Inside Zoë François' Minneapolis Kitchen

Written by Stephanie March, food and dining editor at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.

Since moving into the fixer upper estate in 2012, François has published nine cookbooks (number 10 comes out in September) and launched a national television show, Zoë Bakes, on the Magnolia Channel with Chip and Joanna Gaines.

“When we first moved into this house, the original kitchen space had been turned into an ensuite bedroom for the first-floor apartment,” says François. “But I knew what it could be.”

Born in Connecticut and raised on a commune in Vermont, François came to Minnesota in 1993 and started working as a pastry chef with Andrew Zimmern when he was the chef at Back Stage at Bravo. After rattling around the restaurant industry for a while, she decided to focus more on raising her two sons. Stepping out of commercial kitchens just meant more time on her own, which led to her first book, the national bestseller Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, published in 2007 with collaborator Dr. Jeff Herzberg.

But bread was just the beginning. “I started the zoebakes.com blog in 2007, the same time I started breadin5.com,” she says. “I always knew I’d turn to it eventually, but the bread took off in a way that was all-consuming.”

As social media began to catch on, and Instagram grew to 40 million users within two years of its 2010 launch, François launched an Instagram account, and everything changed. She got hooked on creating stunning cakes and desserts that were showcased beautifully on the platform. Her followers got hooked, too — their numbers growing to more than 400,000. With the highly visual medium, François had to make sure her kitchen was up to the task.

“I bought the house because it looked like a wedding cake,” she says. “It was my muse. I also had all of the original blueprints from 1902, so as we renovated the house, I wanted to honor the original design. When it came to the kitchen, I wanted it to feel like the rest of the house, while being a modern kitchen that worked efficiently for my recipe development. I hired Gregg Hackett, a local restaurant architect to help me reimagine the space. I gave him my rolling cooling rack and told him it was the heart of my kitchen and needed to be incorporated into the new design.”

Some national media have suggested that Zoë François is responsible for fueling a national obsession with meringue desserts, as her signature wispy cakes tend to go viral and end up on the covers of magazines. It’s no wonder that the producers came calling. During the pandemic, she partnered with Andrew Zimmern once again, but this time through his production company Intuitive Content Productions. It was a long process, but her show Zoë Bakes finally began airing on the Magnolia Network in 2022. You can now stream it on HBO Max and Discovery +. In the show, François invites viewers into her kitchen and home as she bakes. It’s not a set, it’s her actual kitchen, and the people on the show are the people in her life. “The fact that I was in my own kitchen, my happy place, was why I wasn’t nervous about having a house full of cameras and crew members,” she says. “They quickly became family and a part of my home.”

It truly is a family affair. You can’t really film three seasons of a national show in your home without occasionally involving your family.

“My two sons, Henri and Charlie, have both been on the show,” she says. “They love it! It’s fun for them to be a part of that world, and it’s helped me feel at home on camera. As for my husband, Graham, he’s still a holdout. We can’t get him on camera to save our lives!”

And while her white marble counters and her favorite Danish whisk may have become nationally recognized stars on their own, François is just like the rest of us: She has wishes for her kitchen. “The butler pantry was all that was left of the original kitchen when we bought the house, and it had black limestone flooring. When we expanded the kitchen, we kept the stone and I regret it. Standing on that floor for 12 hours a day is brutal. I cover it with cushioned kitchen mats to protect my feet and back. In my dream kitchen, I will have a library to house my hundreds of cookbooks, which now spill into every room of the house.”

On the heels of her wildly successful 2021 book Zoë Bakes Cakes, François is publishing Zoë Bakes Cookies later this year.