So, after a fair few months of planning and saving, I’ve got some exciting news. Hand To Mouth is re-locating to the US for six months. The wife and I are upping sticks to head to San Francisco at the end of April, where I’m going to be doing a professional bread and pastry diploma at the awesome San Francisco Baking Institute.

Photo: Unknown

The seed for this adventure was first planted a little over a year ago when I read this post on the Chow blog. My wife and I were feeling increasingly disillusioned with our careers / industries, and had been talking for some time about opening our own cafe bakery. But with very little in the way of experience, we didn’t really know where to start. It was beginning to feel like it may always be a bit of a pipe dream, and then I read the Chow post and a large penny dropped.

So we did some research, found out more about the course, talked about it for a while, and decided to go for it. To be honest, it’s all a bit scary, but also exhilarating. If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you’ll know that I’ve been bitten by the baking bug, but this is a whole new ball game. I’m going to be well out of my comfort zone, and when you throw into the mix quitting a perfectly good, well paid job at one of the UK’s most respected ad agencies, you’ve either got a recipe for disaster, or the best thing I’ve ever done with my life.

We don’t have any time frame on when / if  we’re going to start our own business, but that’s partly what this trip is all about. As well as doing the course, we’re going to do some work experience, travel around the States, and generally immerse ourselves in country’s food culture, whilst getting a plan together of the kind of business we want to open. But I guess there’s also every chance that we might end up by missing our day jobs, and we’ll yearn to return to London at the end of our adventure. Only time will tell.

So can an Advertising Wanker be transformed into a Master Baker? You’ll have to keep it locked right here to find out.