Baking wasn’t always important to me. Quite honestly, it’s become a more recent thing in my life, and I have less than a year under my belt for doing any legitimate baking. (As of this post at any rate.) Sure, I’ve loved to bake cookies with my grandmother when I was a young girl, but as I grew older, it just became a thing to do once in a while, typically around the holidays.
However, that all changed last year. You see, in December of 2022, I ended up on bed rest for a chest injury. It changed my life in a lot of ways. And I was stuck in bed more often than not, until late July of 2024. Just prior to the injury however, I had learned about sourdough bread and starters.
It piqued my interest to know that you could make your own leavening agent at home, with a sourdough starter. So, I started researching more, knowing that my husband, Jeff, loved bread. He talked about bread often, especially about his times in Europe, when he would have it baked fresh. So, to make him happy, I figured I should learn how to make it myself. I figured if nothing else, he would love it as a treat once in a while, and I would have fun playing with the dough.
Then, because of the chest injury, I couldn’t do anything other than lots of research. I joined countless groups on Facebook to learn more about baking bread. I watched videos on YouTube on how to knead the dough. It was all I could do, for nearly two years. Simply dream of baking bread.
Thankfully, God saw fit to heal me at the end of July in 2024. But that didn’t mean I could go straight into baking bread. I had lost a lot of muscle mass due to the nearly 2 years of bed rest, and I was weaker than I had been in my entire life.
But, taking things slowly I found a recipe online for a no-knead yeasted bread. It wasn’t sourdough, and it wasn’t anything fancy, but it was 5 simple ingredients, minimal effort, and a loaf of fresh baked bread. I was sold! I convinced Jeff to buy a cast iron dutch oven so I could make the loaf, and he happily obliged.
That first loaf of bread, changed my outlook on bread entirely. Growing up, sure I enjoyed bread for sandwiches, or at restaurants. But I had never had fresh out of the oven baked bread before, and when I took my first bite into the very first loaf that I baked myself, I knew this would be something I’d want to do for the rest of my life.
I would bake bread. Done were the days when I bought bread. No. It was fresh baked at home bread or bust! I began baking it for friends when I went to their houses. I began to bake it for family when they came over for the holidays. And I began to bake it every 3 days for Jeff and myself to eat daily.
Finally, a new dream arrived for me in regards to bread… What if I started to sell it to people around me? Could I do it? Should I do it? How will it work? I’m still working on a lot of these questions, but I have some things sorted out in that endeavor. This website is a part of that process, and while I’m not open officially yet for bread sales, I am excited to announce that plans are in the works for me to do so. I also hope to use the extra funds from the bread sales to fund my way through Ministry School. But, that’s a story for a different day.
You can bet that bread for me now is so much more than something to simply bake and eat. Now it is a delicious and hearty gift to give others, that is filled with my love, dreams, and hard work. It is also God’s gift to me, to enjoy and share with others, because He saw fit to heal me. I hope one day that you, dear reader, are able to enjoy a taste of my Faith Full Bread.
Blessings,
Jess Dobbs
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