What It's Like To Be... with Dan Heath A Baker
14 snips
Jan 27, 2026 Sophie Williams, owner and baker at Raven Bakery in Bellingham who bikes her deliveries and works with local whole grains. She talks about tinkering recipes like a gingerbread that needed hotter baking, adapting to variable local rye harvests, running a bike-based community bakery, scaling from solo baker to team leader, and the physical craft of preserving bodies and workflow.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Local Inputs Increase Variability
- Small, local suppliers introduce higher variability in ingredients than commodity sources.
- That variability forces bakers to adapt recipes and develop technical mastery.
Don't Rely On Starter Mythology
- Don't fetishize starter pedigree; any fresh starter can bake excellent bread.
- Keep backup starter and value the care required to maintain it.
From Intuition To Systems
- Sophie worked solo for nine years, relying on intuition for every bake.
- Hiring required translating tacit knowledge into explicit recipes and systems.
