Although baking’s not exactly something new, our scientific understanding of it grows every day. Now we have centuries of recipes to teach us new ways to bake our favorite breads, cakes, and other sweet treats. At the same time, scientists and bakers alike aren’t just discovering new recipes; there’s now scientific backing behind the grounding effects baking has on the human psyche.

One of the most recent, unofficial case studies proving those positive effects is the meteoric rise of bread baking as a hobby during the height of COVID-19. In some of our most unprecedented times, one of the greatest human connectors was a mass return to the kitchen, where people worldwide found comfort in the aromatic science of baking.

Recent studies show that the creative, tactile tasks of baking work wonders for our mental health. Psychologists tie baking’s benefits to the happiness artistic self-expression brings, the presence mindful work provides, and the elevation of our well-being when we share our creations with others. This means, bubbling beneath all that food science, a key to therapeutic healing may have always existed, even if it didn’t always have a name.

The altruistic act of feeding your community also opens a can of psychosocial health benefits. Research from 2021 got even closer to tying the PERMA (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment) model of well-being to cooking intervention programs that build basic culinary skills. And since food is one of our most well-rounded creature comforts, its psychological and social effects are intricately linked to food’s overarching physical effect on our bodies.

A rise in ultra-processed fast food and decline of home-cooked meals in recent decades has yielded a net-negative effect on the population’s health, bumping up obesity numbers, hospital cases, and imbalanced gut microbiomes, which all circle back to negative effects on mental health. Funnily enough, the kitchens we’ve been pushing aside for fast meals seem to harness the healing our population needs.

As a grounding technique intertwined with one of life’s bare necessities, baking is transformative at every step. The laser-focused attention to each task, between weighing measurements and checking temperatures and sneaking small tastes of food science, helps our brains tap into all the right happy receptors. Best of all, at the end of every bake, we’re given a delicious reason to replenish and nourish our bodies.

One of the most intriguing things about baking is that you may not need to don an apron to feel its positive effects. Television is well into its era of comfort baking shows, putting unknown bakers in competition to create tasty works of art for an audience and a panel of judges.

Watching bakers create in the kitchen through a TV screen gives millions of viewers a comforting slice of joy to look forward to, contributing to the massive popularity of shows like The Great British Bake Off. Participants like 2019 Star Baker Steph Blackwell gave audiences a fan-favorite season of television while sharing baking’s influence on her own mental health journey.

Blackwell combatted her struggles with anxiety, depression, and anorexia under the warm heat of an oven. With fluid precision and creative flair, she tapped into the joys of baking in a way that changed her life’s trajectory. Even after The Great British Bake Off cameras stopped rolling, Blackwell continues to nourish communities of bakers and foodies through published recipe books and warmhearted blogs regularly posted on her Substack, The Comfort Chronicles.

For Blackwell, baking is a passion and a gateway to health and well-being for both herself and her communities. The collective benefits of baking for an audience opened the door to her personal and professional success while reminding people everywhere that whether your time in the kitchen is good, bad, or messy, baking is for everyone.

There’s something about gooey yeast between fingertips and wafting smells of rising dough that returns us to the present and wrap us in a blanket of peace only baking can provide. It doesn’t mean the kitchen doesn’t come with its fair share of stressors, though. Even with its positive effects, baking doesn’t have to be for everyone. People everywhere would much rather skip the heat of the kitchen for the cozy TV version instead.

Others feel baking’s warmth best when they finally bite into their favorite homemade baked goods, and that’s okay, too. In moderation, baking’s physical nourishment gives the brain similar therapeutic effects as the tactile, creative tasks do. So even if the thought of baking tasks stresses you out, shared joys still exist in the warm goodness of a baked treat.

Baking has all the ritualistic makings of spiritual healing. By nourishing mind, body, and soul, baking can remind us of the overwhelming power of our edible creature comforts. When delectable dough becomes crafty creations that feed millions of stomachs, humanity nibbles nourishment in more ways than one.

The smells, sounds, sights, touches, and tastes of our favorite bakery items last lifetimes between the pages of recipe books, new and old. The best baked goods are made with love for a reason; there’s no better way to bake than with joy. Food is the creature comfort that helps us come to our senses, possibly find a passion, and bake healthy forms of emotional release into lives all over the world.