This essay is based on a conversation with Sabrina Lim, a 28-year-old former engineer from Singapore. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I tried salt bread for the first time when I visited a bakery in Korea and it changed my life.
It was my first experience with a dish that was worth the hour and a half queue. I had never been to a bakery that had left such a strong impression on me, and I wanted to do it again. The problem was that I had no baking experience.
I earned a Masters of Engineering from Imperial College London before entering the workforce as a software engineer. I later started working full-time in software development at a large bank.
After a few years of working for someone else’s dream, I got bored and wanted to do 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 was my secret weapon.
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I was worried about quitting my job
It was scary to leave a steady job to venture 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 take care of our household while I take care of things.
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 about my career path. However, I don’t live my life for her. If I wanted to work on something that was entirely mine, it was time to do it before I had a mortgage, loans, or children.
I spent months baking failed bread
Have you ever baked bread? It’s difficult.
I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to do it, but I kept telling myself: If thousands of people out there have learned how to bake good bread, I can too.
Most of the popular recipes I found online come from the USA. When I tried to recreate them in Singapore, the humidity and ingredients made a big difference in the outcome. I had no idea what texture I should even pay attention to when kneading. I’ve been playing around with recipes for many months, but I still couldn’t get them right. My poor husband had to eat all of my defective 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 that I wanted to start selling in 100 days, but I had no plan on how to do it.
A bakery owner reached out to me on TikTok with an opportunity
During the second month of my trip, a cafe owner contacted me on social media and asked me if I wanted to bake and sell at his establishment for free during the hours he wasn’t working.
I was so tired of my home appliances that enlisting the help of a real baker was a game changer.
With the help of his commercial mixer and temperature controlled bakery, as well as the baker’s expertise, I was finally able to achieve the results I wanted. I’ve set up a formal website where customers can pre-order and select a pickup time when I’m working at the cafe. I sold three different variations of salt bread in three pop-ups.
My plan for the future is to keep the menu small but dynamic, offering new flavors every month while keeping the basic salt bread the same. It helps me maintain quality control while I’m still learning the ropes, and it gives my clients something new to look forward to every time.
I use AI for my business and my recipes
I used AI to optimize my bread recipe. I give Gemini several recipes and ask him to explain the differences between them. It helps me understand the science of bread in a condensed form. If I googled it, there would be too many articles to search through and it would be overwhelming.
When I have a specific problem, I ask Gemini what might be wrong. It gives me a list of things to try. It feels like I have someone to bounce ideas off of 24/7, and that’s invaluable for someone doing this alone.
It’s great because I can bring something I learned from the AI ​​to the baker the next day and get their opinion on it.
AI also helps me with the business side. It edits my social media scripts to make them easier to understand, and I’ve even used Gemini to create my own pop-up order form. My new order form is far from perfect, but it cuts my administrative time by about 80%.
Overall, AI helps me plan my entire trip. I told him what I want to accomplish and it will be broken down into days so I don’t feel overwhelmed by the entire process.
It was hard to learn how to sell, but I’m happy with my progress
Baking and selling bread are labor-intensive processes.
Baking is just the final part of the process. My biggest challenge was learning how to actually sell. I market on social media, interact with customers and figure out how to convert viewers into customers, but every time I announce a new pop-up I still feel a wave of fear that absolutely no one will buy.
Dealing with this mental game when navigating logistics was a huge learning curve.
Last month I didn’t have time to film anything or post anything on social media. When I sell, bake, pack and wash, it takes a lot of time. I don’t know if it affects social media viewership or my conversion. Everything is so new to me and I don’t yet know how to best use my time.
I’ve already achieved my original goal of starting selling in less than 100 days, and now I’m at a crossroads. I only have a limited amount of 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.
Can you tell us about how you left your job to pursue an unconventional path? If so, contact the reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com.
https://www.businessinsider.com/former-software-developer-quit-tech-job-to-bake-used-ai-2026-7
