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 →

The Sabbath Day

March 8, 2025 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

What smells do you associate with holiness?

If not “holiness,” then let’s call it “sanctity.” “Austerity” could also work, I think. Whatever word you want to use, it’s the idea of being in a very large place where a lot of people do a lot of generally serious things in the name of something arguably intangible, and it has a unique smell. The government buildings I have been in don’t have that kind of smell (“why” is something others can argue), but synagogues, the right kind of churches, and museums definitely do.

Somewhere a while back, I read that the reason people love the smell of “old books” is because lignen- the fibrous matter in plants and trees that paper is made of- has compounds that decompose over time into a yellowish color and is related to vanillin, the compound that (you may have guessed) gives vanilla its smell and flavor. Synagogues and churches inevitably have a LOT of old books in them unless they are brand new. Hymnals, prayer books, and holy texts to service a whole congregation don’t come cheap, and there aren’t “new editions” of ancient vows and praise that require refreshing the stock. The same prayer books (ideally) serve generations. The next time you walk into a place of worship, it might be interesting to wonder who held your hymnal before you. What were they going through? What were they thinking, if anything? What did they pray for if they could? Were they praying for you?

Continue reading →

The Cult of Pastry

February 23, 2025 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
– A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V Scene I

At the end of his own weird and raunchy comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare lets us in on his own thoughts regarding passion and madness. Passion, Creativity, and Insanity are the coin of the realm in culinary arts. The work of food writers, celebrity cooks, and media like The Bear parade our damage for the public and make us heroes, horror stories, characters, and even martyrs when we die.

I don’t think for a second it’s somehow undeserved. That’s the part of our lives that kitchen veterans miss and swap stories about. What some people think needs to be done about- or with- that passion, however, has me wondering. How to do you temper, train, guide, and coordinate that kind of raw passion and madness? History would tell us we need to be like the military. Owners and executives who spend more time owning and eating in restaurants than actually making them work tell us we need to lead and manage like a business or a factory- possibly one that turns Dirt into Diabetes.

Personally, I think that the answer to leading and managing cooks is to stop seeking “employees” as much as finding acolytes.

Long shot of a stone hallway in a medieval cathedral — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Continue reading →

Drala- Good Vibes To Avoid Drama

December 14, 2024December 14, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Something I’ve come to learn and love OR hate about myself depending on the day is that I seem to have turned into the guy that everyone tells everything to.

It’s the part of working on yourself that I think broadcasts to everyone around you. As you learn to become kinder and safer for yourself, you radiate that out and become kinder and safer for others, and others respond.

Part of it is that, barring imminent danger, I’ve developed a pretty solid vault. I don’t pass along what people tell me, even when someone else comes along and I find myself biting my tongue- “If I could tell this person what so-and-so told me earlier, it could make things so much easier.” I’m no one’s messenger pigeon though, and I’m not gonna break trust for something as trivial as those conflicts usually are (in the grand scheme, anyway.)

It’s not that I’m really good at keeping a secret- it’s that I often either quickly forget or say “you do you” and figure it doesn’t concern me. I’m not a snitch, but I’m also no schoolyard hero.

The bigger part of it is something my therapist described to me, an idea in Tibetan Buddhism called drala– an energy that can infuse people, places and even things that isn’t “good” or “bad”- it simply is, and all it means is “take a breath, you are safe here.”

Continue reading →

Making Meaning with Sauce on the Side

June 1, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Like so many culinarians, I found belonging and sanctuary in the kitchen.

I am just one of a community of artists, craftsmen, lunatics, madmen, and misfits who Found My Tribe. We are passionate, angry, opinionated, and utterly devoted to Food and Dining in and of themselves arguably beyond notions of “customer service.” Serving Customers, though important, is debatably an (important) afterthought compared to the effectiveness and quality with which we just Make Things For People To Eat.

Our belonging is anchored by shared experiences, shared knowledge, shared idiosyncrasies and lingo, and our personal capacity and skill sets. In absence of anything else, I belong in any kitchen I am in because my knowledge, experience, skills, and ability to carry hard give me the right to belong.

“Sanctuary,” on the other hand, is different for everyone. In general, most of the cooks I know (myself included) are terminal workaholics who fall in and out of rehab constantly. We know we shouldn’t work as many hours as we do as hard as we do. We grouse and complain about hoping to get sent home early, but we’ll be first to insist that “as soon as we look away, everything goes to hell.”

The truth is that the kitchen for many of us is not just “work”- even though we’re more than happy to get paid for our labor. The kitchen is where Everything Has A Reason and Everything Make Sense, including and especially us. It’s a space where order is established and it’s an order we know and understand well. No one has to tell us what we’re there for or what our function is after a while. We can lose ourselves in the dance of a busy service, julienne celery, or rolling seemingly endless loaves of bread. We see and feel our meaning for that day in our hands.