|
I spent my first summer in college doing Environmental Restoration in the Cascades. I can’t remember now what I thought the work would be, but I remember being excited about the job, so I’m sure I didn’t imagine it was ten hour days spent clearing Himalayan blackberries. That’s what we did: every day we went out to battle the thorny monsters, armed with long loppers and polaskis. It seemed an impossible task—it was an impossible task!—but we fought on, unquestioning. All summer, my arms were a lacework of scratches. The scabs itched. Still, I gorged myself on berries. When I was young, the eroded hillside across from our house in Seattle was a wall of Himalayan blackberries. The canes were always reaching out over the sidewalk, trying to gain a little more ground. We picked blackberries for breakfast, for pies, for eating where we stood, the fruit still warm from the sun. This is the memory that holds fast. Even now, with the hillside long cleared and the summer of Restoration still clear in my mind, the smell of blackberries is a sweet sense memory. Biking home last night from the bakery, the sun-hot scent reached out from the roadside and wrapped around me, and for a moment, I was a child again, picking blackberries in flipflops and shorts through the long, late evening, arms scratched, feet dirty, mouth sticky purple, heart full of sunshine. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Jam Scones Fig Tarte Tatin Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye Cookies, Scone, Shortbread, etc.  “There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by,” Annie Dillard wrote. I think about this as I work. It is not a good day. I am tired to the soles of my feet. The work pulls me deeper into the night and won’t let go. I trudge on. I daydream about good days: the exuberant pleasure of a day spent swimming in the ocean, or reading books, or sitting over long, leisurely meals with friends. I think about good days as I load and unload the oven, as I stack dishes from the drying rack, as I sweep and mop the floor, wipe down the counters, scrub the sinks, and carry the compost out into the dark alley. They’re Sundays, all, and sweet and sunlit in my mind. But of course, I don’t live a life of Sundays. I wouldn’t, even if I could, though the weeks between are often blurred by schedule and repetition. Is that what Dillard meant? That the days of sun and pleasure are easy enough to find, if you have the time and inclination. It is adding up the days between, weaving the hours and their mundane tasks into the fabric of a meaningful life, that is the great and difficult work. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing…Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern." See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Blackberry Scone Buckwheat Peach Scone Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Toasted Sesame Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Scone, Shortbread, etc. TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Apricot Raspberry Oatmeal Scone Fig & Buckwheat Scone Onion Tart Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Cinnamon Twist Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Scone, Shortbread, and other sweets “What would you do if you didn’t have to work?” he asked. “Didn’t have to work?” “Like, if you were independently wealthy.” I had to think about it. I was unloading the oven. Tired, sticky with sweat and flour, trying to ignore the new burn across my left wrist. “This,” I said at last. “I would do this.” The answer surprised me. The words, and their certainty, felt like a revelation. From the outside, this probably sounds ridiculous. After all, what have I been doing but living, breathing, eating bread for the past four years? But my twenties have often felt like a decade long existential crisis. Certainty has been scarce in the years of doubt. In my early twenties, I was paralyzed by the fear of choosing the wrong path. The future spread before me, possibility and promise, and yet to step onto one path, it seemed, meant forsaking all others, and so I stood still, frozen by agonized indecision. It was an age of hyperbole and deep self-absorption. By my middle twenties I could see that the paths were not, if fact, straight, but braided together. As long as I was walking in the right direction, I decided, I would be ok. But still, I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder as my friends marched off into families and careers, their lives growing ever more distant. My late twenties have been given more to mundane worries—financial security, work-life balance, healthcare—and vague fantasies about a make-believe 9-5 with benefits and free weekends that, on closer examination, disintegrate into Machiavellian office politics and hours hunched over a computer. And so I felt that moment of certainty through my whole body, like a deep breath that pushed out the clutter and worries. My shoulders went back. My eyes widened. Laughter expanded in my chest. And then I finished unloading the oven, lined the loaves up on the rack to cool, walked over to the bench where I’d been rolling out pastry, and got back to work. TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Apricot Scone Raspberry Buckwheat Scone Herb & Onion Tart Raspberry Cream Tart Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Rosemary Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Scone, Shortbread, other sweets Raven Breads will not be at the market next Saturday, 7/28. See you soon.
Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone (the last marmalade until next winter!) Raspberry Buckwheat Scone Raspberry Peach Galette Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Wild & Seedy Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Scone, Shortbread, Galette  See you soon.
Sophie Owner | Baker When the mixing and shaping are done for the day, when the bread is rising, and the cookies and scones are lined up in orderly rows up and down the sheet pans, then the real work is finished. Still, hours remain. Still there is the baking, the oven loaded and unloaded and loaded again, the proofing baskets to scrub, dishes to wash, cooled loaves to stack in their stacks of boxes, walls to wipe down, the floor to sweep and mop. It is late morning on a day that started well before sunrise, and the work is not even half done. So I make a cup of coffee, milky and strong, and sit out back where I can see the alley and a ribbon of sky through the window. I open the library’s collection of digital books on my phone, and go in search of someone to read me a story. It has to be the right story. A real sweep-you-up, fast-paced, wild rumpus of a story. A story to lift me off my aching feet, above my stiff knees, away from the sweat and flour grit and my tired-sticky eyes. A story to carry me through the late morning, over the afternoon, and deep into the evening. It is a wonderful and disconcerting thing, to lose myself so completely in a book. When I am reading, or being read to, I no longer hear the world clattering around me or notice the passing of time. It has always been this way. Theoretically, I believe in being fully attentive to my work. After all, I spend most of my days working. If I don’t pay attention to the working hours, I could lose the greater part of my adult life. But in practice, my baking days are too long, the kitchen too loud and poorly lit. My body tolerates more than my mind, so I let the stories carry my mind away while my body moves steadily on through the familiar motions. It is the bike ride home that brings me back. After hours of living divided, the steady pump of tired legs, the air moving over my skin, the smells of the night, hook my mind and pull it inside my body. Afterward, if I have the energy and the light, I’ll run down to the water. Standing on the broken willow at the path’s edge, looking out at the ocean and sky through its branches, I’ll listen to the waves wash their steady beat against the shore. Each wave is like a breath. Each breath pulls me farther inside my skin, till my mind stills, and I am whole again. TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Strawberry Buckwheat Scone Sweet & Sour Cherry Galette Sour Cherry & Hazelnut Tart Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Country Rye Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Scone, Shortbread, etc. See you soon.
Sophie Owner | Baker Customers often worry they won't make it through a whole loaf of bread by themselves, and ask if they can freeze the remainder. I’m always slightly baffled by the question—the answer is yes, you can, though I prefer not to freeze rye since it thaws crumbly—because I can easily eat a half a loaf by myself in a day, and surely, if I can eat half a loaf in a day, anyone can eat a whole loaf in a week. The breads I bake are no baguettes, to stale to rocks in a day or two. They keep well. The acid from sourdough prevents staling, and the extra moisture held in the bran of the whole grain flours keeps the loaves soft enough to cut for well over a week. Even so, the breads change as they age. With time, the crumb sets more firmly and begins to dry out; the flavors mellow. Personally, I like my breads best 4 or 6 days after they’re baked, when they’re firm enough to cut whisper thin for an optimum 1:1 bread:butter ratio. Though they’ll keep for days yet, at around a week I start looking for ways to recycle my old loaves. There are, after all, new loaves piling up, and the old heels can start to look sad, sitting forgotten at the back of the cutting board. The following are some of my favorite things to do with old (7-12 day) bread: OLD RYE (Because rye is so dense, it’s more or less impossible to cut once completely dry, so always store your bread with the cut ends covered, and take action before your loaves have fully petrified.) Croutons: Cube the bread. Toss in a skillet over medium high heat with a generous pour of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. Stir frequently, until the sides are seared deep gold. These are excellent on salad, but don’t always last long enought to make it into the bowl. Crisps: Slice the bread as thin as you can (if you happen to have a meat slicer, this would be an excellent time to use it). Leave dry or toss with oil. Spread out in a single layer on a baking sheet, and toast in the oven on low heat (~300°F) until the slices are lightly browned and completely dry. Eat as crackers, or break up over salad or soup. These will keep in a sealed container for months. OLD WHEAT (Though not necessary, lightly toasting the bread first will add flavor to any dish.) General Hot Dish: Use sliced bread in place of noodles in your favorite casseroles. I particularly love old bread lasagna. If you can wrap your mind around the extraordinary amount of butter, try layering old Red & White with Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce, grated Pecorino Romano, and mozzarella. Remember that the bread will absorb more liquid than would cooked noodles. Use a heavy hand with the sauce. Strata: Mix cubed bread, sauteed or roasted vegetables, chopped herbs, cheese, and perhaps pancetta or sausage in a buttered glass dish. Mix equal parts milk and egg, plus a little salt and pepper, and pour over the dish until the bread is fully submerged when pressed down. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours, or, better yet, overnight. Top with cheese and bake at 350°F until the custard is set in the middle, about 40-60 minutes. This was my grandmother’s favorite addition to Sunday brunch. It’s a great way to use up leftover odds and ends, and in the morning all you need to do is move it from the refrigerator into the oven. I know it's supposed to drizzle this afternoon, but come to market anyway for a new loaf, and some of these beautiful fruit tarts. See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Strawberry Buckwheat Scone Rhubarb Strawberry Galette Sour Cherry Hazelnut Tart Shortbread No WEDNESDAY MARKET this week The garden is wild with last year’s seeds. Cornfield and California poppies, calendula, phacelia, red, white, and yellow clover, wall rocket, fennel, and hairy vetch claim the borders and pathways, grow in flowering thickets over the uncultivated edges of vegetable beds, riot in the corner where the old compost heap lay. Yellow spears of mullein shoot up through the old fishing net we hung as a deer fence. Ours isn’t a huge garden—ten by ten meters, perhaps—but the wild edges make it feel deep and secret. Were I still today the fairy expert I was at five, I might know those edges differently, but the knowledge of magic is long lost to me. Instead, I admire practical things: the peas trellis heavy with vines, the tidy rows of leeks and lettuce, the bank of self-seeded calendula with flowers in every warm color, from safety vest orange to dusky pink and soft, butter yellow. I read a book on sustainable agriculture last week that argued that the keys to success in farming were diversity and the elimination of waste, and I thought, these seem like good practices for any business, especially one so marginal as a bakery. Out in the garden in the gray light of dawn, picking my breakfast, my eyes kept sliding back to the poppies, impossible red against the muted colors of morning. Maybe there’s a bakery lesson in this, too, I thought. Maybe a business, too, can have an orderly, productive center, and deliberately uncultivated edges, were imagination and unexpected beauty can grow. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker
TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + Garden Herb Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Strawberry Buckwheat Scone Rhubarb Strawberry Galette Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Scone, Shortbread, Galette Can you ever be all the way outside in the city? Can you be outside when you stand on a concrete floor, walled in by buildings, with the roar of traffic ebbing and flooding like the tide, changing birdsong and your brain, and the the petro-smell of too many cars rising up from the roads with every warm rain? , Last night I rode home under a hot pink sunset, keeping one eye on the sky, the other on the cars and the boozy sidewalk crowds. The night was sound and color around me. I remembered other night rides. I remembered riding through the country night and feeling the air change. The hollows were cool damp, already collecting mist, and the night smells were as loud as the frog choruses: forest mulch and fir, nootka rose, dust, flowering clover and meadow grass, and the warm smell of the cattle. It made me feel so wildly alive, pedaling through the complicated dark, with only the shadows of the hedgerows to mark the road, and not a single headlight to break the night all the way home. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Buckwheat Strawberry Scone Rhubarb Strawberry Galette Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Toasted Sesame Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Scone, Shortbread, Galette TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + Rosemary Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Buckwheat Rhubarb Scone Cardamom Roll Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White + Garden Herb Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Shortbread Scone and perhaps some other treat |
