Last week I mentioned the “stressful bakery experience” and didn’t have time to go into it, but thought I’d share more about it today. My love for bread started as a kid, but we never had the luxury of healthy bread. I found out about healthy bread as an adult, more specficially after a trip to France where you find a Boulangerie (Bakery) on every corner. This lead me to try out baking sourdough bread at home.
When my time at Automattic came to an end, I had a few Ideas, but no real plan. The first thing I knew was that I needed to make time to take a few things off Lauren’s hands so that she can do some extra work, while we figure out the finances. This meant that I only have 4 hours from 8-12 for work. So I needed to do something there. At that time I was already baking for our family and a few friends on request. Why not make a business out of it?
I have never baked professionally. Never worked in a bakery and have never sold fresh goods. I started baking at the end of 2023 and in this short time I’ve learned a lot. I’ve had a good amount of failures and I’m currently selling bread to a few private clients and a 2 coffee shops. I’ve also gained a lot of respect for the work serious bakers do (I’m not there yet). When you start selling your bread, you need to consistently produce a product that people love and do it at a competitive price. You also have to consider the market. Living in a small town like Ceres, means there are fewer customers willing to spend on premium bread.
When people found out about my baking, they asked me to bake for events. The first event I did required me to wake up at 2am to turn on the ovens, and then to bake around the clock to be ready at 7am. In that sleepless state, I learned my first lesson: I’m not baking on order again. I’ll sell what I have, but the pressure of baking for an order throws my day completely. I would love to have bread ready at 8, but I realized that I’m probably not opening a bakery soon. Non Boulangerie, No Bakery.
How hard could it be to bake more bread? Just scale up the ingredients right? No my friend. This is a sourdough baking. The sourdough starter has a life of their own. If you get something wrong at a larger scale, your failures are multiplied, instead of baking 1 bad bread, you now have 9 that you can’t sell, and on a really bad day, bread that you don’t even want to eat yourself. I never truly understood how to mange my starter. When breads failed it didn’t matter it’s only for the family, but when you’re baking for others, it does. To scale up the bakery you need to scale up the starter and understand when it is ready. This led to my most stressful time as a “baker”.
I had committed to baking sandwich bread for two coffee shops. One day, in the heart of winter, my bread started coming out flat. I had no idea why. I thought it was under fermented, but leaving it to ferment longer had an even worst effect. People were waiting on breads and I couldn’t deliver. I tried everything I could think of with no success. This had been the first time I tried selling bread. It was also my first winter as a “baker”. The weather had a really bad effect on my starter and because the demand on it increased it was getting weaker by the day, but by God’s grace, I was able to learn that the starter needs to be mature before you use it. That means, after feeding, it should have doubled in size and should be at or just past the peak (the highest it will rise).
After learning this and how to manage multiple starters I was ready to bake again, but thanks to this stressful period I realized once again that the idea of starting a bakery was not so glamorous in reality. To make a living from baking, I’d need put out 100’s of loaves per day and invest in serious baking equipment and I’m not ready to commit to this. I’m not putting the idea off completely, but at this stage, I’m keeping it small and manageable while I focus on my main skill, building software. For now, bakery, it’s a no.