Don’t Overthink It- Just Look Closer

March 1, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

It was the third time I’d made those damn tarts in a week. They were a fairly simple idea from my boss.

“Matt, what do think of offering seasonal upgrades on our holiday banquet menu? Like they can order your Chocolate Passionfruit Tartlets, but for a little more they could spring for some other more seasonal flavor?”

“Not a bad idea… what did you have in mind?”

“Hmm… how about apple? Just apple with some whipped cream and pecans? We can tweak the idea later- just spitballing right now.”

“Sure, I guess that’d work. I’ll figure out batching and stuff and we can discuss it.”

The next time it’s discussed looks like this:
“Hey Matt, we’re going to need about 20 dozen Roasted Apple Tarts for next week.”

“Um… since when? I don’t have a recipe or batching for that yet. Wait- did we already sell this?!”

“Just make a good apple filling and put it in some shells. We’ll figure out the rest later.”

In my world, “figuring out the rest later” means “throw together a basic recipe and, if you don’t have perfect math for everything yet, do the recipe as many times as it takes and keep notes.” It practically wipes out the point of production baking- doing one big batch only a few times, storing it, and pulling as needed- because I have only guesswork to go on. “This should make about this many, and we should be able to freeze leftovers for later…”

That’s a lot of “shoulds” and “abouts,” and if they are wrong suddenly I am remaking the product under more pressure. More pressure means more hurry, and more hurry means more mistakes. Haste makes waste.

The pastry chef in me sees this for what it is- a waste of time and a waste of resources spent on what comes down to the impatience and lack of communication that, alas, comes from working under others. That part of me also eventually says, “Fine. You want basic, you get basic.”

The good news is that basic by no means means “bad” if you know what you’re doing.

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The Real Role of Ritual

February 16, 2026February 17, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

I spent a solid chunk of my life trying to figure out how I was going to save the world. Then I realized I couldn’t, so I decided to just do what I could.

I sometimes romanticize this in my mind as “I wanted to save the world, but I was only one person so I became an EMT so I could save people and make them happy. As an EMT I learned I couldn’t save everyone and even then I couldn’t make them happy. Then I decided to just give people more reasons to be happy and become a baker. That’s when it started working.”

That’s adorable and might make a good eulogy for me someday, but the truth is that’s what we all do. Everyone at some point fights with themselves over where they fit in the world, what they want to be, and what they want to leave behind. Some figure out, some resent the question and never do, and others just decide to let the world figure itself out and they’ll go where they fit.

I’m lucky as hell I found my way to baking and culinary. It’s not just a trade and career for me, it’s a calling and spiritual expression. I’d love if it paid more- who wouldn’t?- but it’s work that activates Heart, Mind, Body, and Soul for me and I can make something like a living doing it. That’s not nothing.

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Kindness by the Cup

January 26, 2026January 29, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / 3 Comments

Ever since I was old enough to actually appreciate hot “adult” beverages, I preferred tea to coffee. In fact, there’s only one coffee drink I really like. It’s a cappuccino with cinnamon and honey that I was introduced to at my favorite West Side writing cafe as a cafe con miel, but I’ve since understood is easier to explain to baristas just as “cappuccino with honey and cinnamon at the bottom.”

I’m drinking that coffee drink right now at Taborspace- the cozy social hall of a church on Mount Tabor where the base of the bell tower was rented out to a series of cafe and fast-eats ventures. Most recently, and popularly, it became the third satellite location of the cafe I worked at nearly a decade ago. I talked briefly with the new faces about the old faces (and recipes, and wall notes, and procedures most likely) still around the main kitchen that used to be my world. Then I took my scone and Only Coffee Drink I Actually Like into the sunny, raftered, cozy hall with Christian-themed stained glass windows that only adds to the vibes.

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Half-Rest

January 12, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

“Music is the space between the notes.”
Claude Debussy

The slow season has finally come.

The boss kepts saying words like “slow down, take a breath, relax a bit…” but the schedule and production weren’t bearing that out, and if you’d asked any of my coworkers, they’d have said it felt like we’d been sprinting since June.

Over post-shift beer, my buddy Nick- the lead prep cook- and I compared what was to be our third holiday season at the winery with the previous two and tried to get our hands around the situation.

“It’s fucking insane…” Nick said, tipping back his pint of amber lager and sucking a little foam off his mustache. “We’re doing business and a lot of it, that’s for sure- but not that much more than last year. Events has a full roster, but prep is still short at least one person. We were short last year too though, so what the hell is it?”

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A New Project on the Craft of Living

November 16, 2025 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

After a rainy day and almost too much walking around in it, it seems the last wayward drops are making their way off the trees and onto the patio.

The week at the winery ended, for me at least, in one of those “what the fuck happened,” twelve-hour shifts that you can’t quite put your finger on where the day went or where it clearly all went wrong, but the only thing for it is embracing the suck, powering through, and getting to a point where you can leave the kitchen for a couple days without fear anything will irreparably explode.

I dragged my ass home, pausing to hit up one of my favorite beer stores along the way. The fact that I then dropped all three can of dark beer on the pavement- one rolling under the car, leading me to kneel down in the dark in a black hoodie, waiting for some impatient shmuck to flatten me before I realized it had rolled all the way under to the curb- confirmed that the day was Seriously and Entirely Fucked, and I needed to get myself home and out of work attire before something else happened.

Emily, absolute princess that she is, greeted me when I came home and told me to just get comfy. I stripped off my jeans and long sleeve undershirt, having already deposited my aprons and jacket for the laundry I’d do later. After a little downtime, some brainrot internet cartoons, and a little of my latest whiskey acquisition, I was feeling something like human again.

I’m in the middle of outlining a second manuscript (yes, while the mentorship book is still very overdue on my own schedule. It’ll get there, this is important too, trust me.) This one is the first book I’ve really tried to write with another person- and what’s more, it’s my father.