Book by syd biros by Freestyle Academy

The Midwife and the Baker

Syd Biros

Dedication Thank you so much to Freestyle Academey, and all my teachers who have helped me finish this book. Special thanks to Mr. Greco, Ms. Parkinson, and Mr. Taylor. I could not have done this without the encouragement of my family and my friend and film partner Aidan.

Table of Contents preface

introduction

chapter one: time-honored traditions

chapter two: passion for work

chapter three: creating and sustaining life

works cited

24 5

Preface

ven before I attended Freestyle, I had heard how difficult the documentary project was. I saw, first hand, the effects that the hours of interviews and writing had on my sister years ago. However, no one told me how rewarding it would be to look back on all that I’ve made during this time. Working long hours to complete my film and this book were all worth it to see how much my understanding of work and success has changed. The reason that I decided to do the documentary on The Midwife and the Baker was because of my film partner Aidan. Aidan’s family are devoted farmers market goers and buy bread from the Midwife and the Baker weekly. Since I am a firm believer in bread, doing a project on it was a very “tasty” idea. I was also interested in learning more

about how relatively small scale, family owned businesses were run. As excited as I was about the project it was daunting as well, considering that the Midwife and the Baker is located relatively far away in San Francisco. But Mac and Jaime, the owners of the Midwife and the Baker, were amazing and let us come bake with them many times to get a feel of how everything worked. Despite many cancelled interviews and lost camera batteries, we made it through this project with a deeper knowledge of what it means to be not just a baker and a midwife, but a person that betters society. I exponentially grew as both a writer and a filmmaker during this project as I learned how to power through challenges when it seemed like everything was going to fall apart. I also improved at working with other people and learning how to work

around a million different people’s schedules. This project has helped me grow and become a better person in ways that I could not even imagine beforehand, and none of it would have happened without the support of all my teachers at Freestyle and Aidan. I hope after reading this book you think about how you want to live your life and grow as a person, so you can help the world too.

The Mountain View Farmers Market

Introduction

he kitchen – with its whirring fans and the massive ovens – could not be mistaken for anything else. The bakers glide around the space, pushing cartons of raw dough from table to table, seeming to know exactly what to do without any guidance. The rhythmic motions of dough being weighed and shaped permeate the rooms as everyone works. Mac McConnell, the owner of The Midwife and the Baker, is the hub of all the activity; he spends the time thoughtfully directing the others in order to create the best bread possible. As he shapes and cuts the dough, he talks through the process of creating bread. Mac is all about feeling the bread to know when it’s ready. He says using

tactile sense is similar to how his partner, Jaime Shapiro, works as a Midwife. She assists with not only at-home births, but with helping women throughout their lives. Mac insists that “both professions, midwifery and baking, rely heavily on tactile reliance to tell you stuff about... when you’re growing a baby or you’re growing loaf of bread“ (McConnell). Jaime feels similarly about working with her hands as a midwife. She has a very holistic view of childbirth and the process of pregnancy. Jaime also informs us that midwifery is not just about the childbearing years. She wants to stress the importance of personal care through midwifery. Jaime asserts, “One of the hallmarks of midwifery care is

Midwife: Traditionally someone who assists women

during pregnancy and childbirth

informed choice” (Shapiro). Both Jaime and Mac work closely with their clients, whether it is bread or babies, to create the high quality “product” that they promote. The irony lies in The Baker and the Midwife’s location: 123 DNA Way. Surrounded by giant tech companies in the heart of Silicon Valley, The Midwife and the Baker stands out as a haven for these time-honored crafts that preserve the basics of human life. In times of extreme technological advances, especially in places such as the Bay Area, it is important to remember that not everything can be automatic and robotic; some things require human touch, such as the delicate art of midwifery or baking. At The Midwife and the Baker, Mac and Jaime strive to keep that idea alive. 9

At the San Fransisco Baking Institute

Chapter 1:

Time-Honored Traditions

he life of a loaf of bread begins with dough. With incredible precision and skill, every ingredient is added to the mixer to form the batch of bread. As the mixer stirs and stirs the mixture the dough begins to come alive. Once done in the mixer, the dough is plopped into a large container, where it will continue to rise and grow until it is time for the dough to be folded and divided. The first fold stretches the dough off the table, folding it in thirds on itself. Stretch and fold, stretch and fold, elongating the gluten strands to create the tender dough that the Midwife and the Baker are known for. Then the dough is left to rise once again. This process of baking is used less today because it takes longer to finish the product. The impatience with manufacturing time reflects modern culture’s restless nature Modern day society has left little room for traditions from earlier times, like streaming Netflix instead of going to Blockbuster, or having hospital births

instead of using a midwife. However, many practices that seem “traditional” or “outdated” are still needed today to live a full life, such as healthy eating and exercise. As much as people may despise it, time and effort are a critical part of

human life that cannot be waved away with piece of new technology. Mac and Jaime, whose careers have been a staple in society for millennia, live with this philosophy. Long-established tradition especially applies to Jaime’s life as a midwife. According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2012 only 1.36% of

births happened outside of the hospital, meaning that having your baby at home became an anomaly instead of the norm (“Trends in out of Hospital Births”). For Jaime in hospital births present a problem in how advances in technology have affected childbirth. Childbirth used to be an experience to share with loved ones, not masked doctors who may take away control from women during birth. Many of these new technologies undermine traditional midwifery. As she states, Jaime believes that “there is a time and place for the technology that we have and I think sometimes it saves lives... [However,] most of the time when it’s being used it undermines the body’s ability and the woman’s experience and ability to birth” (Shapiro). Jaime works with her clients to help them have the most natural and self run births as they can because “women have been birthing babies and this is what our bodies are made to do” (Shapiro). Midwifery is also something that is often misunderstood by the general public, who either don’t know what it is, or assume it’s only about pregnancy 11

and childbirth. Jaime aims to use her life’s work to educate everyone on different modes of healing. One of the key ideas of midwifery, according to Jaime is that childbirth as well as motherhood, should be an experience that is celebrated and honors the mother. But, motherhood is not all that defines a woman. In her quintessential book The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan warns “When motherhood, a fulfillment held sacred down the ages, is defined as a total way of life, must women themselves deny the world and the future open to them?” (Friedan). Expecting parents use midwifery as a way to take control over their own birthing experience. Jaime and her fellow midwives are trying to reclaim the reverence of motherhood by freeing women from oppression that can come when the process of birth is taken out of women’s power. Jaime wants to avoid a “conveyer belt of care” 12

where the mother is unaware of what is happening because of confusing medical practices (Shapiro). Midwifery is a way to make sure that the process of birth does not become automated, and still honors the mothers. Mac also runs into the issue of perceived degradation of time-honored practices in the field of baking. Over time, baking – once one of the most important skills to have – has become more and more automated. According to Bobrow-Strain, 90% of bread production in the 1890s occurred in homes, compared to the 1930s where 90% of bread was baked in factories (qtd. in Benson). The increase in bread manufacturing has made the process less personal. Mac, who personally oversees all the bread being created, prefers to have that connection with his bread and his employees. In the kitchen while all the bakers work, there is an invisible line of communication flowing between

everyone. Mac describes the working environment fondly: “The working together, hopefully on the same page, and a lot of nonverbal communication, kind of checking those [doughs] can be really rewarding“ (McConnell). One of the other bakers, Tanner Rubin, agrees that baking is worth all the struggles that come with it. “I still get up at ridiculous hours of the night or the morning and go and bake bread, so I use that as justification to myself that...I’m still obviously enjoying what I’m doing” (Rubin). All the bakers at the Midwife and the Baker agree that working together as a community is part of what makes the bread at The Midwife and the Baker so special. The dedication and the time spent on each batch of dough is what sets this bakery apart from others. One issue that both Mac and Jaime encounter in their careers is the overuse of technology. The automation of not only baking, but many other manual labor jobs starts to create large swaths of problems. Replacing manual labor jobs with automation creates issues with quality and trade. According to journalist Jeremy Rifkin, using machinery also hurts people and the economy: “The first is a simple problem of supply and demand: If mass numbers of people are underemployed or

unemployed, who’s going to buy the flood of products and services being churned out?” (Rifkin). Rifkin brings up the issue of basic economics. When these jobs are lost to automation it results in fewer jobs for actual people to hold. Even if products are cheap because of mechanization, how are people going to buy these things without a source of income? Through the lens of The Great Recession less than ten years ago, the goal is more jobs, not less. Although the technology industry has created more jobs as well, automation may mean a loss of quality, as each product is not being handled by a real person to check for quality. Whether it be the care that women get through midwifery, or bread made by the artisanal bakeries, the importance of these jobs cannot be understated. Jaime believes that “If you travel anywhere around the world ...you will always find a midwife and a baker. Babies are always being born and bread is the food of life; it feels like we really go back to a lot of the basic essentials” (Shapiro). These are the staples of basic human life, and not something to be forgotten in a haze of new technology.

Mac and his daughter Harlowe

Measuring and cutting croissant dough

Mac and Jaime baking

Chapter two: Passion for Work

n almost every kindergarten class across the country young kids are asked the same question: What do you want to be when you grow up? Most of the answers are fairly predictable: astronaut, ballerina, singer, etc. But how often do you really become what you thought you’d be in the 1st grade? For many people at the Midwife and the Baker, their journey did not start with their current craft. For Tanner, baking has been something that has been part of his life since he was a child: “As a kid I was introduced to baking just at home. I have an older brother and myself and my mom was like, ‘well we have two boys we might as well just make sure they know how to cook’ so we started cooking pretty young” (Rubin). Taking something you’re passionate about and turning that into a career only furthers the work and effort you put into your craft. Jaime started working as a midwife because of her own experiences with her body. When her own growth diverted off the known path, Jaime became more interested in reproductive health, especially non-western paths of healing,

to attempt to find a solution that would not just work for her, but for other women as well. At first Jaime thought about becoming a policy maker to affect women’s health all over the world, but after witnessing a birth, Jaime realized the way she could help women the most was with her hands. Her realization along with her own experiences “propelled [her] to investigate other avenues of healing and just a different perspective of looking at the female body” (Shapiro). Although Jaime had struggles with her own self, she used the wisdom and knowledge gained from her journey to help other women as best as she can. This perspective is important because Jaime uses her craft to empower and heal women. It took a little longer for Mac to find his way to baking. Before baking he was working at Caterpillar as a mechanical engineer. He believed that being an engineer would fulfill the yearning for tactile work that was borne out of being raised on a farm. Soon Mac started baking for fun, as something to do to fill free time. In Mac’s own words, “I found myself with some free time and kind of

just started tinkering a little bit with some Sour doughs” (McConnell). After tinkering around with bread for a while Mac eventually quit his day job to take professional baking classes at The San Francisco Baking Institute, and later teaching bread making at the Institute. Mac had found his passion in something that combined his love of tactile work and the science behind baking. Throughout the time at the Institute, Mac had been dreaming of having his own bakery, a place to bake bread. He got his “in” to selling bread through Jaime’s Midwifery clients. At the early stages of “The Midwifery and the Baker” Mac was selling bread to Jaime’s clients on a subscription basis. But then an opportunity to start selling bread at a farmers market came, and Mac took it. Provided with this opportunity Mac started to understand that what he wanted to do was bake and provide people with high quality bread. Now Mac has expanded three Farmer’s Market and continues to bake at The San 17

Francisco Baking Institute. Mac and Jaime have recently signed a lease on a property in Mountain View where they hope to open up a bakery of their own. The most important thing about Jaime and Mac’s journey is they are passionate about where they have ended up in life. When Mac and Jaime talk about their jobs and future, they sound so dedicated to what they are doing. Jaime started of by telling us that she became a midwife because she wanted ”to empower women to take initiative with their bodies and experiences, and their own health and well being” (Shapiro). Both baker and midwife seem to love what they are doing everyday, and are dedicated to how turning out bread and babies makes a positive impact on the world. According to journalist Alina Tugend, “We feel good when the neurotransmitter dopamine is activated, and that’s what happens when we accomplish a given goal.” Being passionate about what you do is important because whenever we actively put effort into our work to complete our goals, it makes us want to continue with those goals and keep working hard. Hard work is apparent at 18

the Midwife and the Baker. Watching all the bakers work hour after hour mixing and folding dough, baking hundreds of loaves a day and selling them early in the morning shows how dedicated they are to their difficult craft. The difficulty of the task is one of the reasons Tanner continues to bake: “One of the things I like most about baking bread specifically is that the way we make bread takes a certain amount of time, at a certain point you can’t push it anymore...you get to --have some control, but then at other points you just have no control and you have to just be comfortable and aware of that and able to kind of roll with the punches” (Tanner). Being able to adapt and work with these issues helps create engagement and enjoyment while working. Even though work, especially tactile work such as baking and midwifery, can be difficult and sometimes grueling, the passion that keeps one coming back is important to feeling fulfilled in life.

The McConnell family

Chapter three:

ne of the most important parts of Mac’s and Jaime’s work is the human connection that it creates. Many jobs today isolate people from each other, rather than help form bonds. According to Oxford Economics, the cubicle style of many offices not only decreases output, but shows a decline in worker morale (Cone). The personal connection that Mac and Jaime have with their customers and clients are the reason so many come back. Mac believes that the “education components of the public buying your bread” is very important so then the customers can then “return to you and not be afraid of a Kilo loaf of bread” (McConnell). When your customers can trust the quality of your product they are

Creating and Sustaining Life

more likely to return. Having human connections and building relationships with other people helps us work better as well. Bonoir recommends that if you’re “Feeling stagnant in your creative thinking... team up with someone for the express purpose of boosting each other’s ability to think outside the box.” Working with others benefits everyone involved. Baking and midwifery are both collaborative careers. When baking there are so many different steps to the process that have to be completed that one person can not run a whole production by themselves.

The same goes for midwifery: Jaime and the other midwives she works with often attend each other’s clients’ births. Midwives are there for all of the stages of their client’s life, not just pregnancy and childbirth. Jaime thinks that midwifery is often misunderstood, as she states “a lot of people hear midwife and they think ‘baby catcher,’ and think that’s all we do, attend births and catch babies” (Shapiro). Midwifery and baking are both collaborative activities that celebrate relationships. In the end, The Midwife and the Baker reminds everyone involved in the process to remember their roots. Whether that’s going back to how childbirth was done thousands of years ago, or getting your bread directly from the baker. Integrating new technologies into old traditions healthily grows our lives into something meaningful and personal. After all, isn’t it more important to get bread that you know had care and dedication put into it, rather than a loaf that looks like all the rest? Mac thinks so. Mac firmly believes that “It’s still good food; it might not always be 21

the prettiest visually, but it still has all those components of health and nutrition and nice long shelf lifeâ&#x20AC;? (McConnell). In the long run, the effort that is put into making your life better is what counts. The Midwife and the Baker is, on the most basic level, trying to keep people nourished. The next step in making bread is to divide the dough. Here it is measured by the gram to get the right amount of dough for each loaf. There is some wiggle room in the process, but youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re still working against the clock and sometimes the dough. Once weighed, its time to preshape the dough. Preshaping helps the dough rise the right way, and it counties to grow. Here is the last step to the baking process. Putting it into the oven. Letting it rise as it becomes the bread it was meant to be. Then it goes out to the people, so everyone can enjoy the creation youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re contributed to this world.

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Works Cited Benson, Amanda. The Rise and Fall of Bread in America. Johnson & Wales University, 1 Jan. 2013, scholarsarchive.jwu.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=student_scholarship. Accessed 20 Apr. 2017 Bonior, Andrea. “11 Surprising Things Good Friendships Do for You.” Psychology Today, 8 Mar. 2017, www.psychologytoday. com/blog/friendship-20/201703/11-surprising-things-good-friendships-do-you. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017. Cone, Edward, and Adrianna Gregory. “When the Walls Come Down.” When the Walls Come down: How Smart Companies Are Rewriting the Rules of the Open Workplace, Oxford Economics, www.oxfordeconomics.com/when-the-walls-come-down. Accessed 25 Apr. 2017. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. W.W. Norton and Co, 1963 McConnell, Mac. Personal Interview. 3 March 2017. Rifkin, Jeremy. “Vanishing jobs.” Mother Jones, Sept.-Oct. 1995, p. 58+. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, link.galegroup.com/ apps/doc/A17410923/OVIC?u=moun43602&xid=81d2b70d. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017. Rubin, Tanner. Personal Interview. 23 March 2017. “Simple Bread Recipe.” The Simple Homemaker, The Simple Homemaker, www.thesimplehomemaker.com/simple-bread-recipe. Accessed 25 Apr. 2017. Shapiro, Jaime. Personal Interview. 3 March 2017. “Traditional jobs yielding to advances in technology.” Sydney Morning Herald [Sydney, Australia], 28 July 2016, p. 10. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A459283872/OVIC?u=moun43602&xid=dac891b1. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017. “Trends in Out-of-Hospital Births in the United States, 1990–2012.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 4 Mar. 2014, www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db144.htm. Accessed 29 Mar. 2017.

Tugend, Alina. “If not passion for the job, at least warm feelings.” New York Times, 26 Sept. 2009, p. B6(L). Opposing Viewpoints in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A208480407/OVIC?u=moun43602&xid=438484bb. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017. 25

Bio Syd Biros is currently a junior at Freestyle Academy and Mountain View High School. Syd is an out and proud non-binary student who uses they/them pronouns. They are in the film program at Freestyle and are enjoying learning new techniques in video and audio recording. When not working on their latest film, Syd can be found in the nearest band room playing Bassoon in the Mountain View High School Wind Ensemble. They also enjoy running the schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Model United Nations club. Sydâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favorite films include classics such as Rear Window and This is Spinal Tap. Syd looks forward to their senior year at Freestyle and further exploring their creative career.