teaching

Good Food, Good Vibes, Good Business- My Dream Pie Shop

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I get asked a lot of questions about my career as a baker.


Was it what I always wanted to do? (No- I remember wanting to be Indiana Jones for years.)
Aren’t the early morning hours rough? (They can be, but you eventually either get used to them, go mad, or advance far enough that you don’t have to work them anymore.)
Is it rewarding? (Absolutely.)

The most common one, however, is “do you want to run your own pie shop one day?”

The answer to that one is “…Maybe kinda?” I have kicked the idea back and forth in my head for ages, especially since I moved out to Portland and started surrounding myself with other entrepreneurs in the industry. Over post-shift beers and conversations across counters, I’ve gotten some solid insights into the life of a small business owner. It’s rewarding, and it can be fun, but it can also be a massive stressor and its own flavor of hell. You can’t really blame everything on the owner or boss, either- you know just how much of a screw-up that fella can be, but they’re trying hard.

All the same, it doesn’t hurt to dream. Between chats with other pros and a little soul-searching, I think I’ve got a good idea of what my dream shop would be like. It almost certainly won’t wind up quite like this, but I wouldn’t mind trying.

A close up of two beautifully baked tiny apple pies
Photo by Nishant Aneja on Pexels.com
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Not-So-Secret: Why I (Mostly) Don’t Mind Sharing Recipes

/ The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

When it comes to our favorite recipes- whether it’s the dishes we make for family or the ones we sell at our businesses- whether or not to share recipes can cause a lot of emotion either way you lean. The same people that have no problem sharing the recipes they created might be a little twitchy about sharing their family’s “secret” meatloaf. That goes double if you are in the business of cooking for others. Why would you want to give away your perfect fried chicken recipe where a competitor could get it? Can we protect our recipes? Should we protect our recipes and keep them secret?

The short answers are “Sorta?” and “Only if you really want to.”

Four people stand in a line. 2 are in military uniforms, two in tuxedos. Focus is on one mans hands holding a small black box with "top secret" written in white capital letters.
Photo by Caleb Oquendo on Pexels.com
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Snapshots of the Bakeshop V- “Last Man Standing”

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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.

Photo by Samuel Silitonga on Pexels.com
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Baking 101: The First Lecture

/ The Black Hat Baker / 2 Comments

If you were to teach a semester of classes on something you do for a living, what would Day 1 consist of?

For the last year or so, especially as I’ve started doing Live Bake-along videos on Facebook, I’ve played with the idea that the next step in my culinary career might be teaching- and if the last two years of training and mentoring apprentices at the bakery has shown me anything, it’s that I’m apparently not bad at it.

The other day while chatting on my lunch break, my manager mentioned that she had taught baking at a community college for a semester as adjunct faculty. While she didn’t necessarily enjoy it (my manager confesses that she does not have the patience for teaching,) the $4000/semester paycheck made it quite a lucrative side hustle for one six-hour class a week in addition to a full-time income baking professionally.

After she brought it up, I found myself wondering what I would say on the first day to a class of new, inexperienced students. You can consider this a companion to my open letters to new culinary students and graduates.

Here we go:

An empty college lecture hall
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Taking a Break for Ambition

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When it comes to ambition, goal setting, and planning- whenever someone says “there wasn’t room for doubt,” I don’t think that’s true. I think they didn’t MAKE room for doubt.

That sounds almost cynical and defeatist- and I suppose it could be taken that way. I won’t pretend to be some grand philosopher on that. I’m an anxious person. “Doubting” is as natural to me as lemonade on a hot day- as is planning, contingency, and fear-setting, for better or worse.

If Jesus can have a moment of doubt at Gethsemane, I’m pretty sure us poor mortals can wake up in the morning and wonder if we’re still going the way we want to in life. Those moments are important, because that’s when you make the turns that get you there. Don’t cheat yourself by removing room to doubt.

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