Wow Place #280: Wild Flour Bakery, Freestone, CA
When you’re on a diet, the whole world feels unfair.
“WHY are there so many delicious foods out there that I’m not allowed to eat!! Not fair!”
On this particular diet that my wife and I are following right now, Bright Line Eating, the primary restrictions are sugar and flour – which just happen to be the two main ingredients of pretty much everything they serve at the amazing Wild Flour Bakery, in Freestone, CA.
Founded in 1998, Wild Flour is known for its scones, sourdough and old-school atmosphere. Just 15 minutes from the Sonoma Coast (about 30 minutes from my home), the establishment is something of a local legend. Ask anyone to recommend a great bakery in the area, they’ll undoubtedly point you to Wild Flour, adding wistfully, “I wish I could go there right now, [sigh].”
Open Friday-Monday and only for take out, Wild Flour is the kind of place you need to arrive at early. Savvy patrons line up well before the 8am-opening time, standing in numbered slots outlined on the ground outside. Get there late and you could be in for a LONG wait, made more painful by the tantalizing, herby/doughy aromas emanating from the kitchen. Once inside, you’re greeted by a large, airy, open room with high, wood-beamed ceilings and murals painted on the wall by employees over the years. Next to the oven is a giant, painted elephant; a redwood forest adorns another wall. As you wait, you can watch the bakers knead dough and take fresh loaves in and out of the brick oven. There are free samples at the front counter.
What makes Wild Flour so special is both the taste of the food, of course, and also the interesting variety of their offerings. Looking for a cheese bread? They might have one that day with shiitake mushrooms, carmelized onions, swiss, jack and gouda. How about an Egyptian sweet bread with fig, pear and ginger? Or an olive bread with nigella seeds topped with zatar? Their sticky buns? Legendary! And don’t get me started on the scones! I usually go for the Apple Blackberry Cardamom – which, remarkably, is both delicious and vegan/GF.
All of which makes Wild Flour an extremely unfair place for dieters like my wife and I. You would think they’d have the courtesy to tone down the deliciousness a notch while we’re on this diet…but no, they just keep cranking out their amazing baked goods like clockwork, week after week, Friday through Monday. About the only good news I can hold onto is that we should reach our goal weights in the next month or two. And you KNOW where we’re going to celebrate!
(David Rock, an expert in neuroscience, believes that our brains are inherently attuned to dangerous social stimuli. In other words, there are certain social triggers that hijack our brains and make it hard to think clearly. The five most common triggers (with the acronym SCARF) are:
• Status
• Certainty
• Autonomy
• Relatedness
• Fairness
We all want higher status; we all want more certainty (and less uncertainty); we all need to feel we’re in charge of our lives; we all want connection with loves ones and our community; and most of all, we all want things to be fair. Whenever we feel someone or something is depriving us of these social stimuli, we get upset and discombobulated. How dare that politician take away my position…or change things too rapidly…or make me dependent on others…or separate me from my peeps! It’s not fair!!!
How important is fairness to you? When something feels unfair, do you devolve into a petulant 13-year-old? It’s entirely natural if you do. We all do! But what if you could interrupt this knee-jerk reaction? What might your life look if you resisted the urge to “play the victim?” Rather than pouting that it’s “not fair,” what if you tossed aside the SCARF and looked at life with an empowered calmness and equanimity?)
365 Wow Places:
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