Kneading to relax? How coronavirus prompted a surge in stress baking

Carl Anhalt hadn’t made a loaf of bread in years. But stuck in his New York City apartment during the coronavirus lockdown, he started thinking about bread again. Anhalt works as a high school math teacher, and like many educators he now spends his weeks dealing with meetings, emails and distance learning. But when his school recently went on spring break, he began working on a sourdough starter, posting pictures of his progress on Instagram.

He says it’s helped him feel productive and deal with stress. “It was a good exercise in mindfulness and a distraction from thinking about the world, so in those ways it certainly eased some anxiety,” he says.

Baking your way through anxiety or uncertainty is nothing new – in fact anxiety has been on the rise since 2016, according to the American Psychiatric Association, and baking has climbed with it. But with the pandemic confining millions to their homes, the practice is rising faster than a packet of quick-acting yeast.

While cakes, cookies, noodles and pastas are all proving popular, bread has emerged as the baking project of choice. Yeast shortages have been reported in supermarkets across the UK and the US, with yeast suppliers calling the current demand “unprecedented”. In France and Australia, flour is becoming hard to find. Google has documented an all-time high in queries about bread, including yeast, and “how to make bread without yeast.”

Clemence Gossett, the founder and co-owner of The Gourmandise School in Santa Monica, California, says she was initially surprised by the turn to bread – she initially thought that people prefer making cakes and cookies. But she surmises that people have been attracted to bread baking not just because of its practicality as a grocery staple, but because of its meditative qualities during challenging times.

Rolling, kneading and mixing all have a calming quality, forcing you to be in the moment and not stuck mentally in the future or past. That may help bakers manage the uncertain emotions. “I think that there is this desire for people to express themselves and it’s really hard to do that when you can’t communicate and have this back and forth with others,” says Gossett. “We have lost that in a way. There’s this wonderful tangibility with baking and lets you work out emotions and express yourself.”

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Some studies show that baking is connected to positive feelings. Psychologists have started exploring cooking and baking as a therapeutic tool to help people dealing with things like depression and anxiety, and a 2016 study, published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, suggests that people who frequently take a turn at small, creative projects report feeling more relaxed and happier.

That makes sense to Gossett – her cooking school offers a class that combines therapy and pie-baking. The class creates a space for people to work on anxiety, particularly perfectionism, using the simple, delicious experience of learning how to make pies.

Ken Forkish, the owner of Ken’s Artisan Bakery in Portland, Oregon, and author of the book Flour Water Salt Yeast, says that people are also looking to make their own bread at home because trips to the grocery store have become riddled with stress. “People want to have fresh bread while avoiding the grocery store as much as possible,” he says. “You’ve got time on your hands, and maybe you have wanted to learn to bake bread and now you have the time to do it.”

Time is a necessary ingredient for bread, Forkish adds, and that extra time at home has prompted bakers to attempt things they may not have before – such as sourdough, which can take days to produce. Professional bakers are turning to social media to demystify the process, and amateur bakers are posting their homemade experiments. The bakers at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco, which helped kickstart the global sourdough craze, have posted instructional videos on making sourdough starter and their signature sourdough loaves which have been viewed tens of thousands of times.

Forkish says the joy of baking lies in producing something tangible amid a pandemic in which so many things, from socializing to school, have shifted online. “There’s a lot of pleasure in learning a new skill, especially something tangible, as opposed to all the things we do virtually,” he says. “The satisfaction of transforming flour into a beautiful loaf of bread coming out of the oven is just fundamentally satisfying.”

Gossett has put bread how-to videos up on her baking school’s YouTube channel, and she takes questions from home bakers on Instagram. The school also has a hotline and email address where people can reach out; she said the response has been overwhelming – running the hotline has become a full-time job, answering questions about which ingredients can be substituted or what meals to make with a random assortment of food in the fridge and pantry. Gossett is even doing FaceTime calls to coach people through their baking challenges.

Gossett thinks the pandemic has prompted a shift in how people view baking as a part of their days. “Instead of asking: how can I make this fit in my schedule, it’s more about how can I make myself available to learn this new process.”