Roxana Jullapat Books in Order

If you want her core whole-grain book: Mother Grains
If you love breads, pastries, and home baking projects: Mother Grains
If you want recipes plus background on flour and grains: Mother Grains

Roxana Jullapat was born in California to a Costa Rican father and Thai mother, and she spent most of her childhood in Costa Rica. That mix of places shows up all through her work. She talks about tortillas, tropical fruit, good butter, strong coffee, and a big family sweet tooth as part of the food world that shaped her early.

Her earliest food memories are sweet.

When she describes her grandparents' kitchen, you can see where the baker came from. There were neighborhood cookies, careful desserts, and European-style techniques tucked into everyday home cooking. She has spoken about watching her grandmother make pastries in a small Costa Rican kitchen and realizing much later just how skilled that work really was.

Writing was her first plan. She studied journalism and thought graduate school might come next. Instead, she took a break after college, went to cooking school, and found herself baking a tarte tatin at Café Figaro in Los Feliz. That was the turn. She has said she wanted to do something with her hands, and pastry turned out to be the thing that clicked.

After that, she was in.

Over the next decade she worked in a run of serious kitchens, including Campanile, Bastide, Lucques, AOC, and Clarklewis. Those jobs gave her technique, speed, and a deep respect for seasonal produce. They also helped shape her style. She likes baking that feels handmade and grounded, not precious for the sake of being precious. In cooking school she realized pastry also made emotional sense to her, because breads and sweets felt more natural than the heavy meat work of the savory side.

In 2011 she teamed up with chef Daniel Mattern to open Cooks County. A few years later, in May 2017, the pair opened Friends & Family in East Hollywood. That bakery became the clearest expression of what she cares about, California fruit, long-fermented breads, and whole and heirloom grains sourced with real attention to where they come from.

She is, very literally, a morning baker.

That life feeds directly into her book, Mother Grains. In it, she takes eight foundational grains, including barley, buckwheat, corn, oats, rice, rye, sorghum, and wheat, and shows how each one changes flavor, texture, and feel in the kitchen. Readers tend to like the book because it teaches without talking down. The recipes are ambitious in spots, but they are also practical, warm, and built for real home bakers. Some people come for the pastries and breads, others for the way she connects flour, farming, and everyday cooking.

Across her baking, a few things come up again and again. She follows the seasons. She pays attention to flour the way some cooks pay attention to wine. And she likes recipes that help people understand why ingredients behave the way they do, not just what to do next. Even when a pastry looks polished, there is usually a strong sense of comfort behind it.

These days she is still based in Los Angeles, running Friends & Family and speaking up for better grain education and garden-based learning. She has also volunteered in school gardens around the city. That feels right for her work. She bakes beautiful things, yes, but she is just as interested in the bigger chain behind them, the seed, the field, the mill, the dough, and the table.