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Here we are, poised between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the high holy days of capitalism. I suppose it’s further proof that I will never be a great entrepreneur—as if the bicycle and brick breads didn’t give me away—that I find this celebration of rampant consumerism macabre. Because it’s not really the great deals and free shipping we’re celebrating, is it? It’s not a holiday about corporate generosity. What we’re celebrating is our ability to take without question. To take from the poor and give to the rich. To take while the fires rage and the seas rise. To take and take, no matter the cost. Does the act of giving balance the taking? Can we really, without irony or acknowledgment, take blindly from the world, and then turn around with a smile and hold out our plunder to the people we love? Look! we say in plastic and packaging, Here is my devotion in planned obsolescence. Look! Here, is my caring in pit mines and clear cuts. Look! Here is my adoration in poisoned rivers and lost species, my gratitude in child labor and exploitation. Look, my dearest, I love you more than the world itself! In a speech she gave near the end of her life, the old-left dreamer Ursula le Guin said, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” See you soon, if my early morning politics haven't scared you away. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Gingerbread Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread The Wednesday Bread Subscription is over for the season. The next subscription, starting in January, will be a survey of rye breads (though there will, of course, be wheat breads available as well). Sheltered on the north side of the house, our maple holds onto its last blaze of leaves. If the sun is up, if the single pane windows aren't fogged over with condensation, it's my first outdoor sight of the morning. Good morning! the maple calls in orange. Good morning! in happy yellow. Good morning! in deep red, against the lightening sky.  See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Turkey Stuffer (rosemary, garlic, olive oil, cornmeal) Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Apple Quince Galette* Gingerbread* Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread THANKSGIVING ORDERS (Order online with a credit card or at market today with cash/check for pickup Wednesday, Nov 21, at 1313 N State St.) Apple Quince Pie (serves 8 / $28) Gingerbread Bundt with Pear Caramel (serves 12 / $42) Rosemary Potato Bread (720 g / $8) *Sample the Thanksgiving sweets today at market before you place your order! I am glad to hold my work in my hands. In a life awash in distractions—thoughts, words, screens—the bread is an anchor. Here, the wet clay of rye, sticky, malleable, and patient. There, the delicate wheat. The doughs are alive and particular. This one wants firm, decisive handling, but that one—be gentle! I mix every dough, up to my forearms, stirring and squeezing flour and water into a smooth mass. I shape every loaf, tipping each with cupped hands into a pan or basket to rise. And when I unload the oven, I examine the bread, noting its triumphs and imperfections: the bloom of a razor-cut line in the crust, the pale, soft sides where two loaves nosed too close together, the curving profiles, the cracks and color. No matter how long the day, no matter how tired I am, no matter how overwhelming the news spinning out of the radio, the sight of the loaves lined up to cool on the rack makes me pause in gratitude. Here is tangible work. Here is what I made with muscle and nerve and the touch-memory of my hands. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Fig Scone Apple Quince Galette* Gingerbread* Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread THANKSGIVING ORDERS (For pickup Wednesday, Nov 21, at 1313 N State St.) Apple Quince Pie (serves 8 / $28) Gingerbread Bundt with Pear Caramel (serves 12 / $42) Rosemary Potato Bread (720 g / $8) *Sample the Thanksgiving sweets today at market before you place your order! Just a few points of business this morning: 1. This is the first week of the late season market. All the market stalls have been moved around and consolidated! Raven Breads will be located just inside the Market Depot, across from the info booth, from now till 12/22. 2. Thanksgiving orders are up online. Pickup downtown (exact location TBD) on Wednesday 11/21. I'll have order forms at market starting next Saturday. See you soon, on this wild and wet Saturday! Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Scone Gingerbread Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread THANKSGIVING ORDERS Apple Quince Pie (serves 8 / $28) Gingerbread Bundt (serves 12 / $38) Rosemary Potato Bread (720 g / $8) Last Sunday we climbed above treeline and into the dusty blue of high mountain sunshine where the larches blazed orange gold and Cascade blueberries lit the hillsides in red fire. Just below Maple Pass, the mountains around us alive with light, another hiker let out a wild whoop, and the mountains echoed back his joy. We need a language of place, I think, to speak the wonder of this landscape. A verb for the way the late autumn sun backlights turning leaves. Another for the blue fading of mountains, each line of peaks paler than the one before till they disappear into the sky. I want a word for the sudden temperature change when you walk from sunshine into shadow, and one for the pockets of cool air held in low, damp places. What is the word for stones sunk into frost heaved ground, for the lacy trim of ice crystals along the edges of leaves, for the way bare branches rimmed in ice glitter in low sunlight? In his beautiful, demanding book on the importance of landscape language, Robert Macfarlane writes, "by instrumentalizing nature, linguistically and operationally, we've largely stunned the earth out of wonder. Language is fundamental to the possibility of re-wonderment, for language does not just register experience, it produces it. The contours and colors of words are inseparable from the feelings we create in relation to situations, to others, and to places." If we spoke the language of the mountains and sound, would we name the daily wonder of this place? Would we see our landscape more clearly, love it more deeply, and protect it more fiercely in a changing world?   TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Scone Buckwheat Scone Gingerbread Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION (Pick up bread every Wednesday Sept 5 - Nov 21. Sign up anytime.) Buckwheat & Honey Mountain Rye I greatly value making time to write early on Saturday mornings, but sometimes I value an extra hour of sleep more. So instead of my written ramblings, here's a video from yesterday of the Mountain Rye mix. View it on Instagram or Facebook. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Garlic & Rosemary Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Buckwheat Strawberry Scone Apple & Cream Cake Gingerbread, finally! Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION (Pick up bread every Wednesday Sept 5 - Nov 21. 5 weeks remaining.) Potato Herb (made with Huckleberry Golds!) Mountain Rye I get caught in the routine of my life. It’s a good routine, bounded by meaningful work, extravagant dinner parties, and too many books. What gaps there are are easily filled by the endless backlog of projects: harvesting and putting up fruit, readying the garden for winter, researching breads, business planning, house chores, etc. There’s always more to do, as you well know. No need to look elsewhere for ways to fill the hours. And so it is a startling pleasure to step out of routine and into the wider world, like stepping out into sunshine after a day spent indoors. Last Saturday a friend texted just as market was ending to ask if I wanted to canoe the Nooksack delta. I usually turn down Saturday night invitations out of hand: parties, dancing, films, none can compete with the lure of a quiet evening at home. As market ends, I’m daydreaming about unfolding a heavy wool blanket under the long-needled pine in the back yard and sitting there with a book, notebook, and pen, with the smell of dry forest around me and the tree above, till the dark or cold force me inside. But the delta. All that sky and smooth water. That was different. “Yes,” I wrote back, ignoring the next customer. “What time do you want to leave?” We parked by the side of the road and carried the canoe past No Trespassing signs and into the lazy river. The water slid, green and sunlit, between alder and willow. Ducks flew up before us. A beaver watched us pass, slipping silently under water when we circled back for another look. I listened to the dip of our paddles, the beating of duck wings, and the distant sound of airplanes. When the forest opened into the delta it was almost sunset. The water was a glossy mirror to the sky. Here, a ten minute drive and a quick paddle from my house, with Bellingham just across the bay, we looked out towards Lummi, over luminous water under a luminous sky, and the whole world was made of light. This was better than any book under the pine tree. Better, even, than coming home to dinner on the table and a house full of friends. The delta filled me like a deep breath, and when I exhaled, the light remained.  See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Scone Buckwheat Scone Apple & Cream Cake Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION (Pick up bread every Wednesday Sept 5 - Nov 21. Sign up anytime.) Toasted Sesame Mountain Rye TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Buckwheat Apple Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Scone Apple & Cream Cake Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION (Pick up bread every Wednesday Sept 5 - Nov 21, sign up anytime) Rosemary Sea Salt Mountain Rye See you soon.
Sophie Owner | Baker We were talking the other day about the knowledge paradox of teaching. My friend, who teaches engineering and design to high school students, was explaining the new CNC software he was navigating. “Last year this program was so easy to teach,” he told me, “because I didn’t know how to use it either. This year...” and with a quick series of clicks he demonstrated his newfound proficiency. The router started spinning across the screen, tracing the design he’d laid out. “This year I know too much.” Just now, the stack of books by my bed includes a gardener's manifesto, a classic literary cookbook, a beautiful and cynical essay on the history of humankind, and Wendell Berry. In a week or two, the books will be different, but the stack will still lean heavily towards food and agriculture. Because so many of my friends, too, live lives built around food, I can often assume a deep and unspoken knowledge beneath our conversations. Without the shared obsession, where does the conversation begin? I want to explain this business to you, the why and the what of it, but where do I start? With the flavor and nutrition of sourdough? With agricultural politics? With environmental ethics? My relationship with food has been built over a lifetime. Which stories do I use to lay my foundations? Do I tell you about the garden I kept as a child and my friendships with trees? Or do I tell you about the sinking sensation of flying over the country for the first time after reading Cadillac Desert and watching the circle-square patchwork of central spigot irrigation spread over the landscape? Do I tell you how, after a farmworker friend told me about her father shepherding each of his daughters across the border in turn when they were teenagers, about the fear and loneliness and the bodies in the desert, about how she’s never been back home, I went to her half-empty village in the Mixe and her grandmother made me tortillas? Or do I tell you about our Sunday brunches, the pleasure I feel when I look around at a house full of friends and laughter, with the sun rising towards noon, and the table scattered with crumbs and empty coffee cups? I don’t have answers, but I’ll keep thinking about the questions. You think about them, too. Tell me about businesses you’ve encountered that effectively share their stories through advertising, design, mission statements, literature, or well trained staff. Learning to bake bread is only one part of building this business. Learning to teach people about bread might be just as important. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Gleaner* Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookies Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Scone Apple Cake Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Cinnamon Twist Mountain Rye *a whole wheat bread made with: with apples from the last few trees of an orchard remnent in the county not yet overtaken by scrub forest; pears from my grandmother's house; dried champagne grapes our 80+ year old neighbor planted along the fence; dried concord grapes from what was once an urban homestead; dried plums from the back alleys of Sunnyland; and dried apricots from the farmers market, because apricots are a sadly ungleanable fruit in the Pacific Northwest. Today is the last day of summer, and it promises to be a decidedly unsummerlike day. I woke in the dark to the sound of wind, where a month ago I would have woken in the cool, white light of dawn. There’s rain in the forecast. For weeks I’ve been gathering in the last of the sun’s gifts: plums from the back alleys, rosemary from my grandmother’s garden, tomatoes, apples and pears, blue fenugreek, and grapes. The back porch is a chaos of canning supplies, dehydrators, harvest totes, dried herbs waiting to be stripped of leaves, dried flower heads waiting to be stripped of seeds, unripe tomatoes pulled reluctantly from the garden, fermenting crocks, and empty glass jars. This is the bulwark of flavor I build every year against the coming dark. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookies Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Harvest Cookies Oatmeal Scone Apple Cake Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Blue Corn Nixtamal Mountain Rye |
