Baking Coronalypse

Image and Sourdough Bliss by S. Gordon

Nine years ago, I was shooed away from photographing (photographing!) Strawberry Hot Cross Buns at Panera. It was part of Bakery Story, a post chronicling my fascination with an app of the same name. Using the app was to engage in mindless entrepreneurial fantasy packaged in gamification scarce on strategy, reliant on time-bound nudges, and that simulated some of the experiential and production concerns of owning and operating a real bakery.

If you’d told me that 9 years later, mobile phones, apps, and intermediary services like Caviar, plus boring old email lists (supplied by new companies like Shopify and Square, with access to my email and mobile phone number) would be how bakeries and small businesses maybe had a chance to survive right now, I would have said to you: 

That’s a pretty hyperbolized reality, and weird too. What do you mean grocery stores don’t have flour and yeast?

What do you mean cafés with more robust meal menus and that serve alcohol are shifting back to their grocery store roots and selling raw ingredients or booze for take out?

These are just local business' responses I've seen to our global pandemic reality. And yes, it is OUR reality. It’s time to take stock of what our raw ingredients and talents are and shift mediums. How can we deliver what we have to customers, and even more importantly to the communities of people we hold business relationships with? It’s a time when genuine relationships will keep us alive and helping each other. Those who have kept relationships transactional or who haven’t continued to nurture interest, new offerings, or even basic communication over time with their patrons will suffer.

Cinnamon rolls and image by T. Fish

Sweetness and Paradigm Pandemic

A picture of cinnamon rolls was the image dear dance teacher started an online class with last week. We can't dance physically together, but we can enjoy the senses we still do have and imagine the "taste" of dancing and processing emotions together again. 

Sweet cinnamon rolls were just one of many, tiny acts of silver lining and of people caring for each other I've seen these past weeks. There are some that I'm personally involved in making happen, others are from strangers offering me help. 

Mother Nature has sent us to our rooms to think about what we’ve done. Sadness, sacrifice, and shift have ensued. It is time to re-invite and re-imagine our physical reality.

Radical (Fragile?) Acts of Bakedness

11 years ago only those who study diseases would have even considered a “global pandemic.” Wired interviewed a researcher from the Bread Lab in Washington who talks about their studies of wheat, the rise of "stress baking," and the fragility of food systems. For me, baking has always been a semi- random act of artistic creation. Admittedly, that is now fragile too! 

Fornax and April's Fordicidia

For those of you baking and processing, take a moment to ponder Fornax, Roman Goddess of the Oven and of the mysteries of bread baking. The Greeks called her Epiclibanios, "she who watches over the ovens." Fornax’s festival, the Fornacalia, was celebrated on February 17th (yes, your dirty mind is making accurate connections with the word). 

The Fornacalia was one of two festivals, the other being the Fordicidia on April 19^th. This is also the day I find myself crafting this piece, coincidentally. (gulp) The goddess Fornax was probably conceived of to explain the festival, which was instituted for toasting the spelt used to bake sacrificial cakes.

What will you create in your "oven," and what will you sacrifice?