What I learned from baking bread

Thank you Universe for showing me more messages

Life and Sourdough

Well, I’ve been off from work all week with the holidays and I’ve discovered new ways to tap into awareness and presence.

While many around me were scrambling and feeding into the mass hysteria of shopping and wrapping AKA holiday season, I decided to finish out 2025 with one more challenge of creativity and learning a new skill - enter SOURDOUGH

Let me start with I’m a bit of a hack - I tend to break rules, draw outside of the lines, rebel against most recommendations and I like to take new trails just to see where they will lead me.

I did a bit of research I’ll confess ~ after all, I’ve learned the hard way that baking and cooking are 2 very different beasts. While I’ve discovered I can be very swappy in cooking land, it’s a bit more difficult in baking land. There seems to be a bit more chemistry and technique involved.

OK then, here’s lesson/story #1 - I really disliked organic chemistry in school and found it to be quite a challenge. I am guessing if they’d taught the fundamentals of organic chemistry in terms of food, I might have aced that class (just kidding).

I am blessed to live in Vermont which is home to the famous King Arthur Flour Company. Over the years, I’ve learned techniques and science hacks which have allowed me to gain confidence in the baking realm.

Fast forward to this past week. After grocery shopping and nearly keeling over at the expense, I decided that perhaps my ancestors had a better idea (out of necessity) by creating their own breads, muffins, soups, etc. And so it began. I didn’t want to just make my bread or use a mechanical machine (aka bread machine) to do it. I wanted to learn and understand the nuances of sourdough baking.

Lesson #2 - working with sourdough is an act of love and artistry, nurturing and tending, patience and anticipation, trust and faith.

WOW, who’da thunk it - all the lessons our sweet soul is here to help our human understand so we can remember the amazingness and spark of divine love we all are - reinforced and gifted to us THROUGH BREAD!

It started with a previous neighbor sharing her healthy sourdough starter (thank you!). This seems to be the crux of successful sourdough baking. I learned very quickly that this starter needs to be lovingly tended with awareness and gentleness in order to be maintained properly.

Lesson #3 - there’s a place between helicopter monitoring and awareness of what’s going on - be present, be accountable but don’t hover.

Then there’s the windows of time in between various steps of the baking process - AH, the meditative gap in between settling, rising, growing and if one isn’t aware of the fundamentals and the environment (humidity, temperature, % ingredients), perhaps some back steps, collapses, challenges. - Lesson #4 - pay attention but don’t over handle or manipulate.

Lesson #5 - there’s growth in rest, there’s growth with patience, there’s growth through trust ~ check the dough but don’t F*** with it. And, just as the winter allows our trees and grass and garlic and other growing things to go fallow and rest; so it is with the dough - it needs time to rest, gather the resources, blend and amalgamate in its own due time.

There is a stage where all of this goodness will go back to the refrigerator for a final rest - it’s not dead, it’s still undergoing a fermentation process prior to baking, but this final step seems to be part of the gold of achieving a beautiful loaf.

Lesson #6 - what you see now and what it will transform into with time, love, patience and trust in nothing short of another of the Universe’s miracles.

And so it is ~ what started as a whim of creativity and curiosity has turned into another amazing journey of messages and lessons for me to hear with my heart.

Bon apetit! Life is delicious!

Photo by Tommaso Urli on Unsplash