As someone outside of the corporate world, every time someone from banking, insurance or other “office” jobs come to me to express their love for bread baking, I feel like a doctor –  a psychiatrist, that is. The number of people approaching us to experience baking or to potentially switch careers is just incredible. But surely, we can’t put everyone in the same basket. I came across ecstatic dreamers but also across truly passionate people that are ready to put their guts and everything else on the table to switch to a new career in baking. For us – bakers by trade – having worked since 15 years old in front of an oven, earning a lot less than these office jobs, we really wonder what goes through the minds of these people. At first, our reaction is “Wow! Let’s trade jobs.” Then we think better of it.

Several people have come to me with photos of their beloved loaves baked at home. Many of them are superb and impressive to the point where I am not sure I could actually replicate their creation in my own home.  Yet, the gap between baking one loaf at home on Sunday morning and working a full shift – where often you wish you were having a good time with your friends at a restaurant or at home with your family – is a massive one. To date, I consider baking as one of the job that most embodies a lifestyle on its own. You have to breathe it; you must have it flowing through your veins and accept the daily hardship. And just when you go to sleep, in the deep silence of the night, is when we’re switching on our ovens, with the smell of fermenting sourdough lingering in the air, waiting to be scaled, kneaded and baked.

These aspiring bakers from the other side of the line are most likely having a very smooth working life with “normal” hours, a good salary, plenty of vacation, so why would they give it all up to come in a place that often reaches 40 degrees Celsius, breathing flour dust, lifting very heavy dough, and baking all day; it’s a massive workout. So far, I have met one person that really took the jump and whose passion runs so deep that his lifelong dream was to be a baker. However, his family wanted him to do something else as baking career was not considered worth chasing.

Once, I visited a bank office with hundreds of desks, with up to six computer screens per desk. For a minute I thought I was Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. It made me feel rather depressed, like I was in a place where life was missing. I tried to picture myself working there and then indeed, with shivers running down my spine.I could imagine right then the way people working there were looking at the other side of fence, where perhaps life and humanity could be better nurtured around baking.

Working with flour is an art. We work with living elements and turn them into delicious loaves. Kneading and shaping dough is very therapeutic. Maybe this is the sort of exoticism people from the offices are looking for, therefore making us, the bakers, their instant occupational therapists.

Like the old adage goes, when there is a will, there is a way. As soon as the bankers lose the letter ‘n’ to become bakers, then the fumes of the fresh daily bread will intoxicate their mind to point where going back to sit in an office won’t be an option anymore. So beware, because once you cross the line, and bite into the “forbidden” bread, there will be no return possible!