Zoë François
Zoe Francis / Pastry Chef & Author
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Cover Photo by Sarah Kieffer
What’s your name? Where are you from? Favorite band, book, movie?
Zoë François. I grew up moving around, a lot, with wandering hippie parents, but Vermont was probably the closest to a home state. Now I live in Minneapolis, MN with my husband and two sons.
If you watch my instagram videos you'll know that my musical tastes are far and wide, but I usually end up with something I can dance to. I love a good Russian novel. The Brothers Karamazov is like the thinking woman's soap opera. The three movies I saw more than 10 times each are Harold and Maud, Saturday Night Fever and the first Star Wars movie. I just dated myself.
How did you get into baking, and what about it do you love so much? What was the moment you realized you wanted to take baking from a hobby to a career?
I started baking when I was a child. I grew up in a commune and the pantry was like a play land of bins filled with flour, bottles of honey and tubs of homemade nut butters. When I was about 3 I emptied a sizable amount of all of that into a bathtub and mixed it up. Maybe that was the seed to this career?
In college I started a cookie business as part of a business class assignment. We were meant to write a business plan for a fictitious company and I invented a cookie company. The class didn't go so well, but I took a semester off and started my Zoë's Cookie company, that actually turned a profit. I guess I learned more in class than I thought and the cookies rocked. I did go back to school and left the cookies behind. It was years later that I ended up in culinary school, after discovering that the cubicle world of advertising was not for me. I've never looked back.
“It was years later that I ended up in culinary school, after discovering that the cubicle world of advertising was not for me. I’ve never looked back.”
When did you first decide to start embracing your silver hair, and what made you do it?
I've not colored my hair since Henna first hit the scene in the 1970s and I was 10. When I was in Paris for my honeymoon I saw a woman in a museum who has always been my style icon. She was elegantly dressed and had long silver hair. I was 23 and couldn't wait to grow into that stage of life. I always liked my hair color, which is a mix of reds, browns and finally the silver is coming.
A few years ago I went to an acting/image coach, when I was doing some video work, and she suggested I'd look younger and less washed out on screen if I colored over the silver. I nervously went to her hair person and he refused to color my hair! He said he loved it as is and wouldn't participate in coloring it. I was so relieved and he became my hair stylist, just no coloring.
Do you feel like the journey of embracing your silver hair has taught you anything in life?
I've never considered coloring my hair, so it is funny to hear women tell me how brave I am to have gone silver. It doesn't feel brave, it's just me.
“I’ve never considered coloring my hair, so it is funny to hear women tell me how brave I am to have gone silver. It doesn’t feel brave, it’s just me.”