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After the mad rush of the holiday markets, I shut down the bakery every year for a break. This year the first two weeks were consumed by holiday gatherings and house projects. I thought of bread no further than finishing up the bakery’s bookkeeping and throwing together a few casual loaves to fuel our work. By the third week, away from the house and its demands, my days opened. I began to walk, run, ski for hours. My mind woke up, filling the space now empty of work and chores. Often I was so full of jostling thoughts I barely registered the landscape around me. I’d come in from the cold with ideas fully formed and go straight to my notebook or computer to record them, spending the short afternoons and late into the nights absorbed in putting some new scheme to paper. I made a lot of rudimentary but very satisfying diagrams, floor plans, and maps.  A map of our current landscape  And a map of the landscape that could be Approaching my last week of break I find my mind finally quieting, the backlog of creativity released. Instead of grabbing my laptop and disappearing into its depths until my eyes are scratchy with sleep, I might now come in from a walk and meander to the kitchen to check the sourdough and put on a pot of tea. I might pick up the newspaper. I might feel the sudden itch to bake. I’ve been feeling a lot of baking itches. Pretty soon I’m going to run out of people to eat them all. By the time I return to Bellingham in a week to start up the Winter Bread Subscription, I’ll be more than ready to get back into the bakery, which makes this a winter break well spent.
Sophie Owner | Baker Comments are closed.
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