How to Find Inspiration from Bread
A newsletter about writing, art and living more creatively
Sometimes I come across videos on Instagram that make me feel a little more relaxed. I know it's a small thing, but I'll take anything I can get in these unpredictable times.
Take for example, a video of sourdough bread being scored that made me feel chilled out for a couple of minutes (and then hungry). I had to learn more about the maker, so I emailed Codi of The Toasted Loaf, a micro bakery that makes organice sourdough bread and pastries, based in Murrieta, CA.
We talked all things bread and creativity and making below!
How did you get into baking?
I only started baking sourdough the past two years, I started in 2019 and it was kind of a weird thing. My family was going through a chaotic time period. There was a lot of resetting in my life. I was just trying to find something new to distract myself. It was kind of the same exact thing how you said about how you saw one of the scoring videos.
I was just on Instagram one day. And I love food, I love making food. I just saw a photo of a really beautiful scored loaf of bread and I got obsessed with it and really intrigued with the whole process. That's how it started. It was pretty random. And it's become a whole small business and a really big part of my life very unexpectedly.
Do you feel the same sense of relaxation when you're scoring bread?
Yes, I think that's like why I fell in love with making sourdough so much, too. The time in my life I was teaching myself how to make it was just very, very chaotic. The whole process of making bread, it's so much patience and time. It's a lot of time and effort... but it's also just really relaxing to slow down and just knead some dough and shape a loaf of bread. Selling it has become a whole other avenue of sharing it with people
How did you take the step from okay, this is something I love doing to starting to make a business out of it?
I was just making bread at home and it was just me and my partner at home — so two people can only eat so much bread. But I wanted to bake more and more... I came to a point where we were eating too much bread every day and there was too much bread in my freezer. I started giving it away... I brought it kind of anywhere I was going and was just giving it to people just because I wanted to make another batch.
People just started posting on their Instagram stories. And then from there, more and more random people that they knew — or someone else saw it through the Internet and Instagram — were just asking and reaching out constantly... . And then it became so many people that I thought, "I don't know, maybe I'll try to sell." So I would just do it on the weekends when I was off of work. And then it progressively got busier and busier. And it's been kind of fluctuating the past year.
What have you learned from bread?
There's so many things. The thing about baking bread that is so interesting to me is that it's the same exact recipe and the same exact process, but at the same time, there's so many variations in the process that you can't do exactly the same each time. You can try to be perfect and try to do everything the way you want to do it in the way you know needs to be done every single time.
But I've found that with making bread, especially transitioning from a personal hobby baker to more of a micro bakery selling bread baker, I've learned that through that process. You need to just put a lot of love into what you're doing, because even if you're doing everything exactly like you're supposed to, if you don't put that love and that want to even do the actions you're doing — for some reason, it just doesn't come out the same in the end.
Every single batch, it's almost the same exact recipe. But some bakes definitely come out way better than other bake days. And I've noticed that it's really depending on my mood.
Sometimes for creative people the idea of perfectionism is really hard, too. We think a process will still us something and it's not always "perfect." But there's something about finding value in the process.
Especially as a creative person who is doing those things as their main income, which I'm trying to do and transition into right now, at this time of my life. A lot of us lose ourselves in this time period — you love doing what you do, but it's also become a strange necessity because capitalism. And just how our world is and just our need to live and afford to live. That's a struggle that a lot of creative artists who do this for more than a hobby.
But it's nice because you get to eat bread at the end.
That's also the nice thing about bread. Even if it comes out bad or good, visually, it still tastes good at the end of the day.
Thank you for your time, Codi! Follow The Toasted Loaf on IG here and check out the website here.
In my own work:
I wrote about self-doubt and the submission process and a book about the van Gogh sisters.
I wrote a new essay about portraiture and clothing and girlhood.
I was interviewed by Lu'Cretia Thomas for her podcast Girl Behind the Hustle.
Your favorite small but feisty writer,
Eva
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