I never baked before I had kids. It wasn’t something that interested me. My cooking style was more akin to throwing various ingredients into a pot and hoping they turned out alright. For the most part this style worked for me – appealing to my creative and risk-taking instincts. Then I had my daughter. When she turned three she said she wanted to bake.
Baking was measured, all the ingredients had to be put in precise amounts, there was a specific cooking time you had to adhere to. It was not like the person I was at all. But I started baking for her. First using boxed cake mixes before turning to simpler recipes.
As the years passed I became more confident with my baking. Nothing fancy – I knew my limits – but I could bake birthday cakes for my children, cookies and muffins for their lunchboxes and most of the time I had my daughter by my side, observing and learning, till she could bake all on her own. And now as we enter another lockdown here in Sydney, my daughter and I are relying on cooking and baking to get us through.
As many of us tried to figure out what coronavirus was and what quarantining and lockdown meant, we became a nation of bakers.
I had never heard of the term ‘stress baking’ till last year when the world was plunged into the reality that we now live in. As many of us tried to figure out what coronavirus was and what quarantining and lockdown meant, we became a nation of bakers. Baking became so popular that I remember finding it hard to find basic ingredients like flour and yeast in the shops.
In the UK for example, a thousand-year-old mill to keep up with the shortage of flour in the shops. In Australia, we started to turn to and our local cafes to provide us with our baking supplies.
Baking soothed us for some reason. The countless sourdough bread making experts emerging out of the pandemic were testament to that. As it turned out there was science behind why we wanted to bake.
Before the pandemic, scientists noted how people were turning to baking to quieten their anxiety. “Baking is mindful. Mindfulness means paying attention to yourself in the moment and not being in the past or the future, but really being there,” Philip Muskin, a Columbia University psychiatry professor .
Baking, much like cooking and cleaning, are self-care activities that . The task of baking also makes us become present, forcing us to focus on the task at hand, which makes it a form of mindfulness.
For me baking did this and more. It also became an activity I could do with my daughter that we both enjoyed doing together. Plus, it was a way for me to teach her a set of skills, ones that will see her through her lifetime.
This time as we approached lockdown we knew that baking in our household would be back in a big way. So we made cookies, banana bread, and a I highly recommend. But was it enough to just cook for ourselves?
It was not something I thought about until I happened to see a that provides soup, bread and baked goods to the homeless community in Sydney. On a whim I decided to help out. Along with the help of my daughter we cooked a big batch of soup for the homeless. This time cooking for people who needed it more than we did, felt better than cooking just for us.
There are others of course who are , and I admire and look up to them. I have also been inspired so that in the coming days we hope to do more rounds of cooking and baking to help out.
The pandemic it seems is not going away anytime soon. Until we find a way to get on top of it, we need to turn to activities that help us cope with the uncertainty of the times we live in. Stress baking is just one of many activities that people are doing to help them get through this time.
For me as the years have gone by, I've watched my daughter take over more of the baking tasks in the kitchen. I feel almost like a mother bird watching her baby learning to fly. There will be lots more lessons and learnings for us both ahead, but for now I’m glad that we are both able to get through this together, all with a tasty slice of cake in hand.
