You Don’t Need a Dutch Oven to Make Bread (or a Publishing Contract to Be a Writer)
Amra’s Authorly Advice: Craft, Career, and Creative Grit
This year I began making sourdough. Not because I wanted to add a new skill to my repertoire, or because I wanted to enjoy the smugness of baking my own bread (although both are undeniably delicious side effects), but out of necessity. My daughter developed digestive issues that seriously affected her physical and mental health, and sourdough became one small, practical way to help her heal and function.
I came to sourdough by accident. A friend had been baking it quietly and without advertising it — she’s an introvert, a condition I still don’t fully comprehend. I’ve only been doing this for a month and it’s all I talk about. As I stumbled into the world of sourdough baking, I bought a few basic things and, without meaning to, descended straight into the algorithmic advertising cycle.
Suddenly my feeds were filled with starter kits that read like wedding registries. Expensive ceramic Dutch ovens. Banneton proofing baskets. Dough scrapers. Stand mixers. Thermometers. Linen cloths. It was implied — never stated outright, but strongly suggested — that without these things, you weren’t really making sourdough. You were play-acting at it.
Except none of it was actually necessary.
You don’t need a ceramic Dutch oven when a regular tin and foil work perfectly well. You don’t need a banneton when a glass bowl or plastic container will do. You don’t need a dough scraper when you have hands. You don’t need a stand mixer when you have a spoon.
As I started sharing my experience, people told me they wanted to make bread too. Almost every conversation followed the same script: Do I need a Dutch oven? Do I need the basket? What equipment should I buy? And I found myself repeatedly dispelling the same myth — that all this optional gear was somehow required.
Somehow, their social media feeds had convinced them they couldn’t begin without it.
Somewhere along the way, making bread stopped being about bread.
What these advertisements and influencers create is a low-grade shaming of ordinary people who want to make something with their hands. If your bread fails, the implication is that you didn’t invest enough. That you skipped a step. That you weren’t serious.
But the equipment isn’t the point. The feeling is.
This is expertise theatre: people surrounding themselves with props to sell themselves as authorities. The tools create the illusion of mastery, and with it comes the quiet suggestion that you are not serious about your ambitions because you lack the same setup. Not skilled — just insufficiently equipped.
As I watched this play out, it became impossible not to notice the parallel with another world I know well: publishing.
In this analogy, the Dutch oven is the literary agent — sold as the essential accessory if you want your freshly baked manuscript to land on the right desk. Never mind that there are other paths: competitions, open submissions, pitching directly to publishers, building industry relationships, or publishing independently. The agent is positioned as the only legitimate vessel, even when it clearly isn’t.
The proofing basket is the Master of Creative Writing — or one of its many equivalent credentials — offered as visible evidence that you are the right material to be shaped into a publishable writer. It’s not strictly necessary for the work, but it photographs well. It signals seriousness. It reassures gatekeepers that you’ve been trained to rise correctly, hold your form, and fit the expected shape.
Never mind that countless successful writers never passed through a creative writing program at all. Margaret Atwood studied literature, not creative writing. Toni Morrison trained in English and worked as an editor. Stephen King learned by reading obsessively and writing badly for years. Octavia Butler sharpened her craft through discipline, repetition, and survival, not institutional permission. Their legitimacy didn’t come from a credential. It came from the work accruing power over time.
What’s rarely acknowledged is that creative writing degrees don’t just teach technique — they teach taste. They are often run by people who sit close to the industry, who understand what sells, what journals want, what prizes reward, and which voices are currently legible. Consciously or not, they teach students how to write toward approval. How to sound right. How to produce work that will be recognised as literary, contemporary, polished — proofed.
But voice doesn’t come from being shaped by a basket. It comes from friction, risk, and sustained attention to what only you can see. When legitimacy is outsourced to institutions, writers learn to look outward instead of inward. To ask, Is this good enough? instead of Is this true? The result is neat, competent loaves that all rise to the same height — and a quiet suspicion that anything misshapen must be wrong.
The proofing basket doesn’t make the bread.
It just makes it look acceptable to people who expect a certain shape.
Publishing advice works the same way sourdough advice does: it convinces you the work isn’t enough without the accessories.
The only thing that truly matters in sourdough is the starter. This is the living spark — the thing that gives the bread life. And in publishing, it’s the same. You need a spark of imagination. An idea with energy. Something alive.
Like a starter, inspiration is temperamental and unglamorous. It doesn’t care about aesthetics. It needs attention. Regular feeding. Time. The weekly ritual of care that allows it to grow stronger. Writing works the same way. You don’t need special software, upgrades, or credentials to be a good writer. The starter — and the work — grows through repetition, not perfection.
You don’t buy a better starter. You feed it.
You don’t outsource fermentation. You tend it.
You don’t rush it without killing it.
Both industries profit from beginners who don’t yet know what to ignore. Beginners are told they need all the things before they can begin. That without the right tools, courses, platforms, or validation, they’re doomed to fail. Experts speak in absolutes, constantly moving the goalposts because certainty is what they sell. They confuse tools with talent, and process with progress.
Tools should serve the work. The moment they become the gate, something has gone wrong.
I fell for this in publishing too. I spent years building a résumé of short stories and accolades, believing I needed to reach the “right” stage before submitting to an agent. In the end, it was a prize shortlist that did the heavy lifting. When my debut novel was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Award for Unpublished Manuscript, I suddenly became desirable. Representation followed quickly. My agent submitted to major publishers. I received offers.
It was both a blessing and a curse.
My agent took me on because I already had momentum, not because she wanted to build it with me. When my career shifted, so did her interest. When she no longer wanted to submit my memoir, I did it myself — and secured a traditional publishing contract anyway. My memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me was later shortlisted for the National Biography Award.
After traditional publishing ran its course, I moved into indie publishing and made every mistake imaginable. I chased shiny strategies. I spent money badly. I stressed over launches and metadata and marketing instead of focusing on the work.
But like sourdough, I kept showing up. I baked when I forgot to set the timer. I salvaged overproofed dough. I learned by doing. I repeated the process until it became easier. Last month I had my strongest sales month yet — not because I discovered a magic trick, but because I finally understood the foundations and stuck to them.
So if you want to bake sourdough — or write and publish — don’t wait for permission. Don’t wait until you’ve bought everything you think you need. You’re allowed to learn in public. You’re allowed to be imperfect. You’re allowed to ignore people selling certainty in a world where none exists.
The most important thing is to begin. To keep showing up. To keep feeding the starter. To drown out the noise designed to make you feel inadequate.
An industry that sells the illusion of readiness has overtaken both sourdough culture and publishing culture — when the only thing you ever needed was already alive in your hands.
I didn’t stop making sourdough once I understood the trick. I just stopped being intimidated by it. The same thing happens when you see how industries work — not from the outside, but from inside the machinery. The power drains out of the props. What’s left is the work, the repetition, and the quiet confidence that comes from doing it anyway. In the next part of this series, I’m turning to another system that survives by convincing people that suffering equals seriousness — where exhaustion is framed as discipline, burnout is worn like a badge, and rest is treated as a moral failure. If sourdough and publishing sell readiness, this one sells pain.
Amra Pajalić is an author and teacher who has moved through traditional and independent publishing. In this series, she uses everyday analogies to expose how industries sell insecurity disguised as expertise.