Sever Shauna - Midwest Made: Big, Bold Baking from the Heartland

Because it is the Midwest, no one really glitters because no one has to, its more of a dull shine, like frequently used silverware.

Charles Baxter, A Feast of Love

I N THE MIDWEST, OUR LOVE OF BAKING IS REAL AND ITS DEEP . As Americas Bread Basket, we believe in No Carb Left Behind. We love our local bakeries where were treated like family as much as we love to bake at home. Firing up our ovens gets us through long, cold winters, while our kitschy-but-irresistible icebox desserts delight at every summer picnic and potluck.

Midwestern recipes tend to be handed down through generations, most with dynamic immigrant influences. While the big cities of the Midwest have become culinary hotspots, in many of the rural communities, your neighbors are far more likely to be farmers. The bounty of native grains, top-quality dairy, and vibrant seasonal fruits here are legendary. From the Dakotas to Ohio, from Minnesota to Missouri, the Midwest is a veritable quilt of twelve states full of history, values, recipes, people, and places that make up the baking culture of the Heartland.

But up until a few years ago, I thought about all this as much as I wondered about the differences between kolacky and kolaches. I was thousands of miles away from my own culinary history, and I felt great about the whole thing. When Id left the Midwest for California at the age of twenty-five, a newly minted bride with my Ohio-born husband, I had no curiosity about the place where we grew up, especially not the food. I was all about heading west and discovering a life that was, to me, actually interesting. I was all about the glitter.

With my journalism degree in hand, I managed to work fairly often as a generalist television host and reporter, talking about everything from pop culture and red carpets to sports, cars, or technology. After several years, even with some of the worlds most gorgeous movie stars inches from my face and all that glittering, it started to feel stale. Glittering is exhausting.

As a counterpoint, to keep a record of my baking hobby and exercise my atrophying writing muscles, I set up a blog. During a textbook quarter-life crisis, it allowed me to consider what I actually loved doing. Landing a part-time job as a recipe writer for a Michelin-starred chef taught me volumes about great food and pastry, and the craft of writing recipes.

In late 2007, we left Los Angeles for San Francisco. Moving to one of the worlds great food cities accelerated all the second thoughts I was having about my already-shaky career path. And as a capper to all of that, within weeks of moving to the Bay Area, I was expecting our first baby. Sometimes the universe whispers to you to get your attention, and sometimes it lobs a few grenades at your head.

Once our daughter, Caroline, was born in August 2008, the blog became a place for me to not lose my mind as a new mother, and help overcome my postpartum depression. (I would throw myself back into work much sooner after our son, Andrew, was born in 2013 to avoid slipping back into the depths, which was exhausting, but relatively effective.) As the blog grew with intention, it was inspired by what was happening in Californias vibrant food scene and trend-focused bakeries. Through a series of fortuitous events, I was introduced to a marvelous editor who would open the door for me to write my first cookbook in 2012. I wrote two more cookbooks after that, and got back to doing television, but this time the food-focused kind, loving the work and feeling that any glittering that was required by the job was an honest, low-key sort that I could get behind.

In California, I never really thought much about the food from the Midwest, and especially not the baking. Why would I? Other parts of the country have much more definitive food personalitieswe all know what to expect from sweets in the South, the edgy bakeries of Brooklyn, or even dessert in California (and yes, they do occasionally eat dessert out there). And I wasnt alone in this thinking; not much light has been shone on the baking culture of the enormous swath of land in between those hotspots.

But with all the inventiveness encouraged in California, I still always craved tradition. Id revisit it time and again, through family recipes, feeling almost rebellious for making my moms cherry shortcake squares with their lollipop red canned pie filling in my San Francisco kitchen, when loads of fresh cherries awaited at my neighborhood farmers market.

Over our five years in LA, and eight more in San Francisco, Scott and I started to wonder whether we were really meant to raise California kids. Wed talk about all the what-ifs, here and there, as most big transitions tend to begin. There werent really any serious plans in place to leave. But you know what happens when you start to put ideas out into the universe like that. Just as a tube pan of benign batter emerges from the oven as an airy, showstopping angel food cake, things were rising.

In October 2015, after thirteen years of California living, Scott got a job offer that would really change up his commute. With just a couple days consideration, we headed back to Chicago to be close to family and friends, increase our hot dog intake, and give our two young kids more seasons and less exposure to kale.

With a one-way flight, I left my flip-flops-in-January days behind, and moved back to my home state of Illinois. I didnt know what Id do next personally or professionally, or what motherhood would look like in the suburbs of Chicago, a place I had only known as a child-free person. But halfway through the flight, I had my answer. Barely off the tarmac, I planned to reexamine my midwestern roots and show them to my kids the best way I knew howby firing up my oven. Even before my baking pans were unpacked, I was digging for recipes, newspaper clippings, and old community cookbooks. People I barely knew lent me their favorite church recipe collections, tabbed with Post-its to indicate their favorites. Exchanging recipes with a midwesterner is a bit like playing therapistdeeply buried memories are revealed, and everyone takes home extra reading material.