Snapshots of the Bakeshop V- “Last Man Standing”

January 30, 2021January 29, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

It’s been ten months since my day job changed to answer COVID-19. The last time I wrote one of these, the “A-Team” was in charge. We ran our asses off for 12-hour days, making ends meet for the dawn of the apocalypse.

Ten months later, and they’re all gone. Quit from stress and depression, walked out in a huff, or simply went on leave and never really returned.

It’s a new team now. Eager, curious, capable… and as a Great Old Sage of an employee at two years, I’m doing my best to help them keep their hands on the wheel. I thought being the “Last Man Standing” would be a heady, affirmative feeling- “I’m finally indispensable. I’m the one that could hack it.”

Instead, I feel beaten. Beaten, tired, and sad. The “last man standing” is usually pretty lonely.

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Crossroads and Signposts- Where Do You Go From Here?

January 23, 2021January 22, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / 2 Comments

I really don’t like the idea of New Year’s resolutions. It’s not because most of the popular ones are superficial or shallow (as someone who wrote a weight-loss book, I know just how narrow my space to talk is by saying that.) It’s not even because they are cliche and nebulous (Not everything needs to be a “SMART” goal, but you can’t expect much from a resolution of “play less video games and get outside more.”)

What bothers me about them is that people set these big, noble but vague goals for themselves, then get down on themselves when they fall off the wagon- as they inevitably will. It turns the elements of effective goal-setting on their heads and, as someone wiser than me said, “people overestimate how much they can do in a day and underestimate how much they can do in a year.”

Regardless of your personal commitment, keeping goals “SMART”- Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed- rewarding yourself for achieving them, and working toward them slowly will add up to success more (and disappoint you less) often than trying to “sprint up the mountain” on Day 1.

Before you start writing those goals down though (and yeah, put them in writing,) you need to ask yourself two questions and answer them as honestly as you can:
Who are you? What do you want?

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5 Simple Steps to Do the Thing

January 16, 2021January 15, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

I have been thinking about what to write in this blog post since I left work yesterday afternoon. In the time between then and now, I was preparing myself to sit down and write.
I also went for a long hike around Mt. Tabor, enjoyed a game night with my housemates, baked a pie, had a bit too much whiskey, slept in, ate breakfast, went for a run, meditated, showered, gamed a bit, and fixed myself a cup of tea.

All of it has been in service to writing this, because if you want to write about Life and Food and Joy and Good Things, a big part of it is getting those things in your life. The bigger part is actually sitting down and writing the thing. Far from being the sole difficulty of creatives, dreamers and nutcases like me, you can find difficulty in Doing the Thing in just about any human pursuit. I think it’s something to do with being sentient robots made of meat and untanned leather, stuck on a speck of dirt rocketing through the void.

So let’s go through my Five Simple Steps to Do The Thing together!

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Gimme More Than A Gimmick!

January 9, 2021January 8, 2021 / The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

A few months ago, I had a great idea. I’d just recently found a great challah recipe from America’s Test Kitchen, and I had the thought, “You know, challah isn’t the same as brioche, but it’s close. Cinnamon rolls are made out of brioche… so what if I made challah out of 6 braided strands of cinnamon roll?

The bread came out interestingly layered and noticeably over-worked, but good. The next step was seeing how the bread would do as cinnamon French toast. When asked how I came up with it, I gave a joking answer of “I like cinnamon toast; if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”

It’s a reductivist joke, and one that too many operations are taking literally. If you’re creating a dish, and you want it all to highlight and enhance a particular flavor, that requires fitness to do well.

If you’re going to go overboard, you’d better be able to swan dive.