Dan: 0:00

Before Sophie Williams started baking bread for a living, she'd never worked in a bakery.

Sophie: 0:06

So the first year that I was baking, I just like consistently made pretty horrible bread, and I didn't have another job, and so I sold it, which was an excellent lesson in humility and in failing repeatedly in, like, really public ways, which I think is really valuable and was not something that I had learned in school.

Dan: 0:24

Public humiliation?

Sophie: 0:25

Public humiliation. Just like repeated, having to go into the world because I was financially dependent on this absurd business that I had started and like bring my ugly bread and ask people to buy it.

Dan: 0:37

The bread got better, so did the business. And today, Sophie owns Raven Bakery in Bellingham, Washington. So what is people's reaction when you tell them you're a baker?

Sophie: 0:49

Almost universally positive.

Dan: 0:51

Yeah.

Sophie: 0:51

Yeah. I feel like it's like a fairly romantic profession in a lot of people's minds.

Dan: 0:56

Yeah. Why is that? Because I had the same sense about it.

Sophie: 1:00

I think part of it is how fundamental bread is. Bread is the thing that we bring to the table. It's the thing that we share with other people. That is the root of the word "companion". There's so many, like, Latin roots of words that are based in "pan" and "bread".

Dan: 1:15

That you just blew my mind. I had never made that link, but, like, the pan and companion is bread.

Sophie: 1:21

Yeah. With bread.

Dan: 1:22

Oh my god.

Sophie: 1:23

Your friend is someone who you break bread with.

Dan: 1:36

I'm Dan Heath and this is "What It's Like To Be..." In every episode, we walk in the shoes of someone from a different profession. A mystery novelist, an executive chef, a seismologist. We wanna know what they do all day at work. Today, we'll ask Sophie Williams what it's like to be a baker. We'll talk about what it means when your bread sings, how she decides what to charge for a loaf of bread, and why people are so obsessed with sourdough starters and whether they should be, stay with us. Sophie's bakery is different in a few ways from most bakeries. For one thing, she sources all of her grains from within Washington and Oregon. For another

Sophie: 2:27

We operate entirely by bicycle.

Dan: 2:30

Wait. What do you mean by operating by bicycle? Like, you're you're delivering?

Sophie: 2:33

Great question. Often when I say that, I think that people are picturing, like, people in the back with, like, huge thighs powering our ovens or something with their stamina. That is not, that is not the case.

Dan: 2:44

Yeah. You're working on cardio power at the bakery.

Sophie: 2:48

We do not produce our own electricity by bicycle, although that would be wild. But we do all our deliveries. We run all our errands. We, like, get around by bicycle.

Dan: 2:59

Okay. And is that an environmentally driven choice or a business driven choice or...?

Sophie: 3:04

It is an environmentally driven choice. I don't own a car myself either

Dan: 3:09

Okay.

Sophie: 3:10

That is made possible by the way that I've structured the business. So, like, the fact that we are in a central location and our grocery accounts are so close, there's the community food co op is, like, within a mile, and the Bellingham Farmers Market is also within a mile.

Dan: 3:25

And so are you selling mostly wholesale to grocery stores, or are you do people come into your store and just buy for their families or both? Or

Sophie: 3:33

Both. Yeah. The retail out of the shop is the biggest part, but our hours are fairly limited. We're only open four days a week for six hours. Okay. So having, like, the grocery option and the farmer's market option is really wonderful so that people have access if they can't come in during that time.

Dan: 3:52

And and what are, like, your top five sellers?

Sophie: 3:56

Well, okay. This is such a puzzle because retail is always shifting, and I don't know why. And I feel like I feel like maybe there's some AI tool out there that could, like, analyze all of the information, like the sales data and the weather and cultural factors. But right now, we make this really amazing dark sticky gingerbread cake that's our best seller all winter long.

Dan: 4:20

Okay.

Sophie: 4:20

And people ask about it the rest of the year, and we don't make it. We only make it when it's cold and wet. And I think one of one of the products that sets us apart is that we make some really lovely Northern European rye breads, like, really like, 100% rye or, like, really high percentage rye sourdough breads, and other folks aren't making that style of bread. And so there's a lot of people who come in just for that.

Dan: 4:46

We talked to an executive chef a few months ago, and I was asking her, is there something that you wish you could drop from the menu, but it's too popular and you have to just keep making it because that's where customers' demand is? And and she had something, that was like a cornmeal fried oyster that was a perennial favorite that she was dead tired of making. Is there something like that for you?

Sophie: 5:10

Okay. This gingerbread that I just mentioned, I have been making that recipe and tweaking it for almost a decade.

Dan: 5:17

Mhmm.

Sophie: 5:18

And just this winter, we finally solved how to make it consistently.

Dan: 5:23

Oh.

Sophie: 5:23

Like, I have been working on that recipe for so long, and it's been the best seller for so long in the winter. And so I haven't been able to drop it, but it's, like, so frustrating to have something that is just, like, so inconsistent and so fickle, and I never know if it's gonna turn out well or if I'm gonna end up with, like, 60 kilos of gingerbread that I have to discount because the texture is weird or it's, like, collapsed in the middle or something.

Dan: 5:45

And so what unlocked the case?

Sophie: 5:48

We had to bake it 25 degrees hotter. I have no idea why. We just, like, create these I I don't know. My academic background from a million years ago is in science, and I, like, create these test logs, and then we just, like, go through and test things. And for whatever reason, we hadn't tested baking temperature before. We had, like, only tested lower temperature maybe because that's often the problem with cakes. And for this particular cake, it had to be hotter, and I I don't know. It's all a mystery, but it works. And now it's just like, it's good every time.

Dan: 6:19

That is fascinating that you're running like scientific experiments, and are you sort of tracking results in an Excel sheet or something? Like, this one didn't work. This one did.

Sophie: 6:28

Yes. I try to. Not consistently. And then sometimes we end up having to solve the same problem multiple times because I haven't taken notes in a place where I retain them. Like, maybe I wrote them down on a paper recipe, and then we recycled that recipe, and there went the information because we don't make that thing again for another year. But I do try to be systematic.

Dan: 6:49

And so how much effort do you put in to trying to make your products consistent? Is that an ongoing source of challenge?

Sophie: 6:58

Yes. It's a perennial problem.

Dan: 7:01

What makes it hard?

Sophie: 7:03

I mean, lot of it is just that we're buying most of our ingredients from small vendors, like directly from farms or, from small millers or from, like, the local chocolate roaster or, you know, whatever it is. And so they just change in a way that commodity ingredients don't.

Dan: 7:22

So buying from local suppliers, it's just you're you're getting more variability, basically, in your inputs.

Sophie: 7:30

Yeah. Like, the best example of this right now is the 2025 rye harvest from the farmer Miller that we buy from out on the Peninsula. It's so different from 2024, and we've been baking with it and, like, tweaking our recipes for three months, and we still haven't figured it out. So we, like, are still consistently having to discount all of our rye breads, which are like one of the breads that we make the most of. And it's frustrating but also fascinating and just like I think the cost of buying from small producers. Like it's our job as the bakers to figure out how to work with the product that they are growing.

Dan: 8:06

I never thought about that aspect of things. I think in my mind, you know, certainly there's been a big wave where a lot of retail shops and suppliers are are sourcing locally, and and I I always thought about that in terms of, you know, it's better for the community or it's better for the environment or or it's better quality, but I never thought about, you know, the flip side of that, which is that it's not as consistent, you know, that there's a cost along with all the benefits.

Sophie: 8:32

But, like, how cool to get to, like, master all of these technical skills. Like, if we were only using commodity flour and it was always the same and the same and the same, then then we wouldn't learn as much.

Dan: 8:44

And is that a PR statement, or do you really feel like it's fun to make... because it seems like it could be incredibly frustrating that your your classic recipes don't work anymore.

Sophie: 8:54

For sure. Both are true. But I do I do love the problem solving, and I would say that, like, sometimes things are like that gingerbread cake where we solve the problem and we just don't know why. Right? Like, I I don't understand the science of pastry the way that I understand the science of bread, and so, there are things that are just like, it works because it works, and that's all I know. But I feel like with bread, because I do have a deeper understanding of, like, the fermentation and the enzymes and the properties of the grain, it's so satisfying. It's like, I don't know if you were ever a math nerd, but like the satisfaction of figuring out a math proof or like whatever problem solving is like the thing that is Meaningful to you. It feels like that. Like, oh, I like all of these pieces are coming together and we have like figured out how to combine time and temperature and yeast and bacteria and this agricultural product that comes from the land of this place and like how to bring them all together to produce something that is good and consistent and that's very satisfying.

Dan: 9:57

One of thing I wanted to ask you about, it seems like in recent years, there's become this kind of fetish around sourdough starters. Why are people talking so much about that? Should they be talking so much about that? And and and maybe tell us about your own if you're so inclined.

Sophie: 10:12

I think that people like stories. I I do not personally believe that the pedigree of your sourdough matters. I think that you could bake amazing bread with the sourdough that you started last week.

Dan: 10:25

You're gonna deflate a lot of artisanal, armchair bakers out there with that.

Sophie: 10:30

I accidentally baked all my sourdough at some point, which is the thing you should never do. Like, you should always have backup sourdough. Right? That is the heart of the bakery. And for whatever reason, I didn't have backup and I baked it all. And then I needed more sourdough in a hurry, I got that sourdough from a customer who had gotten it from another baker who said that their sourdough was from the Alaskan Gold Rush. So, like, maybe, maybe our sourdough could trace its lineage back to the Alaskan Gold Rush. But, like, does that matter? No. No.

Dan: 11:03

And very hard to disprove because you can't really interrogate or, you know

Sophie: 11:07

You can't interrogate the sourdough.

Dan: 11:09

Do people ask about that? Like, do you have customers asking about your sourdough starter?

Sophie: 11:13

We get people asking for sourdough starter all the time, like asking to have some.

Dan: 11:18

Is that rude to ask for?

Sophie: 11:20

No. No. I, we'll always give it, but we ask for a barter in exchange because because I want people to think about it. I want people to, like, value it and value the work that we do to maintain the starter. Like, we take care of it. Right? We feed it twice a day.

Dan: 11:33

And for idiots like me who don't bake, what does it mean to feed sourdough?

Sophie: 11:38

So sourdough is made up of yeast and bacteria, and there's, like, a whole bunch of microbial metabolism that's going on, and they consume elements of the flour. And once they've consumed that, then they need more flour. So like feeding is giving that culture of yeast and bacteria and flour fresh flour and water, basically.

Dan: 11:59

Sophie worked mostly by herself for the first nine years of the bakery's existence. And when she started hiring people, she had to change the way she worked.

Sophie: 12:08

For that first decade, I was able to do things mostly by intuition. Right? Like, I was just I had my hands on everything. I was, like, tasting. And touching and smelling and looking at every single thing that I produced. And in the past couple years, as I've had to translate that knowledge to other people, I've had to like figure out how to articulate intuition, which is such an interesting challenge, and create systems because I can't depend on someone who's only been baking for a year to be able to like make all of the little adjustments that I

Dan: 12:40

Oh, yeah.

Sophie: 12:40

Make to like how they're handling the dough or to the water temperature or to the oven temperature just based on how things are feeling. I have to, like, actually give them information, like, here's what you do, here's the temperature things should be, like, in order to create a consistent product.

Dan: 12:56

I feel like one stereotype that people have of bakers is they wake up at two in the morning to start the baking. Is that true of you?

Sophie: 13:05

It is not true of our bakery. Thank goodness.

Dan: 13:09

How come?

Sophie: 13:10

Because I worked alone for so long, I had to figure out how to develop recipes and a schedule that allowed me to

Dan: 13:20

Function as a human?

Sophie: 13:22

Yeah. To function more or less as a human being.

Dan: 13:26

Well, so how do you solve the business challenge of people wanting their pastries at 8AM or whatever?

Sophie: 13:32

Yeah. Yeah. We do open at 8AM, in fact, but we bake all of our bread the day before. And the reason that works is because we bake all whole grain sourdough bread. So they keep they just, like, have an astonishing shelf life. And a lot of them are actually better the next day or two days out than they are the day that they're baked. So we mix our breads in the morning, we shape them midday, we bake them in the afternoon, and then we all go home. And then we sell them the next day. They, like, sit and cool overnight.

Dan: 14:01

Hey, folks. Dan here. I just wanted to shout out to another podcast called The Economics of Everyday Things. I know many of you are already listeners. The host, Zachary Crockett, announced recently that it was being sunsetted, apparently part of some kind of strategic downsizing affecting multiple shows at Freakonomics. And I just wanted to tip my hat to what Zachary and his colleagues did. It's a show that revels in discovering how things work. How did Girl Scout cookies become a billion dollar operation? How much does the song My Sharona still earn today in royalties? I just love the little details that emerge like in an episode on miniature golf courses. It comes out that owners have to vacuum these things all the time. I always felt like, Zachary's show was a sibling to what we're doing on this one. So anyway, my hope is that he and his team will find a new home for the show. And in the meantime, I wanna encourage all of you to check out the back catalog. It's a great show. And now, back to our own show. Baking is a labor intensive business. These days, the team at Raven bakes from six in the morning to three or four in the afternoon. Sophie works most, but not all of that time. But before she had a team, the hours were much worse.

Sophie: 15:32

I don't think I ever worked less than twelve hours and often, like fourteen to sixteen hours on a bake day.

Dan: 15:38

That's pretty grueling.

Sophie: 15:40

It's pretty grueling. It's really delightful to have other people for many reasons, and that is only one of them.

Dan: 15:48

And again, as someone who doesn't know much about baking, like, why are those long hours necessary?

Sophie: 15:54

That was a combination of factors. That was because I was working in a restaurant commissary, so it just, like, didn't have baking equipment. So I was mixing everything by hand. I didn't have mixers, which is slower than mechanical mixing, and I was baking out of these, like, stacked convection ovens, so I just couldn't fit as much product at a time. And then because I was working alone, there was, like, no one doing, like, cleanup throughout the day. So I would, like, get get to the end of twelve hours and be like, thank god this is over. And then there would still be two or three hours of dishwashing and mopping and sweeping and, like, cleaning everything up, putting everything away, which I, like, conveniently every single day managed to block from my mind. So, like, I would get to the end of the baking, I'd pull the last bread out of the oven, I'd be like, thank god this is over. And then it would be like, two more hours after that. But I but then by the next day, would have, like, blocked that from my mind again. And I think that's

Dan: 16:47

Some kind of coping mechanism.

Sophie: 16:49

Yeah. That, like, willful time optimism is what allowed me to do that for so many years.

Dan: 16:54

Has your selection of products grown or or shrunk over time?

Sophie: 17:00

It is shrinking as I become wiser.

Dan: 17:03

What do you mean by that?

Sophie: 17:04

It's so fun to develop new products. I love imagining something and then figuring out how to make it, or, like, coming across some, like, flavor or texture or, like, visual idea in someone else's baking book and then, like, figuring out how to fit that to our ingredients and our processes in the bakery. Like, I just find that so deeply satisfying. And so it's really easy to have our product line balloon, but having more options doesn't result in having more sales. So we just sell less of more products, which is less efficient and is something that I could, like, allow myself the luxury of when I was working alone because I wasn't counting my labor.

Dan: 17:46

Yeah. Yeah.

Sophie: 17:47

But now that there are other people who, like, not only their labor counts in, like, a material, like, I am paying their paycheck sense, but also their labor needs to be fairly compensated. Like, I need to figure out how to make the business more profitable, not less, so that I can pay them better so that I can, like, figure out how to give them benefits. It's a good guardrail on my desire to, like, create and create and create.

Dan: 18:10

How do you decide what a loaf of bread should cost?

Sophie: 18:14

Oh, we are actually in the process of reevaluating this right now. But theoretically, pricing should be based on, like, rigorous calculations of direct costs, which would be, like, the labor that goes into producing the thing and the ingredient costs and the packaging costs. And then with some overhead factor and, like, profit factor based on that. So, like, I would say, if I was, like, a really numbers driven business person, my direct costs can be 30%. So, like, if it costs me $3 to produce this bread, then the price has to be $10. And that gives me, like, whatever percentage profit margin, and then it gives me the margin to cover rent and insurance and the front of house staff and, like, all of the other things. But I am not quite that rigorous. And so mostly, I try to keep the bread like more or less in line with what other bakeries are charging, who are making similar-ish products. And and then if like our overall margins are starting to feel too tight, then I try to put more of our price increases on our pastry because I feel like pastry is a luxury good, and bread is like a staple food and should be as affordable as possible.

Dan: 19:35

Oh, that's, you have this kind of morality of pricing. That's fascinating.

Sophie: 19:41

Well, and it also it lines up with how people spend money. Like, people are going to balk at spending $12 or $15 on a loaf of bread in a way that they won't at spending, like, $7 on a slice of cake or, like, $3 on a cup of coffee. People's mental calculation is so different for things that feel like treats, whether it's like sugar or alcohol or snacks than it is for something that feels like grocery, that feels like a staple good.

Dan: 20:09

What would you tell someone who loves to bake as a hobby and has fantasies about doing it as a business?

Sophie: 20:24

I

Dan: 20:25

You laughed at that. And then it's like you're

Sophie: 20:28

Okay. Well, okay. I think the thing that allowed me to take the risk to not only start a small business, but also to, like, start such a strange small business, like such a out of the common way small business, making whole grain bread and sourdough bread. The most important thing that allowed me to do that besides a very strong work ethic was the fact that I, at 25 when I started the business, didn't have any financial dependents or debt. And I think that the reality of starting a business for someone who is taking care of kids or parents or had, like, consumer debt or student loans, it would just be such a different calculation. And I would caution someone who cannot afford to live on $10,000 a year as I did. At 25 to, like, really think long and hard about the financial realities of starting a small business.

Dan: 21:20

Mhmm. I mean, the other thing that comes to mind for me is I think, like, at one point for one of my books, I interviewed a woman who loved to bake cakes. I mean, and and they were, like, exotically sculpted cakes. So like a, you know, Thomas the Tank Engine cake for a nephew's birthday or something, and just loved it, and people loved her cakes, and she had talent. So she thought, naturally, well, why don't I do this? You know? I love baking and I love making people smile, let's go for it. And then the reality of what it was like to make that a job rather than a hobby was so different for her. It was like she talked about, you know, baking a Thomas the Tank Engine cake for your nephew, a whole different world from baking a wedding cake for a Bridezilla and the pressure and the stress, and you've gotta get there by three-thirty, and if you don't and you've got it in the back of your car, and you're terrified every turn, it's gonna fall over. She said it just kinda, like, took all the fun out of it for her.

Sophie: 22:24

Interesting. Yeah. I I love baking for the bakery. I find it maybe more satisfying than home baking because it comes with all of these other challenges of like scale and consistency. But I do I do think that in order to start a business, you have to also want to run a business. And I don't think that's true of everyone who loves a craft. You know, like, loving to bake bread doesn't mean that you also enjoy, like, putting together financial reports or figuring out, like, hiring and firing and managing people or enjoy customer service or, like and I do think you have to, like, at least be able to, like, tolerate, if not love most of those components. Like, maybe you can hire some of them out, but but as a small business, you do as the owner of a small business, you do have to, like, have your fingers in a lot of different pies. You have to, like, bring a lot of different skill sets or develop them.

Dan: 23:19

If someone watched you work for a month and really came to understand what you were doing, what do you hope they would come away respecting?

Sophie: 23:28

If we were doing our very best work, I think the physical efficiency of the workflow. I don't know if you've ever had a physical job, but there's so much satisfaction in knowing that the way that you're moving your body through space is like the best way you can be moving your body. I love that and I love trying to I wouldn't say I'm great at teaching it, but I I love trying to teach it and like watching new employees, like, come to understand how to move themselves through space in ways that are efficient in terms of, like, movement and energy and not putting strain on their bodies.

Dan: 24:05

Give me an example of that.

Sophie: 24:07

I talk a lot with new staff about setting up workstations so that every movement that you make is the smallest, most efficient movement that you can make so that you're never, like, reaching over yourself or, like, having to move something more times than is necessary. Like, having everything almost everything in the bakery is on wheels. So like you can really like set up your stations however you want, like, so that everything is within reach so that you're not having to like walk back and forth or stretch your body in ways that might hurt your back or like bend down. And I I think that's such a like the ergonomics of baking, I guess.

Dan: 24:44

Like, would be give me even more detail. Like, what would be a classic mistake that a baker would make in the way they set up their... Like, what what are they doing too much of that that they needn't do?

Sophie: 24:54

A way that I hurt myself early on was in how I used my wrists and elbows. Like, how I cut and lifted dough and put strain on my joints. So, like, I am like making a motion right now that you can't see. But but like keeping strength in your joints, like keeping your joints aligned when you're putting a lot of stress on them, like when your arm

Dan: 25:20

Mhmm.

Sophie: 25:21

is a cantilever, making sure that your wrist is straight and not bent, making sure that your, like, elbow has some tension in it. Like, those are things that protect your joints and allow you to, like, repeat movements without hurting yourself.

Dan: 25:33

I love this. I I mean, you have such a a scientist's brain for a baker. Like, if you couldn't do baking, do you think you would use that scientific brain in some other way?

Sophie: 25:45

Would I have become a geologist after being a geology major? I don't know.

Dan: 25:49

Oh, is that what you majored in?

Sophie: 25:50

Maybe. Yeah. It is.

Dan: 25:52

It's just an unusual blend of of talents.

Sophie: 25:55

I do I think this is one of the things that I really I don't know if I would be satisfied being a baker for someone else. You know, like, if my job was to mix bread for eight hours or to Shape bread for eight hours, I wouldn't find it nearly as satisfying as, like, getting to hold all these different pieces and, build all of these diverse skills and to always always feel like I'm coming up short and have something else to learn, like, that makes this work so interesting.

Dan: 26:24

I'm curious what your experience changes about the way you consume other people's baked goods. Like, what what do you think you spot or notice about, you know, a loaf of bread or a pastry that you get somewhere else that other people wouldn't?

Sophie: 26:40

I often will notice whether things are properly fermented. Like, there are signs of something being under or over fermented that I think are not things that everyone would... Actually, I know that they're not things that everyone notices because we often over or under ferment our products. And

Dan: 26:58

And no one ever mentions it.

Sophie: 26:59

Yeah. Like, I'll discount the bread because I know that it's not perfect. It's not like everything that it could be, and customers won't understand, like, why. I mean, they're grateful, but the imperfections that I'm seeing are not things that they would notice or see.

Dan: 27:12

And what are those diagnostic signs of over or under fermented bread?

Sophie: 27:17

Okay. So here's, like, a little bit of bread science. There's you know all the holes in bread? The, like, the bubbles inside?

Dan: 27:24

Yeah.

Sophie: 27:25

Those are called alveoli. And in a wheat bread, every one of those bubbles is separated by, like, a thin stretched layer of dough.

Dan: 27:35

Okay.

Sophie: 27:35

Like every one of those bubbles is expanding and held in by a network of gluten. And the thickness of the walls between those holes tells you a lot about whether the bread was properly fermented. So like if the walls are thick, it wasn't fermented enough. And if they're so thin that they're transparent, even if the bread is like, you know, like a sandwich loaf that has like lots of little tiny holes, not like big Instagram style holes. The walls between the alveoli tell you a lot about the fermentation.

Dan: 28:05

This is so interesting. I love this. So, Sophie, we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions. Here we go. What is a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know, and what does it mean?

Sophie: 28:23

Starch attack is...

Dan: 28:25

Starch attack.

Sophie: 28:27

Yeah. It's terrible. It's it's what happens in a rye dough if you don't acidify it properly, if you don't ferment enough of the flour or like add enough acid in some other way, the enzymes in the rye dough, the amylase enzymes, will break down the starches in the oven, and this beautiful loaf that you put in will come out as just like a gelatinous inedible lump.

Dan: 28:56

What is the most insulting thing you could say about a baker's work?

Sophie: 29:02

I really hate when people break out, "At least you're doing what you love", as, like, a reason for people who are doing craft work or artistic work or care work not needing to make a living or, like, not needing to have health care or, like, not not needing to have, like, basic financial support because we're doing work that we enjoy.

Dan: 29:23

It's it's like, well, because you have that, you needn't get a good wage or yeah. I was just reading part of this book called Bulls*it Jobs.

Sophie: 29:32

I was just listening to that chapter in a posthumously published collection of his essays.

Dan: 29:39

Oh, that's great. That's good. So, yeah, so we're on the same wavelength about where you're going with that, because he he points out that, you know, a lot of the jobs that ostensibly create the most social value are some of the most poorly paid ones, and and people often offer the the explanation that you did. Well, it's like, well

Sophie: 29:54

Yeah. Like, that kind of what's the Englishized German word? Schadenfreude. I feel like there's some of that. Like, I hate my job, and therefore, like, you, as someone who loves your job, should suffer for that love.

Dan: 30:05

That's your compensation, so just shut your yapper and be happy. Yeah. What is a tool specific to your profession that you really like using?

Sophie: 30:15

I love simple and, like, incredibly efficient tools. So I'd say we have a balance beam scale. Like, you might remember something of this nature from science class.

Dan: 30:28

Mhmm.

Sophie: 30:28

But it's just like, it's so simple. It's a cast iron. It's an enameled cast iron balance beam scale, and it's so much more efficient and durable than a digital scale for measuring pieces of dough. And we got it from a customer and a friend who is an elementary school teacher who found it in the basement of his school, and no one knew what to do with it. Like, they didn't have a use for it in the school, and so he brought it in, and we bartered bakery credit for the teachers in that elementary school for this balance beam scale, and now we use it every single day.

Dan: 31:02

What is a sound specific to your profession that you're likely to hear?

Sophie: 31:07

Sometimes, when we have a really bold wheat bake, which means like we bake the bread especially dark, the crust sings as it cools.

Dan: 31:16

Woah. What do you mean by that?

Sophie: 31:19

So that's another, that's another baker phrase. But that's like the the popping and the crackling and the hissing that loaves make as they contract. And it's like such a lovely interesting sound that is very particular to a particular style of bread.

Dan: 31:34

I mean, is it really faint, or is it is it not subtle?

Sophie: 31:38

It's subtle. It's subtle.

Dan: 31:40

And what what what goes through your mind when you hear that?

Sophie: 31:44

Oh, I just I think it's so lovely, and I I, as a baker, and I think this is true for a lot of bakers, really like dark baked loaves. We tend to bake our bread blonder than perhaps any of us in the bakery would prefer because that's what you know, Americans love blondes. But when you just, like, have a really bold dark bake, then you can get this beautiful, like, sound acknowledgment of the depth of your bake as the bread cools.

Dan: 32:11

Can you remember a day that made you think, this, this is exactly why I do this work?

Sophie: 32:19

Every time I'm in the bakery mixing and the sun comes up is that moment. It's like, oh, it's so good, like, to be in that space with all those windows and it's quiet in the morning. Like, I'm often in there alone mixing if I'm on the first baking shift and no one else has come in yet. And it's the streets are quiet at that early hour, and I'm, like, doing something that I love doing. And then the sun comes up, and, like, what what could be better than that? It's, like, such an astonishing delight every time it happens, which is all the time.

Dan: 32:59

Sophie Williams is a baker and she's the owner of Raven Bakery in Bellingham, Washington. I want to highlight one part of Sophie's story, that leap from being a one person operation to being a team. For years, she did everything herself because she could, but fourteen hour days were not sustainable. She needed to scale up, which meant opening a shop, hiring a team, building something that could run without her hands on every loaf. Scaling changes things. When you're solo, you can bake intuitively. You touch, you smell, you observe, you adjust, but intuition can't be transferred to a new hire. That person needs recipes, systems, guardrails. It's the same evolution that tech entrepreneurs go through. The garage eventually gives way to the org chart and that maturing is a hard transition. Many tech founders stumble because the skill of the specialist, the brilliant coder or the intuitive baker is different than the skill of the systems builder. That person who can manage an environment where great work can happen at scale. Not everyone can do both or even wants to, but it turns out Sophie can and she seems to enjoy the stretch. Sourcing grains from local suppliers, testing recipes like lab experiments, learning ergonomic workflows, and cherishing those moments when the crust starts to sing. Folks, that's what it's like to be a baker. A shout out to recent Apple podcast reviewers, BigYoda68, Emily Aborn, Chi_97, happy campers all around, Monica Bee Forte, and MarkitwithanM. Thank you all. This episode was produced by Matt Purdy. I'm Dan Heath. Thanks for listening.