We all agreed that given the popularity of this first Flour book we should follow up with a second Flour book, in part as an answer to the hundreds of people who've contacted me asking, ‘Where's the BLT recipe?’ ‘How do you make that awesome curry tuna sandwich?’ ‘Would Chef part with the Spanish gazpacho recipe?’” she wrote.  

With her first cookbook, Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston's Flour Bakery + Café, still hot off the press (and booksellers’ shelves), Chang admitted to being surprised when her agent contacted her in December about a second project. 

“I thought I must have misheard her - a second book? The ink on the first book printing was barely dry...was she joking?”  

At her agent’s advice however, Chang submitted a list of four book ideas to to her publisher, including pitches for a Soup of the Day recipe book, a bakery memoir tracing Chang’s path from Harvard University to Flour, an Asian cookbook featuring recipes from , and a book of recipes from the Flour kitchen. 

“Testing commences right away,” Chang wrote on Monday. “We couldn't be more excited to be making another book.”

Since the release of her first cookbook five months ago, Chang has been something of a mini-celebrity - she made appearances on the Today Show and the Martha Stewart Show to promote the book, which is now in its third printing with a fourth to come. For Chang, messages and tweets from readers have been the best indicators of the book's success.

"The emails and pictures and tweets and [facebook] posts from readers who've been baking successfully from the book have been tremendous," she wrote. "That's all I really was aware of."