What bread-baking taught me about mentorship. And the naming of my sourdough.

Like millions worldwide, I got my hands into flour, water, and many ingredients during the lockdown making bread. It’s been two years, and baking continues to relax me, provide a unique tactile focus, and offer me the pleasure of breaking homemade bread with other people. There’s something basic, human, and romantic about baking with sourdough.

Working with humans as they contemplate their next step, a new adventure, or next project, is as interesting to me as it is to them. I have been advising, coaching, consulting, and mentoring interchangeably for most of my life. However, it is only lately that I’ve focused on mentoring.

Here’s my approach to find the links between bread-baking and mentoring or create them all together: readiness, ingredients, the process, and the journey.

Readiness is key

A sourdough starter is made of flour and water. Given enough time and the right temperature, the fermented mixture becomes a leavening agent that naturally creates a culture of yeast and bacteria. Bakers use some of their starters to germinate another batch of flour, water, mixed with other ingredients before putting it into an oven. All this can happen only when the starter is ready. Usually, it shows activity by doubling its volume.

Sourdough starter. Photo by Margaret Jaszowska on Unsplash

As a mentor, you walk with another person on their journey as they reinvent their business, redesign their life, or make small yet impactful decisions. No journey can start before both mentor and mentee are ready to take the first step. Most of the time, the mentee defines the cadence and intensity of the support they’re getting from their mentor. Like a good dough quenched with water, the best human journeys are the ones soaked in humility.

Ingredients

The better the ingredients, the tastier the end product. I try to get the flour from a local mill. They source the best and make the right mix for an amateur baker like me. I use bottled water. I wish I could source it from some 2000-meter elevation spring somewhere in Lebanon.

Just like the Scotts make their single malts in Islay because of its unique water quality.

As for the many other ingredients I use, I get my rosemary from the garden of two of my friends. The honey is of a Cleopatra caliber. Pecans of the crunchiest Missouri standards. As for all other not so minor additions, I get the best sun-dried tomatoes, cheeses, raisins, chocolate, salt, ginger, clover, and cinnamon.

The finest two elements of a transformational journey of one person, the mentee, is another knowledgeable, flexible, attentive, and empathetic person, the mentor. Just like dough gets proofed in a basket for hours, the two explorers on their journey decide on the best way to communicate among them. Then, they work together and, along the way, sketch the mentee’s journey step by step, change by change, progress by progress, and win after win. Mentors come ready. They offer instruments from their curated toolset to help their companions. They support them in clarifying a point, deciding, seeing a perspective, jumping a hurdle, or breathing to build patience and confidence.

Sun-dried tomatoes, cheese, half wheat half white flour in a proofing basket

And the process

A good process helps both travelers stay in check. Deviating from a process is not always detrimmental to the journey. Do it with caution and courage. If not, your loaf may end up with the dogs.

It also depends on the dogs, mind you. Some of them might go “Thank you, but no thank you. Woof Woof. 3aw 3aw.”

Mentorship is usually a long-term process starting by establishing a trusting relationship between the two individuals. Mentors do their best to be a sounding board, and an honest, trusted, and nonjudgemental confidant. A mentorship period can go from a few months to a year or longer, like a rich loaf of sourdough bread can take anywhere from 12 to 48 hours. It’s a process that needs its time. Until the right moment arrives to …

Enter the oven

Something happens when you put a room-temperature dough in a preheated cast iron at 240 Celcius and then bake it in an oven for 30–45 minutes. It gets a kick. It’s woken up, bothered maybe, but it also expands in volume and turns from a raw mix to a flavored crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside loaf of bread that even makes Scrooge smile.

On their journey, mentees will face changes in their environment, the people they deal with, or the methods they use. Their journey will take them places. Uncomfortable places sometimes, and it’s the best way to grow. To get crunchy on the outside as they build resilience and soft on the inside as they better understand themselves and the people they deal with. A self-discovering explorer will invariably experience change, growth, and, sometimes, a complete transformation. The best of these situations is when they have a wingman flying by their side. Someone who listens and analyzes with them, watches for their blind spots, and is there.

A little extra in the oven

The journey

The best journeys are the ones that are fun and adventurous; when mentor and mentee embark with curiosity and a desire to learn and change. Surprises are a guarantee. So are endings. Most mentorship agreements conclude at some point while others may last a lifetime. All words, conversations, documents, and ideas are left with the mentee to develop and grow. Mentors lock them up in their memory vaults. But whichever way it concludes, when mentorship is done correctly, a bond would have been established that leaves leaves both mentor and mentee enriched. Both grow out of the process. And what a reward!

Warmer in bunches

When you raise your sourdough starter, they tell you to name it. I don’t. It’s not Hugo, Ezmeralda, Nazih, Nazeef, Haifa, nor AbouEzouz. It’s just a sourdough starter to me. It died on me twice already due to travel, and I had to start all over. I’ll name them, him, her, when I have it survive me for over a year. After that, the naming, the attachment, the care, the feeding, and the separation would have been worth it. After all, it would have been feeding my family and friends for 365 sunrises.

How close do you want to get on your journey?