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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

The Temple

January 22, 2026January 22, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

My idea of a “fancy night out” wasn’t entirely determined by period movies. A good chunk was my parents.

Growing up, my parents would occasionally fancy themselves up for special occasions and go out. My older sister was left in charge, $60 was left in the foyer for Dinos (or Michelli’s if we want pizza that night instead of subs) and my parents would head out. My father actually owned a tuxedo and one of my clearest memories of those times was my dad in a matching cummerbund and bowtie, with a chained ribbon around his neck and a smaller version on my mom’s.

As I got older and I ingested more media, visions of what one actually did in a tux and pearls clarified beyond “go off and leave me with my sisters.” Images of Thomas and Martha Wayne getting dolled up for the movies seemed old fashioned because that’s common and casual these days. Going to a concert also didn’t feel appropriate because I’d been to or seen rock and folk concerts. If there was a tuxedo in that crowd, it had to have been either a prank or a prop.

The opera or symphony, however… THAT felt like the kind of thing you dressed up for. The period pieces were definitely old-timey, but the buildings still exist and walking into one makes you feel like you ought to dress the part.

A photo of a music hall, taken looking down at the stage from the very back, highest row. — The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Continue reading →

Between the Mountain and the Sea

January 5, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

“A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“And Slid said: “I am the Lord of gliding waters and of foaming waters and of still. I am the Lord of all the waters in the world and all that long streams garner in the hills; but the soul of Slid is in the Sea. Thither goes all that glides upon Earth, and the end of all the rivers is the Sea.”
Excerpt From The Gods of Pegana,
Lord Dunsany

It’s a windy and cold morning on the shore. I’m out walking the beach down by the water, where the tide turns the sand from soft tan to slate gray and my boots leave footprints. It’s easier-going for older people who are out with their dogs. The dogs, for their part, don’t seem to mind the going or the feel of the cold sand; they’re high as kites on all the smells and feeling carried on salt air and the ability to run.

In a few hours, I’ll be on a plane back to Oregon. Back to my wife and cat, our basement apartment up a mountain, and eventually a kitchen that’s felt more like a psych ward the last few months than the serene kind of chaos I want to believe I work in.

Those LeGuin and Dunsany quotes slide through my mind along with “A Pirate Looks at 40.” It feels silly and dramatic and florid, but I don’t really care. Finding a bench on the pier where my grand-uncle once tried to teach me to fish, I could almost cry.