COLUMBUS, OH -- In Columbus' Short North, on the corner of 2nd Ave and North High Street, along the rustic brick, you'll see a sign.

• Bakery will produce more than 20,000 Christmas cookies
• Instagram-worthy baked treats entice fans of all ages
• Owner Jonas Laughlin found second calling after opera career

If you follow the arrow, you'll find a little bakery decked out with Christmas cheer on the exterior and on the inside drenched with holiday goodness and, if it's early enough, you can find Head Baker Jonas Laughlin hard at work in the back--making music as he bakes at Laughlin's Bakery. 

Because as Jonas is not your typical baker. He was an accomplished opera singer who studied at the prestigious Boston Conservatory at Berklee. But 15 years ago he suffered an injury to his right vocal fold stopping him from being able to sing. 

"I was told pretty much that I needed to change my focus completely, that there was no recovery possible for me...It was devastating. I went through a really dark time." Laughlin says that time in his life is what led him to baking. 

"I think finding something that I could really treat like a craft and practice and kind of hone a skill set....It saved my life to be honest with you." says Laughlin. A new talent he says he never would have imagined would be in his future, let alone the center of his life. 

Laughlin laughs and thinks back saying "I would've said, you've got the wrong guy! I was such a musician...I still consider myself a musician but I was very serious about it and imagining myself doing anything outside of music would have been completely foreign to me."

Now as an entrepreneur and head baker, Laughlin is thankful to the community he moved to on a whim a decade ago for being his muse. 

"It's my first bakery...it's my first business. I came here thinking I could teach music and I ended up living in this area, which is the Short North, and I saw an opportunity for contributing my own special kind of art to the arts district."

An art that is easy on the eyes and on the taste buds but has taken Laughlin years of practice to perfect. Calling it "scientific and relating it to music as the practice was something very familiar to the former singer.

And just like success in music, success in the baking world takes sacrifice and hard work. 

Laughlin described his daily routine saying "As the head baker I do the bake off every morning, which means I get here really really early or really late depending on how you look at it. Usually around either 11pm or midnight and I do all the baking for the day, so anything that goes out the next morning, I bake it."

A life Laughlin has embraced after what he thought was his future was taken away from him. A new path that is still a crowd pleaser, and a new passion he is thankful for this holiday season and every day of the year. 

"Looking at stuff in the short term...It's difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel...But that light comes. I'm very glad I have my bakery, I'm glad that I bake. I miss music, I try to incorporate it into what I do...I'll never fully abandon the music and I'll never get over it I don't think but I feel very blessed to have this second calling."