Status Updates From Becoming a Baker

The most gratifying part, Martin says, was the thrill of inserting themselves into a profession that has existed largely unchanged for hundreds and hundreds of years. "I'm making my way into this grand lineage, this process, and I have just a tiny, tiny bit of knowledge, enough to know that there's so much that I need to understand."

She's baked birthday cakes for customers when they were teenagers, gone on to bake their wedding cakes, and is now baking cakes for their baby showers. ... "It's generations," she says of how Ladybird has influenced the neighborhood.

The outcome of baking is prettier than masonry, and associated with a certain kind of decadence, but the process involves no less sweat or endurance than construction a building out of brick and mortar.