Why baking is the best thing since sliced bread for anxiety
Tome Morrissy-swan meets the converts who extol the mindful benefits of kneading a simple loaf
Every weekend, after a tiring week’s work, I – like everyone else – need to unwind. For some, this comes in the form of meditation; for others, exercise. But over the past year I have found a particularly wholesome way of letting off steam: baking bread.
Whether a hearty wholemeal sandwich loaf or a springy, tangy sourdough (with mixed results), an evening spent baking provides an antidote to the working day.
And I’m not alone. With anxiety and depression on the rise, baking a loaf, – using a little patience, some know-how and plenty of aggression busting kneading–has been hailed as an alternative to the therapist’s chair.
In the sweltering summer of 2018, Kitty Tait’s parents were searching for ways to help their daughter, then 14, to combat her depression. They tried walking, knitting and sewing, to no avail. “Nothing took my mind off sadness,” she says, “until I watched Dad mix flour, water and salt in a bowl, and leave it overnight. In the morning, he scooped it into a tin, and put it in the oven.”
Her father, Alex, hadn’t baked for a long time and, while the resulting loaf was a little stodgy, it was edible. “To me, that’s utter magic,” Kitty, now 15, beams.
She had previously found baking stressful, but the simplicity of bread was intriguing. A self-described perfectionist, baking taught her a valuable lesson: “You can’t be a perfectionist with bread.”
Chris Young, of the Real Bread Campaign, which is behind this week’s Real Bread Week (tagline “Together We Rise”), has conducted several surveys on the topic. “I’ve received many responses from people who have found baking real bread makes them less anxious, calmer or more relaxed.”
Giles Farrington, from York, spent 14 years as an Army medic before “retiring” in 2003 to work in a local hospital. A few years later, Giles began a “slow decline”. He missed the tight network and “being part of
‘Making bread takes time so it means your hands, mind and heart are connecting’
something”. Sleep problems, nightmares and flashbacks – symptoms common in PTSD – began to hinder his life. “I became quite insular, and really didn’t want to do anything,” he tells me.
His GP, also a veteran, put him in touch with Combat Stress, which recommended Help for Heroes. It was at a veterans’ cooking competition where Farrington first baked. “I really enjoyed it. There was also the Great British Bake Off, Paul Hollywood was quite cool, and suddenly men baking wasn’t frowned upon.”
Thus, from 2014, he began to bake regularly: “You can get lost in the kneading.” Unlike exercise, which he describes as a “drudge”, baking provided that physical release, as well as a mental distraction.
Tami Isaacs Pearce, from Hertfordshire, has always wrestled with anxiety. While studying for a master’s degree, it became so allencompassing that she dropped out right before the end. “Anxiety becomes all that you are,” she says. Treatment included medication and mindfulness, but only when a friend took her to a baking workshop did she feel progress. “The minute I pushed my hands into that dough, I just fell in love.”
As insomnia hit that very evening, Pearce went to the kitchen and mixed some dough. “I wasn’t struggling for breath, my shoulders dropped, my body stilled, my hands didn’t shake, I remember thinking ‘something’s going on here’,” she says. She has since opened the Karma Bakery – known for its challah bread – in Hampstead Heath.
Michelle Stratford, founder of community project Planet Leicester Bakers, says that whereas cake making requires perfection, bread “can come out of the oven looking wonky, and people will still be amazed and delighted at what they and others have achieved”, building confidence.
At The Sourdough School in Northamptonshire, founder Vanessa Kimbell is a keen researcher into the nutritional and wellbeing aspects of eating proper bread. “The wellness industry talks about meditation, but for some people that’s quite challenging. Making sourdough takes time and consideration, so it means that your hands, mind and heart are connecting; it’s a form of being in the moment, which in itself is therapeutic,” she says.
Back in Watlington, Kitty, who is homeschooled, juggles her time between studies and catering for the community via Orange Bakery, which she opened with her father. It is named after her favourite orange dungarees, which were the only clothes she wanted to wear that difficult summer.
Initially delivering the results to locals by bike, their bricks and mortar site opened last year. “I probably haven’t had any depression for about seven months now,” says Kitty.
Many bakers cite the wider community aspect. “It’s quite a social network,” says Farrington. “I’ve never met a grumpy baker,” he adds.