Of all the words we would use to describe bread, “beautiful” wouldn’t be one of them.

Let’s face it, as delicious bread can be, it’s hard to make a beige food look like a work of art. But would you believe it, one woman has managed to do just that.

Meet Hannah Page.

This self-taught baker has been making astonishing art out of loaves of bread for the last six years. She’s gotten so good at it that she now has more than 150,000 followers on her Instagram page, @blondieandrye, which she dedicates to showing off her latest creations.

Baking bread is the latest craze, thanks to quarantine, which has left us spending more time in our homes – and our kitchens – more than ever before.

Hannah has been popular since she started out, but the recent months her Instagram account has really taken off, with some of her photos amassing over 10,000 likes.

This North Carolina baker clearly has serious talent. She doesn’t just shape her bread – she carefully fashions beautiful designs onto the crust, and even uses a variety of natural powders and veggies to produce vibrant colors.

She works with all kinds of bread, from buns to baguettes to boules, and has mastered both the baking and the artwork that goes into her creations.

Speaking to Insider about her talent, Hannah said that she first got into bread baking when she was given a Dutch oven as a present at her wedding.

It wasn’t long before baking standard loaves of bread was no longer interesting to Hannah. She decided to start using sourdough – and that’s when her passion truly began to develop.

Hannah learnt everything about the ins and outs of bread baking, until she was eventually skilled enough to make her own sourdough starter, the yeast base that she could then use for all of her bakes going forward. She said:

“Once I made my own starter and figured out how to bake with it, that’s when I didn’t look back.”

Hannah’s baking obsession meant that she was now producing home-cooked batches of bread on a daily basis. She started scoring interesting patterns onto her bread before she put it in the oven, and enjoyed the artistic effect it produced.

“It was no more than a year in that I began getting interested in what they look like, and not just what they taste like.”

Hannah started doodling designs whenever she got the chance – including at faculty meetings! But despite this, she says there isn’t actually that much forethought that goes into each of her bakes.

She can’t just score any old design onto her bread, though. Hannah explained:

“A part of what you’re figuring out when you’re scoring is if your design will bloom well in the oven, or if it will rip apart and not look as pretty. You have to think about it ahead of time, ideally, but a lot of the time I don’t go in with a whole lot of plans.”

Looking at her Instagram account, we don’t think we’d ever be able to master Hannah’s bread baking or design skills! Her feed is bursting with intricate patterns, veggie color pops and meticulously shaped designs. Not only is her bread a work of art, it looks absolutely delicious, too.

Baking bread isn’t actually Hannah’s full-time job. She teaches history at a high school in the week, and says she prefers to keep baking as a side hobby she can turn to for relaxation purposes.

She explained to Insider:

“The process of baking bread is a way for me to decompress. I’m a very early riser, I almost exclusively do it in the morning when no one else is awake and it’s just me. It has become part of my morning ritual.”

She is excited about how quarantine is encouraging more people to bake, and said that it would be “really something” if we ended up with a new generation of bread bakers.

Of course, Hannah would agree that baking bread is the perfect activity for those stuck at home, though we doubt most people would end up producing a masterpiece anything like what she is capable of!

You can check out Hannah’s Instagram account here.

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Source: Instagram/ @blondieandrye, Insider