It’s been a challenging day at the bakery today. Actually, it’s been that kind of month. Whatever might go wrong has, and I’ve been spinning my wheels putting out proverbial fires and attempting to prevent new ones from sparking. One of our mixers broke earlier this week, and thanks to our amazing neighbors, we had a team of three men show up, tools in hand, ready to do whatever necessary to get us back up & running. The relief was short-lived; our second mixer broke today. We’ve had equipment failure, a blocked sink, recipe failure, and today, raw material issues. The hits just keep coming, and this is where having perspective is critical.

I never considered how much having resilience would come in handy in baking. Today I realized that the first step to being able to weather obstacle after obstacle is to remember my purpose: what am I doing, and why am I doing it. I’m a pastry chef because baking fills me with joy. It just never gets old for me. The hiccups, screw-ups, broken equipment, challenging recipes – these are just part of the drill. It’s all one big maze, and the test is whether we, as a team, can find our way to the other side with as little bruising and as few tears as possible.

Mixed throughout the difficulties of the day were buds of success – tweaking recipes and finding something that works, new production plans for the week ahead, appreciation of our ability to re-group, a freshly cleaned floor. Hey…I’ll take what I can get. If I need to feel good about a clean floor in order to walk out of here intact, I’m ok with that.

Did we do what we needed to do today to keep up with our production? No. Not even close.

Such is life in the fast lane.

The ‘win’ comes from wrapping up the day and looking forward to starting fresh tomorrow.

Onward –

xo