Luisa Weiss

Luisa Weiss (born 1977) is an Italian-American Her Italian mother, Letizia Cosentino Weiss, worked as a translator. Her father, , was from the United States and taught mathematics. After her parents divorced when she was three years old, she moved to the U.S. with her father and settled in Boston, Massachusetts. Weiss went to school in Brookline and spent her vacations with her mother in Berlin and family in Italy. Weiss returned to Berlin when she was ten years old to receive her middle and high school education. Around this time, she began gathering clippings of recipes to test in the kitchen.

Weiss studied at Tufts University in Massachusetts Weiss was employed as a literary scout at Bettina Schrewe and later became senior editor at Stewart, Tabori & Chang, a publisher whose acquisitions focused on cookbooks and books on crafts. She started a blog named The Wednesday Chef in 2005 to document her experiences creating all the recipes she had clipped from newspapers over past years, inspired by the work of food bloggers such as Julie Powell, who had documented her experiences cooking all the recipes in a Julia Child cookbook within a year. In 2009, Times Online featured The Wednesday Chef on a list of their favourite food blogs. from 2014 to 2017.

Books My Berlin Kitchen (2012) Weiss's memoir, My Berlin Kitchen, was published with Viking Press in 2012.

Booklist reviewer Allison Block, in a starred review of My Berlin Kitchen, called the book "a heartwarming (and often mouth-watering) memoir" with appeal to both foodies and non-foodies and chapters "brimming with colorful cooking tales and savory recipes." Sue White of Library Journal recommended the book, finding it a "charming" food memoir suited to those who enjoy the works of Laurie Colwin or M.F.K. Fisher.

Classic German Baking (2016) Classic German Baking was first published in 2016 by Ten Speed Press. The cookbook contains a hundred recipes of traditional baked goods, ranging from butter cookies, to cakes, strudels, tortes, and Christmas cookies, written with consideration to American home kitchens and ingredients. She described the recipe-gathering process as a two-year effort that involved investigating antique cookbooks, then consulting friends and family, and corroborating her research using the internet.

The Washington Post and The New York Times placed Classic German Baking on their lists of 2016's best cookbooks. Oliver Strand, writing for Vogue, called the book a "gorgeous" introduction to German baking culture, while Los Angeles Times food editor Amy Scattergood credited Weiss for writing a "not only useful and instructive but charming" cookbook.