May 1, 2022

It’s spring in my small northwest town, and I’m feeling good. April delivered on its promise of chaos. To manage the wild swings in weather, we dressed in layers. We shrugged when we woke up to five fresh inches of snow because we knew all too well that the sun would melt it away by lunchtime. The plants in my small garden bravely broke through the packed earth of their winter home, and major league baseball finally got its act together to begin the season. Yep, it’s my favorite time of year, without question. There’s just something about spring and baseball that fills me with such joy and optimism. I feel energized to try new things, like blogging!

I’ve always fancied myself a decent cook. I can whip up a meal that looks and tastes good, but until 2018, I’d never considered myself much of a baker. Baking is very precise; it requires careful measurements and time, two things that I am sometimes loose with as a home cook. After reading Michael Pollan’s book Cooked, I was positively captivated by the concept of making a sourdough starter. I’ll spare you the diatribe of all my attempts and tell you that it took me five tries to get the darn thing going, but once I succeeded, baking bread became a weekly habit.

It’s fair to say that I love learning. I love the process: the uncertainty and frustration of it, the feeling I get when the penny finally drops and what was previously foggy becomes crystal clear. I suppose this is why I spent so many years in the corporate training world, creating that special magic for others. But reading recipes online from other incredible bloggers, I realized that there was so much I didn’t understand about baking technique, so I did what any lover of learning does; I enrolled in a culinary program for baking and pastry arts! For more than a year, baking and learning became my world outside of work. In school, we weren’t just baking. We were building a foundation based on theory and technique. I began to understand that it wasn’t about mastering the recipes, but rather the methods. Armed with knowledge and new skills, I felt like I could bake anything, and most exciting of all, I could begin to develop my own recipes.

My learning journey is far from over, which is why I wanted to take all the many pearls I acquired in culinary school and share them with other home bakers. Teaching is learning, and learning is doing. With practice, I believe we can all achieve baking enlightenment!

Sarah