Christina Tosi

Christina Tosi (born 1981) is an American chef and cookbook author. She is founder and co-owner with Momofuku of Milk Bar and serves as its chef and chief executive officer. She also created Milk Bar Pie and Cereal Milk. Food & Wine magazine included her in their 2014 list of "Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink".

She is the author of several cookbooks. She has served as a judge on the reality competition MasterChef and presented for the Netflix series Bake Squad. She has won two James Beard Foundation Awards.

Early life and education Tosi was born in 1981 in Berea, Ohio; her father, Gino Tosi, was an agricultural economist and her mother managing partner in an accounting firm. The couple divorced while Tosi was a teenager, and she was raised primarily in Springfield, Virginia. She has an older sister, Angela. both of her grandmothers are "avid bakers", according to Tosi. Her parents were both fond of sweets. She was interested in math and foreign languages. then enrolled in the French Culinary Institute's pastry arts program. On the recommendation of Wylie Dufresne, David Chang hired Tosi in 2005 at Momofuku to create a plan for Momofuku, which had just discovered they needed such a plan to cook with a vacuum-sealing system. Tosi created the original logo herself by simply typing 'milk' in Brush Script Medium.

Culinary influence She developed recipes such as Cereal Milk, Compost Cookies, Crack Pie (now known as Milk Bar Pie) and Candy Bar Pie.

According to the New York Times in 2021, "Nothing bears the trademark of the pastry chef Christina Tosi more than her cereal milk flavor." According to the Seattle Times in 2022, Tosi is "often credited with starting the soft-serve craze in restaurants".

Axios in 2022 called Tosi's cereal milk and crack pie creations "cult favorites". Francis Fabricant said Tosi "made Cereal Milk soft-serve and the Compost Cookie household names".

Books

Tosi has written several cookbooks and a memoir.

Tosi's Momofuku Milk Bar (2011), a cookbook containing recipes from the restaurant, was published by Clarkson Potter. Susan Chang in The Washington Post called it "a hard-core baking book, dense with text, full of sub-recipes", recipes which are ingredients for the main recipe and need to be prepared prior to preparing the main recipe. Melanie Haupt in the Austin Chronicle agreed that preparation of some of the recipes was "a massive pain" to prepare due to the many sub-recipes required.

Tosi's Milk Bar Life (2015) was published by Random House. Washington Post reviewer Chang said "There’s something intellectually provocative about 'Milk Bar Life,' with its mad juxtapositions of Fruity Pebbles and slow-simmered sauces", but that "after the chemical party in your mouth subsides, you might just find yourself longing for a poached pear".

Tosi's Dessert Can Save the World (2022) was described by Publishers Weekly as a "clumpy mix of memoir and self-help", saying that "Despite the delicious premise, the filling leaves much to be desired."

Media Tosi joined the judging panel of MasterChef on Fox beginning with its sixth season, which premiered May 20, 2015, as well as the fourth season of MasterChef Junior, which premiered November 6, 2015. In April 2018 she was featured in an episode of Chef's Table: Pastry. She has presented for the Netflix series Bake Squad and been a judge on Chopped.

Tosi has made advertising appearances for Subaru, American Express, Kellogg's, Estée Lauder, and Verizon.

Recognition In 2014 Food and Wine Magazine named Tosi to their list of "Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink".

Tosi received the James Beard Foundation award for Rising Star Chef of the Year for her work at Milk Bar in 2012, the first pastry chef to do so. In 2016, Crain's New York Business included Tosi in their annual list of the top 40 business persons working in New York City who are under the age of 40. They lived in a Flatiron penthouse which according to the New York Times they purchased in 2016 for $3.7 million.