|
This is the last week of the winter bread subscription. I’m taking off for the remainder of March to visit bakeries! The spring bread subscription starts April 3, the Wednesday before the first farmers market, and runs for 9 weeks, through the end of May. Sign up HERE to get your midweek bread. The Baker’s Choice Subscription will be make up of recipes I gather on my travels. In the meantime, for those of you who like to bake, or who are interested in starting, I’ve written out a basic recipe for Mountain Rye below so you can keep eating good bread while I’m gone. Bread isn’t hard to make. Mix flour, water, salt, and leavening, give it some time, add heat, and you have a loaf. The challenge is making good bread, consistently.  This week's Baker's Choice: a malty, sweet, slow baked black bread, inspired by Åland black bread. THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Mar 6 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Black Bread SPRING BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Every Wednesday, Apr 3 - Jun 5 Red & White Subscription Mountain Rye Subscription Baker's Choice Subscription Mountain Rye Recipe
Makes 1 large loaf What you’ll need: Healthy sourdough, whole rye & whole wheat flour (available in the bulk section at the Coop), non-iodized salt, a scale, mixing bowls, a loaf pan, an oven, the contents of your pantry. Optional: A thermometer. Sourdough: Mix 145g warm water, 145g whole rye flour, and a generous teaspoon (7g) sourdough. Cover and leave in a warm place overnight (12-14 hours), until the dough has risen and is just starting to collapse. Soaker: Mix 155g total of the seeds, cracked/rolled grains, toasted old bread, nuts, dried fruit, or whatever other dry goods you have in your pantry that look interesting. Add 2 teaspoon (11g) salt. Optional: add 1 teaspoon (5g) whole spices, toasted and ground (caraway, coriander, anise, and fennel are common bread spices, but you can use anything you want). Pour 225g boiling water over the top and let the soaker sit for a few hours or overnight. Dough: Mix the sourdough and the soaker until smooth, breaking up any clumps of seeds or old bread. Add 170g whole wheat flour, 60g whole rye flour, and 90g very warm water. Mix vigorously until the dough is smooth and supple (5-10 minute). It will not feel strong like a wheat dough. Set aside, covered, in a warm spot for half an hour. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and press into a long rectangle with floured hands. Roll the rectangle up and set seam side down into the greased bread pan. (Add more flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking to your hands or the counter, but try not to roll raw flour inside the loaf). Press the rolled dough into the pan. Score the top by cutting a 1/4” deep crosshatch (a flat-ended spatula works well) or by poking holes with the narrow end of a chopstick. Cover and let rise in a warm place until the dough has expanded by about half and the surface of the loaf shows widening cracks (2-5 hours). Preheat the oven as hot as it will go. Add a pan for steam. When you load the bread into the oven, pour a cup of hot water into the steam pan. Bake for 10 minutes at the hottest temperature, then lower the oven to 375F and bake for another 50-70 minutes. The loaf is done when a thermometer inserted into the bottom reads 198F to 205F. If you don’t have a thermometer, err on the side of caution. Let cool completely before cutting. Enjoy! Sophie Owner | Baker  Late February already, and the crocuses push up through the moss and grass, violet and yellow against the brightening green. The birds are all out at once: robins probing the lawn, warblers gossiping in the hedgerows, mallards and mergansers crowding the water, and in the stubbled fields flocks of swans browse, their necks bent like white question marks to the untilled earth. Skiing last weekend over Lightening Lake I squinted into the cold, trying to read the shape of the land in the flat light. The snow was depthless, the hills on either side dark and close, the sky low. The landscape felt too austere for beauty after the noise and exuberance of our temperate spring. But when the sky opened on a patch of western blue and the low sun lit the clouds’ heavy bellies warm gold, lit the hills and lake, lit my face and chest and the cold fronts of my thighs, I stood still, caught by the light. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Feb 27 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Quince & Rye THE LAST WEDNESDAY BREAD (till April) Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Mar 6 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Black Bread Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm  I won’t always write about walking. As summer approaches the work begins to tighten around my days, squeezing out the spare hours till moving through the world becomes purely functional: cycling for transportation, running for exercise, driving for hauling impossible loads or covering impossible distances. Then I’ll write about baking, or cycling, or perhaps running. But now, in the slow heart of winter, I have time to walk. The time I take to walk without direction is often the truest part of my day. The chores and routine work, the hours absorbed by the blue glow of my screens, the casual interactions with friends and strangers, these so easily blur till the days slip by into unremembered months. Perhaps what I find in walking is the sort of moving meditation others seek in yoga or martial arts. Walking brings time into focus, makes me fully embodied and awake to my surroundings. Already, most of the hours I spent indoors yesterday are slipping from my memory, but I remember so well the yellow of the willow branches and the clean cut of snow against wet pebbles at the high tide line. I remember the cold of the wind and the heat of my body. I remember the sound of wings, and looking up to see crows silhouetted against the white blue sky, flying north. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Feb 20 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Sour Ring Bread NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Feb 27 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: undecided Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm   We walked out of the forest and down the lee side of the spit. The water was the same dense gray as the sky, the islands dark and snow dusted, disappearing into fog where sky and water merged. Two skiffs out in the bay passed close enough for conversation, but from shore we could hear nothing but the wind and gulls. The beach’s contours had changed since the last time I’d walked this way at low tide. The point, when we reached it, was flat and broad where before had been a sharp, current-rippled ridge of sand and pebble. Out of the land’s shelter the wind took us hard. I balled my hands into fists in my pockets as I looked out over the channel, the water an eerie, pale green and frothing white. Birds flocked this shore, the gulls swooping up to drop shells onto the rocks, the ducks crowding the sandy flats, facing into the surf. They lifted up before us, resettling as soon as we’d passed. The wind was picking up, cutting cold through my heavy coat and hat, icing my fingers, stiffening my face. The waves had thrown up new driftwood above the tide line and scattered shells that showed secret purple and mother of pearl green against the dark sand. Down the beach, something large and white stood at the edge of the driftwood. We followed the footsteps of other curious walkers to investigate. The shape sharpened into a padlocked sail chest, a single tie line hanging down its side. In the summer the beach is littered with plastic, but the winter empties the sea of casual boaters and their trash. The chest was the was the only jetsam we found on that whole wild shore. Back at the forest’s edge we turned away from the wind and towards an unexpected piece of abstract art: the wind had painted snow into icy, white racing stripes up the windward side of each exposed tree. Glancing back, I found the forest behind us was dark. Before us, the bold white stripes shone and swayed. A few paces into the trees and the quiet closed around us. The air was still. I took my hands out of my pockets and flexed my fingers. High above, the treetops twisted, shaking down snow flurries. Above the trees, a raven played the storm, wing dipping and rolling, skimming the air, before swinging around in a broad arc to ride down the wind and out of sight. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Feb 13 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Tinned Rye with Raisins & Walnuts - inspired by the rugbrod so many of you loved a few weeks back. 100% Whatcom grown (except for the salt). Happy Valentines! NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Feb 20 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Sour Ring Bread - the daily bread of Finland WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION 4 weeks left! RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new rye every week Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm  Look at this! After a January so warm the crocuses are up, the kale is bolting in the garden, and across the driveway, the neighbors’ quince is flowering pink*, it’s snowing in February. Tuesday, perhaps, when I’m biking to the bakery through the predawn dark on icy roads, pursued by marauding cars, I’ll wish for rain, but today being Sunday, I’m giddy as a kid on a snow day. What a perfect day to drink tea and read my (self-assigned) homework. Later, if I’m lucky, there will be enough snow to go skiing! Happy snow day. Stay warm! Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Feb 6 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Farmer's Bread 2.0 - a rye & wheat boule with a little fennel, caraway, and blue fenugreek. I'm still tweaking the recipe. Critiques of last week's loaf welcome! NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Feb 13 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Tinned Rye with Raisins & Walnuts WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION 5 weeks left! RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new rye every week Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm * I know, from searching my past newsletters, most written at this same table, that two winters ago that quince didn’t flower till April.
 Tracking fermentation (with a nifty little Bluetooth pH meter) in a test batch of Farmer Bread. I spent last weekend in Olympia at the Cascadia Grains conference, talking with farmers and bakers and listening to talks on subjects ranging from business finance to climate change, crop rotations, and the centers of origin for the world’s grains. I came home, as I always do from these industry events, fizzy with anticipation and nerves, invigorated by the in person connections in a way I never am by interactions on social media. I want to build this bakery dream into reality. I want so much more than this little market business can hold. I’ve been deep in the numbers all week, building foolishly complicated spreadsheets, researching costs, working out financial projections. Next up: financing, real estate, incorporation, interviewing contractors and designers and accountants and attorneys. When I think about all the steps between here and my cheerful, light-filled bakery, I want to climb back into the dough tub (metaphorically) and just hang out with the bread. Bread is so wonderfully complex, but also simple, you know? Tangible. Immediate and satisfying in a way the business planning is not. To fight the paralyzing size of this new project, I make task lists. Lots of them. In notebooks, in spreadsheets, on loose scraps of paper. I make task lists for making more task lists. That way, I have one step to take, and then the next. And when the nerves overwhelm the anticipation, I have the stories I’ve written to myself about the bakery. Dozens of little stories, each a window into the dream bakery, to remind me that at the end of the lists is a business as tangible and immediate as the bread it will produce. But bigger. And not at all simple. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Jan 30 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Farmer's Bread 1.0 - a crusty rye & wheat boule, inspired by the Austrian Bauernlaib. Eventually, I'd like to add a rye boule like this to my weekly bread lineup. Help me develop the recipe by letting me know what you think of the sour balance (lactic/acetic), the spice mix and strength (currently a little fennel, caraway, and blue fenugreek), the texture (moisture, density), the keeping quality, and anything else you think is important in your daily bread. NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Feb 6 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Farmer's Bread 2.0 WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION 6 weeks left! RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new rye every week Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm  Back when it was cold, back in the beginning of the week, before the rain, when the chill eased through the uninsulated walls of my upstairs bedroom and I slept curled under all my blankets in a tiny island of body heat, the bed a cold sea around me, I woke to frost. The grass was frosted, and the brittle leaves of kale and cabbage in the garden. The fennel, just tufting up between last year’s dead stalks, was wilted and rimmed with white. The gravel in the drive was frosted, and the cars, the garbage cans, the old leaves scattered by the walk. Ice crunched satisfyingly underfoot. The sun is slow to reach us this time of year. It was late morning before light crept all the way to the back fence. When I walked out to the garden at midday to pick my lunch, I found the deep shadows still frozen. The house threw a long, straight frost shadow. The pine and rhododendrons dappled frost across the grass. The trash bins drew precise, frosty parallelograms, the cars, rounded white rhombuses on the gravel. If I had stood in the yard all morning, watching the little puffed up birds flick between bush and fence as the sun warmed my back, I too could have grown a frost twin: a long, cold shadow self, reaching north towards the dark. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Jan 23 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Rugbrød - This hearty tinned bread, made with 100% Whatcom rye, is built on rugbrod recipes sent to me by the Dutch baker Tim van Dalen and French baker Thomas Teffri-Chambelland. The perfect base for smørrebrød (open-face sandwiches). NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Jan 30 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Famer's Bread - a crusty rye & wheat boule, inspired by the Austrian bauernlaib. WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Sign up to get a loaf every Wedneday through March 6 RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new rye every week Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Jan 16 Red & White Mountain Rye Honey & Spice (pain d'epices) Baker's Choice: Sweet & Sour Limpa - There are many versions of Finnish limpa. This one is a blend of Whatcom rye and Walla Walla wheat, and balances sweet molasses, orange, and anise, against the acidity of sourdough. Eat with sweet or savory toppings. NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, 1/23 Red & White Mountain Rye Honey & Spice (pain d'epices) Baker's Choice: Rugbrod - This hearty tinned bread, made with 100% Whatcom rye, is built on rugbrod recipes sent to me by the Dutch baker Tim van Dalen and French baker Thomas Teffri-Chambelland. The perfect base for smørrebrød (open-face sandwiches). WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Sign up to get a loaf every Wedneday through March 6 RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new rye every week Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm  View from the Samish Overlook on New Years Eve. The view outside the cafe was all concrete and cars, but sitting at the window reading Robert Macfarlane as my coffee cooled, I felt the ghost forest press close. Here around me and stretching out in all directions was the memory of trees over a century gone: fir and spruce, red cedar wider than my outstretched arms, with clouds catching in their peaks and the understory open beneath. I could almost hear the wind and creaking wood, almost smell the forest must beneath the coffee and the wet wool of my sweater. “She came to know her chosen place closely, [and] that closeness served to deepen rather than to limit her vision,” Macfarlane wrote of the Scottish writer and mountaineer Nan Shepherd. I would know this place closely, though it will take me a lifetime of stolen Sundays to learn the landscape, and years of baking to know the fruits of our land. This winter my studies range from rainy runs through the Chuckanuts to an exploration of Whatcom-grown rye through the Bread Subscription. I look forward to every day. Sophie Owner | Baker WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Jan 9 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Potato Rye Honey & Spice (pain d'epices) WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Sign up to get a loaf every Wedneday through March 6 RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new rye every week  Recipe testing: on the right, Belarusian and Lithuanian potato ryes for this week's Baker's Choice. On the left, sweet limpas for the following week. After the holidays, after the lights, the rooms warm with friends and family, after the gifts, after the tamales and pozole, the roast beef, ragu, and rugelach, the gingerbread and gingersnaps, after eating and eating and eating, I step out into the world. It’s mid afternoon. Damp cold. The sky mottled gray. I start slowly, moving awake after days glutted on food, books, and sleep. The muddy track along the lakeside is quiet. Under the car rumble, I can hear the waves lapping. They roll towards shore from two directions, crossing at a wide angle. Each facet of the water’s surface reflects a different sky. For a while, I stand watching the water, trying to catch the shifting pattern; it eludes me. I run on, under the gray sky, along the gray water, through the lowering dark. I cross a hillside of waterbirds probing the grass. The ducks lift off before me in waves. The geese keep eating, unperturbed. I take the long stairs up from the lake two at a time. One flight after the next. I reach the top gasping, sweating, calves tingling, thighs trembling, face flushed, cold fingers fisted, feet fumbling for the last step. I am wholely alive. Every corner of my body is awake. This is a gift I try to remember: legs and lungs that move me through the world, arms that lift and carry, hands as competent to mix dough as they are to hold a pen. I am glad to have work that demands mind and body both, glad too to live in a community whose support lets me turn that work into a livelihood. Thank you. The bakery is growing steadily, straining the seams of the shoestring operation I’ve been running for the past four years. I have you to thank for that, as well. Because of that growth, I’ve been able to double my donations this year from one percent of sales to two percent. A small change, but a step in the right direction. And because of that growth, I’ll spend the winter planning how to build my bakery dreams into brick and mortar reality. I’ve passed enough hours staring out over the water, watching the light and writing stories in my head. It’s time to run. Happy almost New Year. Sophie Owner | Baker WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Jan 2 Red & White Mountain Rye Broa Milho Honey & Spice (pain d'epices) WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Sign up to get a loaf every Wedneday, January 2 - March 6 RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: 10 weeks, 10 ryes |
