The Grain Less Traveled
Baking has always been a deeply personal act for me. With well over a decade of professional baking experience under my belt, I’ve found myself reflecting more and more on what baking means to me. Not just on a technical level, but also emotionally.
This blog is a journal of sorts; a reflection on the study I’ve dedicated my entire adult life to.
Breaducated started with a simple initiative: make education accessible through a tangible, real world application. In many ways, that’s still very true. But more and more, Breaducated has become my personal field guide and philosophy; a place for me to explore what grains have taught me, what I’m still learning, and how baking has become a lifeline for the moments when I feel most misunderstood in the world.
Lately, I’ve been working exclusively with spelt. An ancient grain with a delicate gluten structure that is often considered temperamental and finicky in comparison to wheat. In a lot of ways, this has become a deeply personal project. I see myself in spelt. In how it has been labelled too unpredictable, too delicate, too specific in it’s needs.
As someone who has found it difficult to find her place in this world, to find a sense of community, and to feel understood by those around her, I have learned so much from and related so heavily to spelt as a grain. It’s need for gentleness. It’s desire to be seen for who it is, not to be compared to modern wheat. Spelt doesn’t act like modern wheat. It ferments faster. Its gluten is more delicate. It doesn’t hold shape the same way, and it doesn't like to be forced. Working with it requires a different kind of listening. And the more time I’ve spent with it —testing hydration, experimenting with lamination, watching it collapse and rise again —the more I’ve realized: spelt is teaching me how to approach things with less control and more care.
And so, this is the introduction to The Grain Diaries. Part personal reflection, part scientific log of my journey with spelt. Yes, this is about the science of grain, gluten, and baking. But it’s also about identity, failure, discovery, and intention. It’s about the lessons we learn when we truly listen to our ingredients and ourselves in the process.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about:
What makes spelt different from wheat
How gluten behaves across ancient grains
What I’ve learned from trying to laminate with a flour that resists definition
And how all of this ties back to the core of Breaducated: that education is a right, and learning is most powerful when it’s experiential.
I don’t know exactly where this path is leading yet. But I know I need to walk it.
So… this is where I’ll start.
With the grain. With the questions. With the need to understand, and the hope that maybe someone else out there is wondering about the same things, too.
Welcome to The Grain Diaries. I’m glad you’re here.