Month: September 2025

If you have ever tried to run a bakery, you know the market is always shifting under your feet. Some days, I spend more time chasing flour than actually baking. Prices for flour, chocolate, sugar, go up and down with no warning. You try to keep suppliers close, but even then, you can end up waiting, hoping the next delivery is as good as the last.

Shelf life stays on my mind. Bread and pastries never keep as long as you want. You work out how much to bake, but there are mornings when you watch your bread go stale. You keep an eye on what is left, wrap it up, try to be ready to change if you have baked too much. Sometimes, you get it right. Other times, you do not.

Costs build up. Rent, power, wages. You might close early, cut back hours, or change up equipment, but some weeks, profit disappears before you notice it was ever there.

Production and inventory are another story. Some mornings you are left with too many loaves, other times not enough. You miss an ingredient, and the recipe is off, or you serve something you know is not right. With staff, training takes time. On your own, the pressure shifts in a different way.

Custom orders are a mixed bag. They look promising, but can eat up the day. If you are not careful, you find yourself looking at a counter of half-done cakes, customers waiting, the hours slipping away. Sometimes, it is just long days, short nights, and work that does not let you rest.

Still, you show up. You adjust, talk to your regulars, try new ways. You hope the bread turns out, and there is someone there to eat it. That is what keeps the lights on, morning after morning.

I loved it. But the purpose of this post is to showcase it is not all sunshine and rainbows.

I have spent more mornings with a rolling pin than most folks spend with a pillow. And I am not joking. That is what baking does to you. If you are expecting tidy lessons or polished advice, I am afraid I do not have much of that. What I do have is a kitchen full of stories, some with happy endings, most with a mess to clean up. (maybe that is the point.)

When I started, it was cakes for the staff room and sticky scones for the local show. I will never forget the WI judge’s note: “salty and tough.” My swiss roll came second once, though I was the only one who bothered to enter. Apparently not enough sugar on top. The sting faded with time. You learn to laugh at yourself, or you will not last long in this racket.

You might think, after all these years, I would have stopped making mistakes. Not so. I still mix up rosemary and basil now and then. Basil bread, anyone? I have to serve it with a grin, hoping nobody minds. Sometimes the loaf flop, sometimes the bread rises anyway. Either way, I have learned not to get precious. Eat the evidence and move on is my favouritie moto. There is always tomorrow, and there is usually more butter.

I will say this: planning does help. Laying out every ingredient, reading the recipe twice. Still, the real problems come when I get ahead of myself or try to be clever. Then the dough will not come together, or I am halfway through before realising I am missing the one thing I need. At my age, you would think I would learn. Truth is, we are always learning. That is not just baking, that is life.

So if you are up to your elbows in flour and thinking, “I will never get this right,” well, neither did I. Not at first. Not even now, if I am honest. The kitchen is for getting things wrong as much as getting them right. If the cookies fall apart, glue them back together with chocolate. If you burn the toast, eat the unburnt bits and call it breakfast.

We are all stumbling along in here together. That is the real secret, I think. The mess, the mistakes, the mornings when it is just you and the dough and the radio playing some old tune before dawn. That is what stays with you. That, and the friends who will eat your flops and come back for more.