From Fitness to Doughpe Fiend
In my last four months living in the States, I became that guy, the full-blown COVID-era sourdough evangelist.
“Hey guys, check out the ear on this loaf.”
“You ever tried baking sourdough?”
“Bro, look at the blister on this crust.”
I was insufferable, baking a loaf of bread every single day. Yes, every day. Possessed. A doughpe fiend.
At the time, I was working as a fitness instructor, where every working hour was a performance, a manager of energy, cheerleader, and drill sergeant all rolled into one. So when I’d come home to this silent lump of flour and water, just sitting there in the bowl, existing quietly and swelling slowly, it was like entering another world, a place where the energy didn’t go out but folded in. The dough didn’t need hype, feedback or applause. It just needed time and a little folding.
My schedule gave me enough flexibility to choreograph my day around its folds and fermentation. I’d dash home between classes, give is a quick fold, dash back to work, dash back home, tickle its tummy, rub its rump and then head back for a quick hour or two. It was the transformation I fell in love with, the way the dough morphed from grainy and sticky to smooth as a baby’s butt. Alive, responsive, charged with its own quiet energy. Each time I returned, my fingers would feel something entirely different.
Breadmaking
After the bulk fermentation, the dough reluctantly releases itself from the bowl in a subtle protest, drawing out the moment, clinging like a bear waking from hibernation. It oozes onto the table in silence, spreading slowly in all directions like a snail. A slow sprawl of freedom. Truth in motion.
Shaping: a dance of scraper, hand, and dough form a tight, but not-too-tight ball.
Rest.
Final fold. Light flour dusting. A deliberate sequence of folds, tightening the surface without overworking it and, puffy like a swollen burrito, she enters the banneton. Into the fridge for an early bedtime, its metabolism slows, yeast relaxes, flavor develops, acids deepen, and starches break down and complexity blooms.
After a chilly night in its flour-dusted sleeping bag, it’s ready for the sauna. I wake to the sharp beep of the oven, informing me of its blazing, 550°F internal temperature. Rub the goop from my eyes and flip the dough onto parchment, blade in hand, sharp enough to cut a fart. I draw it across the surface, quick and deliberate.
Dutch oven opened. A rush of smoke. Dough eased in, dutch oven closed, doughs fate sealed. Gases trapped inside the dough, (carbon dioxide and water vapor), expand rapidly, ballooning upward, and blooming like a flower.
Twenty minutes later, lid off. Admire the rise, the ear. 28 more minutes. SHOWTIME. Caramelization. Crunch. Flavor.
Then the bread sings.
Crackling, snapping and popping in a percussive ensemble of hot crust fracturing as it meets cool air. Thermal contraction. Trapped steam escapes through the tiny fissures in the outer shell. It’s the loaf’s way of exhaling. A crackling chorus.
Then comes the crumbs, exploding off the knife blade like shrapnel from a grenade. The slice topples away from the loaf like a falling domino.
First: butter. And lots of it. The kind of absurd amount where, if you were serving someone else, they'd silently think, Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of butter, but say nothing, because they’re polite.
Then, a generous pinch of flaky salt. Not that fine, iodized nonsense, but the real stuff, voluminous, crystalline, with texture and crunch, enough to catch the light and your attention.
At least one bite gets the salt treatment. The rest? Honey. But not the kind that comes from that sticky plastic bear. No, that thick, unfiltered, raw good-good. The kind you have to scoop with a spoon or knife, frothy and floral.
At the time, I was working as a fitness instructor, where every working hour was a performance, a manager of energy, cheerleader, and drill sergeant all rolled into one. So when I’d come home to this silent lump of flour and water, just sitting there in the bowl, existing quietly and swelling slowly, it was like entering another world, a place where the energy didn’t go out but folded in. The dough didn’t need hype, feedback or applause. It just needed time and a little folding.
My schedule gave me enough flexibility to choreograph my day around its folds and fermentation. I’d dash home between classes, give is a quick fold, dash back to work, dash back home, tickle its tummy, rub its rump and then head back for a quick hour or two. It was the transformation I fell in love with, the way the dough morphed from grainy and sticky to smooth as a baby’s butt. Alive, responsive, charged with its own quiet energy. Each time I returned, my fingers would feel something entirely different.
Following the Breadcrumbs to Switzerland
So before we left for Switzerland, I put my energy into finding a bakery and life laid out a trail of breadcrumbs. Nicole and I, self-appointed croissant connoisseurs, discovered, COPAIN a sourdough bakery tucked behind a retired firehouse in Bern’s Breitenrain district.
As if by divine intervention (or luck) would have it, we were in the right place at the right time when the owner, Patrice, stepped outside for some fresh air. I introduced myself and shared my yearning to bake. He invited me to join his world for a few weeks. It was one of those moments in life of awe. I had thought it, went for it and now here it was.
Inside COPAIN
I came into the bakery eager to absorb whatever I could, it was a chance to develop my skills and deepen my relationship with the craft of baking.
I watched and I learned.
Production started Wednesdays with starter feedings, as every single item utilizes the sourdough starter. I came in on Thursdays and Fridays for full-scale prep days, where the production was focused on pastries and laminated doughs: croissants, pains au chocolat, cardamom buns, sweet yeasted treats. Beautiful, delicate things
One tray after another, Hundreds of them. Folding. Rolling. Cutting. Repetition.
On Saturday, the doors open at 9 a.m., but the baking starts well before sunrise. By 3 a.m., baking is underway. As soon as a batch emerges, another batch goes in. By 8:45 a.m., everything is out and placed upon the counters cooling off, ready for the inevitable rush that begins when the clock strikes 9.
To be frank, I realized quickly that I wasn’t in love with making croissants, it felt more like an assembly line than working with alive dough. The magic I sought in baking didn’t live in their layers. What I loved was the process of making bread. Simple, slow-fermented, soulful bread. Sourdough. Dough that breathes and teaches you something about time, temperature, and communication. But that didn’t stop me from giving everything I had for I respected Patrice, he was a man of true quality and believed with sword and scale that the truth lies in quality. And so looked at the job more through the lens of how he treated people, customers and staff alike. His standards and his dedication. On chilly mornings, I watched Patrice set out self-serve thermoses of homemade chai and locally sourced Länggasse tea for customers, teas that elsewhere would cost six francs a cup. At COPAIN, they’re simply offered. Leftover croissant trimmings? He had us roll them into mini pastries for the kids. During our shifts, he’d always prepare a shared meal: a warm seasonal soup or a plate of thinly sliced prosciutto from the local butcher. Actions i wish to one day be able to do for my employees or patreons, actions i felt are how the world is suppose to be run by. So I kept showing up. I did what was asked of me and I did it to the best of my ability.
After a few months of being his extra hand, I allowed myself to hope. I thought maybe, if a position ever opened, he would think of me. I thought maybe I’d proven myself, if not as a pastry chef, then at least as someone who cared, who could be shaped and sharpened into something closer to what he needed. Someone worth investing in. Then one day, scrolling through Instagram, I saw his post. He was hiring. Looking for help. And my stomach slightly dropped. Maybe it was the language barrier. Maybe it was my lack of technical pastry skill. Maybe it was something I did or didn’t do.
Whatever the reason, I hadn’t made the cut.
In the months that followed, the rejection lingered—stinging deeper than I’d expected. Especially as I sent résumé after résumé into the void, collecting rejections like parking tickets, flailing helplessly in the Swiss job market.
I questioned everything: my skills, my value, myself. But that’s another story.
There’s a unique kind of heaviness that comes not just from being told “no,” but from not knowing why. From sensing that even your best effort wasn’t enough and not having the explanation of what was missing. Whatever Patrice’s reason for saying no was his alone. But the mirror had its own quiet response for me: You didn’t want the job anyway. You don’t even like making croissants. You just need money because you’ve got a kid on the way. It was true. As beautiful as they are, croissants never stirred my soul the way bread did. His kitchen ran more like a pastry factory than a bakery, and deep down, I didn’t want it. My heart wasn’t in the lamination or the butter blocks.
And I began to wonder, what if the subconscious is powerful enough to make decisions before we consciously do? What if, beneath the surface, deeper truths and subtle shades of who we really are and what we really want, are already shaping the world around us, beaming out into the ether like quiet radio signals? And in this case… maybe Patrice picked up on the frequency.
Yes, I was heartbroken. But alongside the grief came a kind of wonder. A curiosity about the quiet intelligence of the subconscious. Carl Jung believed the subconscious wasn’t just a private storage vault of memory and instinct, but a bridge, an invisible tunnel, leading to the collective unconscious: a vast, shared psychic architecture that exists beneath individual awareness. Imagine an invisible spider web, stretched right before our eyes across time and consciousness, with each one of us a node. The web is ancient. Tremble one thread, and the others feel it. We are connected, not metaphorically, but psychically, energetically, through a symbolic language older than any tongue. Archetypes, dreams, gut feelings, synchronicities: these are whispers from the web. Jung didn’t think we were isolated minds making choices, he saw us as parts of a greater whole shaped by forces we don’t fully understand. When something stirs in the depths of your being, an urge, a warning, a knowing, it may not come from you alone. It may rise from the web.
Modern neuroscience has found that brain activity begins before we think we’ve made a choice. What we believe to be conscious intent is sometimes just us catching up to what our subconscious already decided. The "you" who acts may not be the “who” you think.
And if you have time to continue this digression, lets entertain reincarnation, that perhaps this web is not just between people alive now, but between selves we've been before. Perhaps the instincts that guide us, the who we ares, are not only from this lifetime but from many. The baker who shapes dough by feel may be guided by hands that shaped it in a different century. The reason we fall in love with certain things, or certain people, so instantly, so deeply, may be because the thread connecting us is simply being tugged again.
So when I wonder whether my lack of enthusiasm for pastry revealed itself to Patrice before I ever said a word, maybe it did. Maybe that quiet passion, that love for dough, had spoken louder than I meant it to.
Regardless, my attempt to find a steady job ended with a “try again”.
In the meantime, it gave me some extra time to prepare for what was just around the corner.