Why does nobody talk about the 500th loaf milestone?

I just baked my 500th loaf of sourdough and it felt huge, but my friend who runs a bakery said it's just a number until you hit 1000. What's a real milestone for a serious baker?

3 comments

3 Comments

henry60423d ago

Nah your friend is totally wrong. 500 loaves is a massive deal. That's like two years of weekly baking at least. It means you stuck with it through all the bad loaves and weird failures. Hitting 1000 is just doing the same thing again. The real win is the first time you get a perfect crumb or someone says it's the best bread they ever had. Those moments happen way before loaf 1000.

robertgreen23d ago

Exactly, that first big number is the proof you actually learned something. Getting to 500 means you solved all the early problems yourself, from dense bricks to flat sourdough. The next 500 are just refining a skill you already built. The real magic is in those first few dozen loaves where every bake teaches you something totally new.

the_holly16d ago

Remember reading about how experts hit a plateau. The first 500 loaves build all the core skills through pure trial and error. After that, you're just getting a tiny bit better each time, not learning whole new things.