Owen had been baking bread at home for years.
Not professionally.
He just liked it.
It started with a basic white loaf, then whole wheat, then sourdough. Somewhere along the way he began keeping jars of starter in the refrigerator and developing opinions about flour he had never expected to have.
Friends started asking him questions.
Why didn’t my dough rise?
How often should I feed a starter?
Do I really need a Dutch oven?
Why did my loaf come out looking like a brick?
Owen usually had an answer.
Eventually he started wondering whether he could put some of what he knew online and build a small business around it.
He could write useful articles. Maybe recommend some of the baking equipment he actually used and earn a commission if someone bought through one of his links. If people were interested enough, perhaps he could eventually make something of his own to sell.
He didn’t know exactly what the business would become.
First he needed to figure out what it was about.
He opened a document and wrote at the top:
Things I could make or write about
Then he started typing.
Sourdough starters, bread flour, Dutch ovens, pizza dough, stand mixers, homemade pasta, cookies, cake decorating, kitchen knives, cast-iron pans, fermentation, barbecue…
Owen stopped.
Apparently his new business was about food.
That narrowed things down to several million possibilities.
What exactly is this business about?
Owen looked at the list again.
He could probably write something about most of it.
That was part of the problem.
Sourdough on Monday.
Kitchen knives on Wednesday.
Barbecue on Friday.
He imagined trying to explain that website to somebody.
What’s it about?
“Well… food.”
Not especially helpful.
He tried a smaller word.
Baking.
Better.
Cookies and cakes fit.
Bread fit.
Pizza probably fit if he was feeling generous.
Barbecue could leave.
So could kitchen knives, unless Owen planned to spend a lot of time arguing about whether slicing bread counted.
He was still left with a lot.
A person could spend years decorating cakes and never bake a loaf of bread.
Someone else could make nothing but cookies.
Owen went back to the questions his friends actually asked him.
Starter.
Flour.
Dough.
Dutch ovens.
Flat loaves.
Most of them kept circling the same thing.
He deleted Baking and typed:
Home sourdough baking
Then he looked at his list again.
Sourdough starters?
Obviously.
Bread flour?
Yes.
Dutch ovens?
He used one constantly.
How to shape a loaf?
Definitely.
Cake decorating?
Owen paused over that one.
His sister’s birthday cake was still sitting in his photo folder. She had announced that she was “being good” and would only have half a piece.
She went back twice.
Owen smiled at the picture.
Then he deleted cake decorating from the list.
Nothing wrong with the cake.
It had just wandered into the wrong business.
Owen had found the smaller part of the much larger world of food and baking that he wanted to concentrate on.
That focus was his niche.
The niche starts doing some work
The next morning Owen opened another document to plan the first few articles for the site.
He typed almost immediately:
Why isn’t my sourdough starter rising?
He had answered that question more times than he could remember.
Then:
Do you need a Dutch oven to bake sourdough?
What flour should you use for sourdough bread?
Why did my sourdough loaf come out flat?
The day before, he had spent half his time deciding whether pasta and barbecue belonged on the same list.
Now he had four article ideas before his coffee was cold.
While looking through photographs he might use, he came across the birthday cake again.
For a second, he pictured an article about making the chocolate roses.
Then he looked at the titles already sitting on the screen.
Starter.
Flour.
Dutch ovens.
Flat loaves.
Owen closed the cake photograph and kept going.
Was he boxing himself in?
A little later, pizza dough crept back onto the idea list.
Owen stared at it.
He liked making pizza.
People liked his pizza.
Why was he deliberately leaving out something he was good at?
Then came homemade pasta.
That one sat underneath pizza for a few minutes.
Owen leaned back in his chair.
Choosing a niche was beginning to feel suspiciously like making rules for himself.
Fortunately, there were no bread police.
He could still make pizza on Saturday night.
He could spend Sunday rolling pasta across half the kitchen if he felt like it.
Those things did not automatically have to become part of this website.
The same question came up when he thought about products he might eventually recommend.
His kitchen scale was easy. He used it almost every time he baked and had already talked two friends into buying the same model.
A banneton—the basket that holds dough while it rises—fit too.
So did his stand mixer.
Then Owen reached his barbecue tongs.
He picked them up from the drawer and looked at them.
Excellent tongs.
Completely innocent.
Not remotely about sourdough.
Back in the drawer they went.
Owen had not narrowed his life down to sourdough.
He had narrowed what he was building.
How narrow should he go?
Once Owen got comfortable narrowing things down, he discovered another danger.
He could keep going.
Maybe home sourdough baking was still too broad.
He typed:
Whole-wheat sourdough baking
Then:
Whole-wheat sourdough baked in Dutch ovens
There was room to go narrower.
So naturally he did.
Whole-wheat sourdough baked in Dutch ovens on weekends
Owen read it back.
It was beginning to sound less like a niche and more like a very exclusive baking club.
Whole-wheat sourdough only.
Dutch ovens required.
Meetings on weekends.
Owen deleted his way back to:
Home sourdough baking
There.
He could write about starters, flour, shaping, proofing, baking, equipment and the problems that could leave a loaf dense or flat.
There was plenty to work with.
He would have to find out whether enough people cared about home sourdough baking—and whether he could eventually make money from it.
Choosing a niche gave him somewhere sensible to look.
It couldn’t promise what he would find there.
One question Owen still hadn’t answered
A few days later, one of Owen’s friends was looking through the site.
Starter guide.
Flour.
Dense loaves.
Dutch ovens.
“So who are you writing all this for?” he asked.
Owen barely looked up.
“People interested in sourdough.”
“Which people?”
Owen looked up this time.
His friend waited.
Owen turned back to the site.
He opened the starter guide.
Someone making their first loaf might need every bit of it.
Someone who had been baking sourdough for five years?
Probably not.
Then he opened the article about flour.
Was he writing for someone who wanted the simplest possible way to get started?
Or the person who already owned enough bread equipment to open a small bakery?
Owen looked at his friend.
“Huh.”
He had spent weeks deciding what belonged on the site.
Now he had another boundary to figure out.
Not what he was building around.
Who he was building it for.