The Baker’s Trade by Zachary Y. Schat

During the four months of my career in the music industry back in 2000, when I worked as the manager of a recording studio in Oakland, I was living in a studio apartment by Lake Merritt. The apartment had a separate kitchen with decent square footage, but it was extremely narrow and the appliances were similarly petite, and not exactly top-of-the-line. It was in this apartment that I reached the pinnacle of my baking life.

In that little hallway of a kitchen, where the oven thermostat was often 25 to 50 degrees off, I produced desserts for a number of occasions involving many guests: my cousin’s bridal shower (lavender cookies, chocolate tart, raspberry-chocolate “kisses”), several birthday parties (chocolate layer cake, lemon tart, coconut layer cake), Christmas candy boxes for all my friends, and a few dessert parties in my own apartment.

At that time, I had a friend, MB, who was also baking hobbyist. When we saw each other, “What have you baked lately?” was always our first question. So when, two months into my tenure at the recording studio, I began to hate my job, MB joked that I should quit and open a bakery.

Here’s an interesting aspect of human nature: when you really hate your job, every other job in the world sounds like heaven. At that moment, opening a bakery seemed like a completely rational idea.

I bought the only book I could find on the subject, The Baker’s Trade by Zachary Y. Schat, and read the entire book from cover to cover. It is actually a great reference, giving an overview to the business and covering the financial and logistical details of start-up, operations, and growth. However, the following is the most important piece of information in the entire book:

Running a bakery means getting up at 3:00am every morning.

While this information was steeping in my brain, a series of events at work led to my rather sudden resignation. Before I knew it, I was considering a completely new opportunity with Shen’s Books, which I ultimately took, and the bakery idea fell by the wayside. My baking habit has also fallen off, though I do like to challenge myself with a fancy dessert every so often.

Now that I look back, opening a bakery seems like a preposterous idea. There’s no way I could have gotten up that early every day. I kept the book, though, just in case.

The Baker’s Trade by Zachary Y. Schat

tags: business books book reviews bakeries baking Zachary Schat