Issue #113: Creative cycles, burnout, and starting over

Chatting with OG food blogger Joy the Baker

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Interview by

Aliza Sir

. Edited by

Aja Frost

.

I’ve always loved Joy the Baker’s blog. There’s something about the way she writes — straightforward, funny, real — that makes you trust her completely in the kitchen.

Joy Wilson

has been Joy the Baker since 2008 (back when food blogging was just beginning!), and she’s still at it, which feels kind of miraculous in the internet age. She taught herself to bake on the job, started the blog as a way to learn and ask questions, and has built a whole beautiful life around it — which isn’t surprising at all after we had a chance to chat.

Now, she’s turning her garage in tiny Bellville, Texas (population: 4,000) into a pop-up bakery, learning to work with local flour, and trying new things that scare her — like launching

Baked In with Joy the Baker

, riding motorcycles, opening a bakery, and starting a family.

We talked about creative cycles, why her forties have been her favorite decade yet, and what it’s like to build community when you move somewhere brand-new…

On being an OG food blogger:

Gosh, I’ve been Joy the Baker since 2008! I feel like there aren’t all that many bloggers who started around when I did that are still doing it. There’s me, there’s Deb, there’s a handful of people. The blog came about as a way to learn. I’m a self-taught baker. I finagled my way into a baking job. So then I had to hurry up and teach myself how to bake in that specific environment in order to survive. I would get home from my job and be like, okay, let me try that again and see if it works. [As Joy the Baker], I wasn’t so much positioning myself as an authority on baking — it was more the space where I was asking questions and teaching myself and learning.

It still shocks and excites me that this is a career at all — and that I’m still doing it! I feel very grateful for it.

The site of the pop-up bakery… coming soon! (Source: Joy Wilson.)

On her upcoming project:

I’m currently turning my garage workshop into a pop-up bakery opening this fall. Yesterday afternoon, I tested a cinnamon roll recipe. I already have a cinnamon roll recipe — but I want to make sure it’s the best one possible and a recipe for production, meaning it needs to be able to be frozen for a while, and then baked from frozen... And I’m using a new local flour from a mill just outside Austin for this entire project. They grind 100% Texas grains. I’m realizing that baking exclusively with their flours is a bit of a different ball game.

The local flour Joy’s using in all of her bakery goods. (Source: Joy Wilson.)

On creative cycles:

I’m feeling like I’m in a season of failure, to be honest, because I’m not getting the results I want.