Tell me you were baking a sad little bread cave without telling me. That cold oven start is like asking your bread to get out of bed on a Monday morning, no coffee. Of course it's going to slump right back down. Preheating is the bare minimum of encouragement it needs. My old oven lied about its temperature so much I started checking it with a thermometer like a suspicious parent. Turns out it was a full 25 degrees off and everything made sense.

Yeah my friend started doing that last year. She said writing down one small thing she learned each day, like how to fix her bike chain or a better way to chop onions, made her feel less like she was just spinning her wheels. It was just a few words in the corner of her weekly spread, but it changed how she saw her whole routine.