This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sabrina Lim, a 28-year-old former engineer based in Singapore. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I tried salt bread for the first time while visiting a bakery in Korea, and it was life-changing.
It was my first experience with a dish where the hour-and-a-half-long queue was worth it. I had never been to a bakery that had left such a strong impression on me, and I wanted to recreate it. The problem was that I had zero baking experience.
I received a master of engineering from Imperial College London before entering the workforce as a software engineer. Later, I started working full-time in software development at a large bank.
After working for a few years hustling for someone else’s dream, I was bored, and I wanted to make something of my own. About a year after my trip to Korea, in 2025, I quit my job and decided to start baking bread. AI has been my secret weapon along the way.
I had concerns about leaving my job
It was scary to leave a stable job to dive into something new, especially without a solid plan, but I’m in a privileged position. I don’t have any financial burden, and my partner can provide for our household while I figure things out.
I worried about how people would look at me. I have a good degree from a good university, and coming from an Asian family, I feel like people have expectations for how my career path should look. I’m not living my life for them, though. If I wanted to work on something that was completely mine, doing it before having a mortgage, loans, or kids, was the time to do it.
I spent months making failed bread
Have you ever made bread? It’s tough.
I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to figure it out, but I kept telling myself that if thousands of people out there have learned how to make great bread, so can I.
Most of the popular recipes I found online are from the US, so when I tried to replicate them in Singapore, the humidity and ingredients made a big difference in how they turned out. I had no idea what texture to even look for while kneading. I toyed with recipes for many months, and I still couldn’t get it right. My poor husband had to eat all my failed products.
I started posting about my baking journey on social media because it was the least capital-intensive way to market myself. In my very first video, I said I wanted to start selling in 100 days, but I had no plan for how to do it.
A bakery owner reached out to me on TikTok with an opportunity
In the second month of my journey, a café owner reached out to me on social media and asked if I wanted to bake and sell in his space during the hours he wasn’t working, for free.
I was getting so fed up with my home equipment, so it was a game changer to get help from an actual baker.
With the help of his commercial mixer and temperature-controlled bakery, and the baker’s expertise, I finally started getting the results I wanted. I have a formal site set up where customers can preorder and select a pickup date when I’m working at the café. I’ve sold three different variations of salt bread at three pop-ups.
My game plan moving forward is to keep the menu small but dynamic, rotating out new flavors every month while keeping the core salt bread the same. It helps me maintain quality control while I’m still learning the ropes, and it gives my customers something new to look forward to every time.
I’ve been using AI for my business and my recipes
I’ve used AI to tweak my bread recipe. I give Gemini multiple recipes and ask it to explain the differences between them. It helps me understand the science of bread in a condensed form. If I were to Google it, there would be too many articles to sift through, and it would be overwhelming.
When I have a specific issue, I’ll ask Gemini what could be wrong. It gives me a list of things to try. It feels like I have someone to throw ideas around with 24/7, and that’s invaluable as someone doing this alone.
It’s great because I can bring something I learned from AI to the baker the next day and get his thoughts on it.
AI also helps me with the business side of things. It edits my social media scripts to make them more digestible, and I even used Gemini to build my own pop-up ordering form. My new order form is far from perfect, but it cuts down my administrative time by about 80%.
Overall, AI is helping me plan my entire journey. I’ve told it what I want to achieve, and it breaks it down into days so I don’t feel overwhelmed by the whole process.
It’s been hard learning how to sell, but I’m happy with my progress
Baking and selling bread are labor-intensive processes.
Baking is only the final part of the process. My biggest challenge has been learning how to actually sell. I market through social media, engage with clients, and figure out how to convert viewers into customers, but every time I announce a new pop-up, I still get this wave of anxiety that absolutely no one is going to buy.
Dealing with that mental game while navigating the logistics has been a massive learning curve.
Last month, I didn’t have time to film or post anything on social media. When I’m selling, baking, packing, and washing, it takes up a lot of time. I don’t know if it’ll affect viewership on socials or my conversion. Everything is so new for me, and I don’t yet know what the best use of my time is.
I’ve already achieved my initial goal of starting to sell in less than 100 days, and right now I’m at a crossroads. I only have so much time in a day, and I don’t know whether to invest, hire help, or keep doing what I’m doing.
I don’t know what’s next, but I’m happy with where I’m at.
Do you have a story to share about quitting your job for an unconventional path? If so, reach out to the reporter at [email protected].
