Steemit is Helping Me Actualize My Dream: Baking Bread for a Living
I have been baking bread for the last couple of years. I want to bake the best loaf of bread, a loaf that when you bite into it, you would not want to eat another piece of bread in your life. But I also want to share this bread with other. It is an age-old thing: baking bread and sharing it with family and friends. Sourdough bread’s, or naturally leavened bread’s, popularity has risen again in the last couple of years, not just because it is a new hype, but because it is really healthy. Or in other words, it is much more healthy than the other bread for sale. I love bread, and I love baking bread. That is why I would love to do it for a living. But like most things in life, I am not able to pursue this dream. I am not in culinary school, I don’t have the money to walk away from my studies and open a business, I don’t have a family that owns a family run bakery etc. But then Steemit entered my life.
My first post had some success. My other posts had huge success. I got some money to buy baking equipment. This morning my first oven arrived. The first thing I bought in my life. This is the first time I received my own money, and then buying something with it. This is the first move toward a future of hard work, but with a smile on my face.
The oven will help me to bake 2-4 breads at a time, roughly ten breads an hour. That is more than enough for me to get the small bakery from the ground. Small steps forward, not too many steps at a time. The idea is to have return customers, and not to have too many at a single time. Doing something at huge scales does not help the product. Small scale is always better in my view.
I have sold some bread over the last couple of years to friends and family. They do not want the bread for free, they feel they need to pay. I understand this, getting something for free does not help you feel like you are receiving something with value. When people pay, they feel like they are getting something with value. With the money that I saved with the little sales, I bought Dutch oven style pots, or cast-iron pots. They are quite expensive, but they act like industrial ovens, baking the bread with steam. This is important. But industrial style steam ovens are really expensive. The cast-iron pots work in the same way, giving a similar product.
The oven is big enough for 2-3 cast-iron pots. I will thus back 4-6 breads in an hour, or a little bit more. The numbers are only estimates. My goal will be to sell 20 breads a week. I will work my best to do this, and to further my studies as well.
Steemit is the best thing that could happen to me. I still don’t fully believe and grasp what happened. I have never had enough money to do anything like this. In a way it shocked me that I gave away so much money for something that does not have a sure return on value. I closed my eyes and listened to my heart. Bread is such a simple thing, but it can change your life. Through the ages bread has been seen as a sign of life, a sign of wealth and fortune. Today it is still seen as a sign of life, to give money to the poor so that they can buy a cheap loaf of bread. But this is not real bread. Real bread has been lost for some time.
So this is a thank you post to all those who have helped me. I cannot say thank you enough. I really hope this message/post will find those who helped me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You are helping me actualize my dream of starting my own bakery, to helping me share great bread to other, to helping the art of baking bread with sourdough or natural yeast live on. This is also a post for those with similar dreams with Steemit to keep on going! Don't stop, and work hard. Success is bound to come to those who work hard give their all.
I have had some successful deliveries in the last couple of weeks. Return customers, friends and family. I wish I could deliver bread to Steemit, or to bake Steemit bread. But alas, the future is not near. Maybe one day some of you will visit my bakery in South Africa, Cape Town!
P.s, thank you so much for @yasminep for creating the #SBO tag. I think this will help me and others with the dream of opening a small business a lot.
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