Baker and a Tasty Dilemma

What the bloody hell am I supposed to do with my life. I'm nearly 30, unemployed, no qualifications, loads and loads of retail management experience but sick of retail after 13 years!!!!!

While I've been unemployed I've looked into various things, like minding animals, cooking, baking, reading, photography.... Just to see if there is a more creative aspect to my personality that I could exploit to make some seriously needed money!

After every experience I feel elation, purpose and drive. I'm searching, surfing, exploring each individual profession but everywhere I turn there seems to be a road block.

At the moment I'm thinking about looking into becoming a baker. To display the shallowness of my impulsiveness I just baked my first ever bread today! And it was slightly cheating because it was a ciabatta mix from Lidl. But it involved mixing, measuring and harshly of all: kneading.

Well let me tell you I kneaded like a motherfucker for 12 whole minutes. On YouTube Julia Childs and her pal kneaded their dough 850 times. Fuck that! I lied to my mother that I did it for 20 mins.

I must say that my mother displayed the kneading tachnique to me. She watches enough UKTV Food channel to know.

So kneaded bread needed a rest and so did I, so I went for a cigarette and some Facebook time. Researched some plaiting techniques and decided on a fancy technique called pain d'epi (wheat stalk bread) where you roll your dough into a long oblong shape. Take scissors and cut a triangle into dough (don't cut through) and turn to the right, cut again lower down and turn to the left, and repeat. What you get is a wheat stalk effect. Mine looked like a stalk of saggy old lady tits. So I changed the form to a fat plait.

Another rest for 45 mins, and bang into moist oven for 25. Next came heaven. Fresh bread was amazing and oh so so pretty!!! We did the knock test, all good. Had my homemade bread with some pate and some white wine. Amazing! And everyone agrees, so naturally with two peoples praise I've decided to pursue a career as a baker.

You see the problem is that four days ago I was passionately becoming a veterinary nurse after dog sitting for 27 hours.

So I can't tell if my brain and heart have caught up to each other so I've decided to do the only rational thing which is to bake more bread. Not just because I now have a passion for the art of the flour but because I've eaten all the bread and I want more!