🎙️ Introducing Breaking Bread with Rachel Parker — A New Podcast Series Inside the Academy Hey Crust & Crumb bakers! 👋

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I've got something new dropping inside the Academy, and I think you're going to love it.

Meet Rachel Parker — your new favorite storyteller, and the host of our brand new podcast series: Breaking Bread with Rachel Parker.

So what IS this?

Breaking Bread is a short-form storytelling podcast — each episode is just 5 to 8 minutes long — built for bakers who want to go deeper than recipes and techniques.

Rachel is going to take you on a journey through the hidden history, myths, superstitions, and legends that live inside every loaf of bread you've ever baked. Think of it as sitting around a fire with someone who knows all the good stories — except the stories are all about bread.

What kind of stories are we talking about?

Things like:

🍞 Why placing a baguette upside-down on your table was once considered a death omen — and what the executioner had to do with it

✝️ The quiet blessing that European bakers traced over every loaf before cutting it — and why it went way beyond religion

🪙 The Christmas bread with a coin baked inside — and what happened to the family who found it

⚔️ The role bread played in revolutions, famines, and wars

🌙 Bread spirits, haunted loaves, miracle ovens, and kitchen magic from cultures all over the world

Every episode is a single story — tight, vivid, and told with warmth and a little whimsy. Perfect for a commute, a rest between folds, or whenever you want to feel connected to the long, beautiful history of bakers before us.

Why bread stories?

Because bread isn't just food. It never was.

It's been currency, prayer, punishment, protection, and community. It's been placed in tombs, baked for gods, marked for the condemned, and broken over tables to seal a peace. Every culture on earth has a bread story. And most of us who bake — really bake — already feel that. There's something alive in this craft.

Rachel is here to put words to that feeling.

Where do I find it?

New episodes will drop right here in the Academy, and also on our YouTube channel. Each episode will come with a discussion prompt because honestly, some of these stories are going to make you want to talk — and this is the place to do it.

The first episode is already up:👉 "The Executioner's Loaf: The Dark Secret Behind an Upside-Down Bread"

Go give it a listen and come back here to tell us: did your family have any bread rules growing up? Any superstitions in your kitchen you never really questioned?

Drop it in the comments. I have a feeling this is going to open up some incredible conversations.

Welcome to Breaking Bread. 🍞

— Henry

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