Why Bake Bread at Home?

Baking bread at home makes no sense. Bread is pretty cheap. Even a large artisanal loaf of bread wouldn’t cost more than ten dollars, and it would take me a week to consume it. Given the amount of labor that goes into baking even one loaf, I would need to charge a hundred dollars if I were to sell it. If I baked ten, I might save money, but I wouldn’t be able to eat them in time. I don’t have a large enough freezer to store ten large loaves of bread, either. Finally, in most cases, professional bakers can bake better bread than I can. The math doesn’t work, no matter how I think about it.

If it’s not for saving money or for better bread, why would anyone bake at home? It’s somewhat like climbing a mountain where there are easy and hard sides. Either way, you arrive at the same place, yet mountaineers often choose the harder side. Why? The view at the top is the same, regardless of how you got there. Your bread likely doesn’t taste any better than those sold at your neighborhood bakery.

Desire is about what you get at the end. Your urge to bake a loaf of bread or climb a mountain is not a desire because there are much easier ways to get the same results.

A desire is also a moving target. The feeling of satisfaction is short-lived. Almost as soon as you get what you want, you see something else even more desirable. And, it makes no difference how you get it. If marrying a rich man or woman would get you there quicker, you would.

As you can probably see, the urge to bake bread or climb a mountain is fundamentally different from desire. It’s a drive. Some people have only desires, no drives. They are perpetually dissatisfied with their lives because dissatisfaction is a necessary condition for having desires. They are typically successful in life, but they are dissatisfied with their success too.

People who have only drives, no desires, are typically unsuccessful because they do everything the hard way. There is no need for them to learn, say, how to play the piano because there are plenty of great pianists in the world. But listening can only give you pleasure. A genuine sense of satisfaction can only be achieved by playing or baking yourself.