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“What would you do if you didn’t have to work?” he asked. “Didn’t have to work?” “Like, if you were independently wealthy.” I had to think about it. I was unloading the oven. Tired, sticky with sweat and flour, trying to ignore the new burn across my left wrist. “This,” I said at last. “I would do this.” The answer surprised me. The words, and their certainty, felt like a revelation. From the outside, this probably sounds ridiculous. After all, what have I been doing but living, breathing, eating bread for the past four years? But my twenties have often felt like a decade long existential crisis. Certainty has been scarce in the years of doubt. In my early twenties, I was paralyzed by the fear of choosing the wrong path. The future spread before me, possibility and promise, and yet to step onto one path, it seemed, meant forsaking all others, and so I stood still, frozen by agonized indecision. It was an age of hyperbole and deep self-absorption. By my middle twenties I could see that the paths were not, if fact, straight, but braided together. As long as I was walking in the right direction, I decided, I would be ok. But still, I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder as my friends marched off into families and careers, their lives growing ever more distant. My late twenties have been given more to mundane worries—financial security, work-life balance, healthcare—and vague fantasies about a make-believe 9-5 with benefits and free weekends that, on closer examination, disintegrate into Machiavellian office politics and hours hunched over a computer. And so I felt that moment of certainty through my whole body, like a deep breath that pushed out the clutter and worries. My shoulders went back. My eyes widened. Laughter expanded in my chest. And then I finished unloading the oven, lined the loaves up on the rack to cool, walked over to the bench where I’d been rolling out pastry, and got back to work. TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Apricot Scone Raspberry Buckwheat Scone Herb & Onion Tart Raspberry Cream Tart Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Rosemary Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Scone, Shortbread, other sweets Raven Breads will not be at the market next Saturday, 7/28. See you soon.
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