Get a taste of Bake & Pray!

read a sample chapter + a prayer, recipe, and road trip update to start your week

Oct 06, 2024

I can hardly believe it—the week is finally here!

Bake & Pray releases out into the world on Tuesday!!!

You’ve got until midnight Monday to pre-order your copy and forward proof of your purchase to bakepraypreorder@gmail.com for free access to the Bake & Pray video companion!

Pre-Order Bake & Pray Now

For today’s newsletter, I’m giving you a little foretaste of the book with an excerpt from the introduction. I like to call Bake & Pray a cookbook meets prayer book. It will teach you all you need to know to bake a delicious loaf of bread and to use your time baking that bread as a form of prayer. It will also provide you with recipes for every season of the liturgical calendar drawn from Christian traditions throughout history and around the world. Finally, it has a collection of prayers for all different kinds of baking occasions.

It’s a great resource for individuals, families, homeschoolers, and more. Buy a copy for yourself and as a gift for all your bread or church history loving friends!

Mise en Place

The clock on my car’s dashboard read 3:42 a.m. as I pulled out of my parking spot on Marion Street. I drove past the school before turning left onto Kirkland and heading toward Harvard Square.

Boston—or, technically, Cambridge-Somerville—is a tough city for a single woman in her early twenties trying to get her feet under her. The weather is intense. The cost of living is high. The people are driven. I loved it, and I was perpetually exhausted and intimidated.

At this hour, though, the edge dulled. The city was silent. The streets were empty. The students who were on their way to become the next generation of judges, senators, and CEOs were sleeping, as every human has to do. I breathed slowly and deeply through the drive.

A few minutes later, I pulled up next to Sofra Bakery. I unlocked the door, turned on the lights, and flipped the switch to preheat the ovens. The muted roar of fans filled the space.

Soon the rest of the bakers would arrive, and we would chat around the big wooden table while weighing flour and brushing butter onto phyllo dough. Not long after, the front-of-house staff would walk in, and the rush to open would begin.

For the rest of the day, the bakery would be loud and busy. Space would be tight. I would rush up and down the back stairs carrying fifty-pound bags of flour and sugar or giant bins filled with dough.

But first I had an hour on my own—an hour of total silence to pull scones, morning buns, and brioche from the walk-in cooler and prepare them for baking.

In that silence, my movements slowed and I sensed the nearness of God. I prayed through hard decisions and complicated friendships, through job opportunities and painful moments at church. On Sundays, I rushed from the bakery to church, receiving Communion week after week with bread dough still stuck to my arms.

The dough in my hands at work, as well as the bread pressed into my palm at church, were tangible reminders that God was with me and that God cared.

Five years later, when I opened my own little bakery in the basement of a popsicle shop in Durham, North Carolina, those early-morning prayers came rushing back. By that point I had worked for a church, helping them build a bakery to support their ministry, and I’d written a book on the ways God meets us at the table. I’d gotten degrees in food studies at Boston University and in theology at Duke—all driven by the desire to understand how and why I sensed God so palpably in the kitchen. I learned a lot along the way. But no amount of reading or studying or writing could compare to the process of baking itself as a form of prayer.

No matter where you are on your baking journey or your prayer journey, God wants to meet you in the kitchen as well.

Whether you’ve been baking for years or you’re just learning, whether you’ve been praying for your whole life or you’re just exploring to see what it’s all about, this book was written with you in mind.

Thanks for reading Edible Theology! This post is public so feel free to share it.

I have been teaching the Bake & Pray method in churches and schools across the United States and Canada since 2016, helping others discover God’s nearness as they mix and shape dough. It is my greatest joy to watch people emerge from that workshop with confidence in their baking skills and with new appreciation for the importance of bread in the story of Scripture and the history of the church.

As you follow the steps to bake bread, and as you learn about the various processes at work along the way, you will learn something about the character of God and the life of faith. I hope that in the baking, you sense God’s presence, provision, and promise—and God’s incredible creativity as well. I hope you discover that baking bread and praying, together, each enrich the other. And I hope that, over time, baking as a spiritual practice will draw you into closer relationship with God while expanding your appreciation for the global and historical nature of Christ’s church—the body made one in the breaking of bread.

Enjoying what you’re reading? Pre-order today to get the book on your doorstep this week!

A Prayer Before a Book Launch

God who gave us both hands and minds

you delight when we worship you
in thought, word, and deed.

You know the labor that goes into writing,
into editing, marketing, and designing.
Each book an offering of an entire team
who longs for its pages to honor you.

Inhale: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart
Exhale: be pleasing to you, oh God.

Be with me as I release this book
into the world to do as you will.

Be with those who read it, who bake from it,
who give and receive it as a gift,
may it find its way into the hands of those who need it.

May it be a source of continual of joy.

Amen.

Lussekatter, or Santa Lucia Buns

drawn from Bake & Pray: Liturgies and Recipes for Baking Bread as a Spiritual Practice

1 cup (8 ounces) milk
6 cardamom pods, crushed
pinch saffron
5 cups (21.25 ounces) all-purpose or bread flour
1/4 cup (1.8 ounces) granulated sugar
1 tablespoon instant yeast
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 eggs
8 tablespoons (4 ounces)
unsalted butter, softened and cut into 1/4- inch cubes
40 golden raisins
Egg Wash

Pour the milk into a small saucepot and add the cardamom pods and saffron. Heat the milk over medium heat until it scalds (just begins to bubble and rise inside the pot), then turn off the heat and let cool.
Once the milk has cooled until just slightly warm to the touch (about 100°F), mix together the flour, sugar, yeast, and salt in a medium sized mixing bowl. Create a well in the center of the flour.
Strain the spices out of the milk, and pour the milk into well in the flour, along with the eggs and butter.
Mix the ingredients together with your hand until the flour is hydrated. You might have to squeeze the dough in order to help disperse the butter all the way through. Knead the dough inside the bowl using a method similar to the stretch and fold technique learned in part II of this book. Once the dough has come together, you can turn it into the table to knead until smooth and the dough passes the windowpane test.
Once the dough is smooth, place the dough back in the bowl. Cover and let the dough rest at room temperature until doubled in size, about an hour to an hour and a half.
Once risen, divide the dough into 20 pieces that are about 2 ounces each. Roll each piece of dough into 10-inch snakes, tapering the width of the snake near the end. Place a golden raisin at each end of the snake, one on the right and one on the left, then roll the dough around the raisins until it forms an S shape.
Place the buns on two baking sheets, about 4 inches apart, cover with a tea towel, and let rest for 30 minutes, or until you can gently poke the dough with one finger and the indentation slowly fills in about halfway. While the buns rest, preheat the oven to 325°F.
When the buns have finished their final proof, brush them with an egg wash and bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown on top. Let cool and enjoy dunked in a cup of coffee, or just on their own.

I’m hitting the road this week for a Bake & Pray Road Trip Book tour! I’d love to see you out there.

Durham, NC, October 8 — Pour Taproom, 6 pm || RSVP here

Chattanooga, TN, October 13 — Ekklesia Christian Fellowship, 6:30 pm || RSVP here

Birmingham, AL, October 14 — Little Professor Homewood, 6:00 pm || register here

Houston, TX, October 16 — Tallowood Baptist Church, 6:30 pm || register here

Dallas, TX, October 17 — Church of the Transfiguration, 7:00 pm || RSVP here

Nashville, TN, October 20 — Christ Church Cathedral, 7:00 pm || RSVP here

I’m also hosting small meet-ups in the following cities while passing through.
Text the keyword below to (209) 439-3975 to receive updates on times and locations:

Knoxville, TN, October 13 — text KNOXVILLE to (209) 439-3975

New Orleans, LA, October 15 — text NEWORLEANS to (209) 439-3975

Little Rock, AR, October 19 — text LITTLEROCK to (209) 439-3975

Cincinnati, OH, October 21 — text CINCINNATI to (209) 439-3975

Indianapolis, IN, October 24 — text INDIANAPOLIS to (209) 439-3975

St. Louis, MO, October 26 —text STLOUIS to (209) 439-3975