Science Behind Baking, abbreviated as SBB, is a student-run flex at Country Day founded in 2024. The flex has seen much change and growth over the school year, from decorating cookies to experimenting with different concentrations of baking soda.
A typical flex period at SBB begins with a slide presentation that explains a scientific phenomenon related to baking and ends with students trying out the featured pastry for themselves. On occasion, students decorate and make their own sweets.
Lana Lee ‘27, its cofounder, also has a licensed bakery of her own where she makes custom-print cookies and cakes and sells other sweets at the Rancho Santa Fe Farmer’s Market. She plans to bake for the Upper School instrumental winter concert to show support for her peers.
The 2025-26 school year welcomes two new SBB leaders, Ariela Palmer ‘27 and Kaiya Calderon ‘27. “[Thanks to the new leaders,] we talked about baked goods for cultural holidays, which I think the students in the flex enjoyed,” Lana points out. New additions this year include a Mid-Autumn Festival mooncake tasting and a Day of the Dead celebration with pan de muerto to supplement a presentation on yeast in bread.
Kaiya notes personal growth since beginning her leadership journey in August 2025. Each week, she bakes banana bread and loves to make non-sweet baked goods such as cornbread and biscuits. This year, to accommodate dietary restrictions, she expanded her knowledge of baking and made gluten-free desserts so that every member of the flex could enjoy the sweets at each meeting. Ariela also expresses the same sentiments as she finds herself baking more experimentally and outside her comfort zone for the flex.
Student engagement this year has improved this year, according to returning members. The U-shaped layout of the desks in the Upper School Chinese classroom, where the flex takes place now, allows for a balance of student-to-student interaction and focus on the slideshow at the front of the room. The growing emphasis on self-learning, as seen with an activity of DIY buttercream frosting, appears to have a positive impact on engagement.
SBB will continue to work towards more hands-on experiences for their students, such as making fondant, to further enhance their members’ learning experience. After all, science classes come with labs for the students to see the phenomenon for themselves. Additionally, to nourish a community behind SBB, the team plans to host an end-of-semester potluck where the members can bring their own baked goods that reflects the science they have learned.
The SBB leadership team is composed of all juniors and has begun to contemplate future plans for the flex. Lana hopes for an underclassman to continue SBB after her team graduates, and will seek out potential leaders from participants of the flex this year and her senior year. “We have a lot of new students this year… and a lot of them are freshmen, which I think is really nice for the flex’s future.”
