I want to give you a real update on something I’ve been building, and then I want to tell you about something that happened to me today. The update first. I’ve been heads-down on a new course called From Oven to Market based on my book of the same name. It’s the course I’ve wanted to build for years: how to actually sell the bread you bake. Pricing. Packaging. Booth design. Customer connection. Scaling without burning out. Nine modules, a full recipe library built for selling, an AI tool that turns your story into a real website. The whole thing. It should have been finished last week. It is not finished. Life got in the way the way life does, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But it is close. Very close. I am in the last stretch and I want you to hear it from me before I start announcing dates. Here is the part I really wanted to share with you today. A box arrived on my doorstep this morning from a member of our community. Carolyn Bajoie runs a cottage bakery in Baton Rouge called NANA’s Old Fashioned Teacakes. She sent me a sample of her work. I want to tell you what that unboxing was like, because it is exactly what I am teaching in the course. White shipping box. Weight in your hands. Open the flap and there is pink crinkle paper folded over the contents, not stuffed, folded. Pull it back and there is the first teacake in a clear sleeve with a white label, a little teapot logo, “NANA’s Old Fashioned Teacakes, Baton Rouge, LA,” phone number right on the label. Lift it out and there are three more stacks underneath, sleeved, tied, labeled. Stacked the way you stack things you are proud of. I had not eaten a single bite when I started writing this. I needed you to understand the experience of the box first, because that is the lesson. Customers eat with their eyes. The first impression is the package. The anticipation is part of the product. Carolyn understands this in her bones. I am going to feature her ( @Carolyn Bajoie ) in the course as a real example of what presentation looks like when somebody takes it seriously. I will also tell you the teacakes themselves are excellent. Soft, lightly sweet, the kind of recipe somebody has been making for years and refuses to change.

This is my first time trying to make sourdough bread. I followed the instruction for overnight and by the time I woke this morning it had already peaked and fail. I fed it a 1:1:1, 60g starter, 60g flour; 60g water at 7:20 this morning and it is 11:30 and it has not risen any. Not sure if I did something wrong.