BAKER CITY — A kitchen can be a hazardous place with its sharp instruments and hot surfaces.

But for some, it’s the one place that feels most like home.

Joshua Dillen of Baker City has gained a few scars from his 25 years of kitchen and food service work, even earning a fresh one mid-interview after accidentally nicking his finger with his lame, a razor sharp hand tool used in breadmaking.

“When you work in a kitchen you find out which Band-Aids are the good ones,” said Dillen, 54, who quickly washed, bandaged and re-gloved following the nick.

Within moments he was back to work on his latest passion project: sourdough bread.

On his countertop, bins of hand-mixed sourdough rose almost to the point of escaping their containers.

They’re the products of wild yeast, flour, hard work and skill, products about to be trialed by fire in the central kitchen ovens at the Baker County Event Center on East Street, which Dillen had rented for a few days of baking.

“The first time I had sourdough bread, it was the best bread I’d ever had,” Dillen said. “I was visiting San Francisco, which is where I was born, and I had some authentic sourdough someone made in their own kitchen.”

As a teenager Dillen discovered the joy in simple breadmaking. As an adult he has worked in bars and catering. He worked as a reporter for the Baker City Herald before circling back to baking.

He’s calling his business Sourdough Jamz, and within his LLC and cottage laws he could sell up to $50,000 per year, though he’d need a full-time facility to ever reach that level, and beyond that he would need a domestic kitchen license.

Dillen says his interest stems in part from dealing with his type 2 diabetes, which for many means a constant struggle to maintain blood sugar levels.

Bread’s sugar content is often at odds with those hoping to stay healthy while depending on insulin, but at the same time bread can also be very beneficial to gut-biomes, containing a variety of prebiotic compounds that can improve digestion, metabolism and immune responses.

“Regular bread is something I can’t eat much of,” Dillen said, because store-bought break sometimes made him feel ill. “It’s all about the fermentation. Warmer dough ferments faster, cooler dough ferments slower. There’s a lot of science in making good quality sourdough bread.”

Dillen’s appreciation for science runs deep, having earned some college credit in physics.

He appreciates the meticulous nature of baking and has spent a lot of time online perfecting the work, from balancing mixtures, temperatures and timing to methods of folding, proofing, scoring and baking.

Dillen says he isn’t making broad medical claims, but in his case he can eat half a loaf of his own sourdough without sudden consequences to either his blood sugar or any later discomfort.

“I’m in my 50s, and I haven’t always taken the best care of my body, so I need to eat healthier and take care of my body in a mindful way,” Dillen said. “Personally, anecdotally, it’s the healthiest that I’ve ever been. In the years since I discovered these health benefits I have had this mission to bring real food to the masses, starting with sourdough bread, and starting with this community.”

From the small kitchen he’s rented, Dillen says he’s still ramping up and perfecting his workflow, but with the right facilities could produce 100 to 500 loaves of bread per day.

“I think it’s what I was meant to do,” Dillen said. “Sourdough is magic, in juxtaposition with my comment earlier, but in the ancient world the people who made science were the magicians.”

Dillen has sold his breads at local Baker Food Co-Op, and says he’ll be setting up to sell his wares at the occasional farmers market, and online at his Sourdough Jamz Facebook page interested buyers can see when he’s finished his latest batches.