My year is like a mountain. In the fall, I climb, up and up towards that last, tired scramble through the holiday scree. Here, in winter, I stop to rest at the peak, catching my breath and admiring the view stretching out in all directions. Through spring and summer I descend, running faster and faster, limbs loose, feet skidding as I pick up momentum, all my attention focused on the path just ahead. Taking in the winter view, to stretch the simile, I look out over the past year's business, and ahead to the coming years'. I spend more time writing, number crunching, and dreaming. I visit other bakeries for ideas and inspiration, and for the pleasure of talking to people who share my peculiar passion for fermenting flour. These past few days, I've been driving down the I-5 corridor, stopping along the way to talk and watch and, occassionally, help to bake bread. The glimpses into different approaches to baking and business are galvanizing. The friendships with other bakers give me hope. And each stop sharpens my vision of my own bakery's future, filling in details I didn't know were missing, and brightening the colors. Tomorrow I'll drive back to Bellingham (in my new/old truck!) to bake your bread and translate what I've learned on this quick trip into the business plan I'm writing for the next iteration of Raven Breads. On the menu for the coming weeks are: Wednesday 2/28 OAT & HONEY ($8) Sweet, tender, and perfect for toast. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 3/7 MÉTEIL ($8) A beautifully crackled rye/wheat country bread. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 3/14 CINNAMON TWIST ($8) Because who didn't love cinnamon sugar toast as a child? MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Sophie
Owner | Baker I used to build forts in these woods. Sometimes, they were only sketches: this stump is the table; that red cedar is the wall; the front door is here, between two stones; those bits of sea glass, smooth beach rocks veined with pink and green, feathers, and drying seed pods lined up along the log are my treasures. I always walked in the front door. Other times the forts were more solid, like the lean-to I built against the upended roots of a toppled fir. I stole sheets of moss from the forest floor, and laid them over the slanted roof, hoping they would grow over the whole structure. The problem with forts, whether built in the forest, or in the living room with curtains and couch pillows, or piled from driftwood, or tunneled into deep snow, is that all the pleasure is in the building. Once you’re done, you have a dark cave of some sort. Often, it’s rather damp, and maybe your knees are wet from kneeling to line up stones along the invisible interior walls, and it’s probably raining (in my memory of childhood summers, it always rained through the 4th of July), and breakfast was a long time ago. For hours and hours you’ve worked with intense, imagination-fueled focus, unheeding of the damp creeping up from the wet hems of your sleeves, caught up fully in the wonder of your creation. Only now, with the construction complete, does your concentration waver. Maybe you crawl inside the lean-to and sit for a minute, looking around in the dim light at the mud and sticks, and the little treasures tucked into the tree roots' crooked fingers, while the wet drips down your hair and inside your shirt collar. Maybe you fuss for a minute more, moving things just so, but the purpose is gone. So you crawl out again, and thrash your way back through the woods, and home for lunch. Wednesday 2/21 TOASTED SESAME ($8) Umami and crunch. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 2/28 OAT & HONEY ($8) Sweet, tender, and perfect for toast. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 3/7 MÉTEIL ($8) A beautifully crackled rye/wheat country bread. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Sophie Owner | Baker P.S. The monthly winter farmers market is today! Raven Breads won't be there, but you should still go and wander through the Market Depot, if only to give yourself a good reason to leave the house on this rather damp Saturday.
Already, I can feel the earth tilting towards summer. All across the lawn, the crocuses are punching up through the moss and grass, opening the closed fists of their flowers to the sun. Through the leaf mulch and dead stalks of cover crop, the first fava beans are uncurling in the garden. Soon, the daffodils will follow. When I walk the between the vegetable beds, mapping imagined crops with my stride, I daydream of delicate cotyledon and the first true leaves, of muddy knees and muddier boots, of weeds and rain and a riot of new-green growing up from the wet earth. No matter that yesterday I passed children skipping ice shards across frozen puddles as I walked downtown, my jacket zipped all the way to my throat, and my hands held close in my pockets. No matter that we still face five more months of rain. It’s almost time to plant the first peas and greens, to scatter poppy seeds, and tuck sweetpeas in along the fence line. The calendar may call this the depth of winter, but for me, February has always marked the beginning of spring. Wednesday 2/14 CHOCOLATE ($10) A bittersweet black bread, with dark cocoa, Theo milk chocolate chunks, and candied orange peel. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 2/21 TOASTED SESAME ($8) Umami and crunch. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 2/28 OAT & HONEY ($8) Sweet, tender, and perfect for toast. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker I collect books from library the way some people buy clothes. Compulsively. Obsessively. With a thrill of new ownership that all too often fades once the books are in my possession. Every time I bike by the library, I feel the inexorable pull. All those unread books. All those beautiful words. All those stories, waiting for me! When she was little, my sister would heap her plate with food at the dinner table, insistent of her hunger. Once the plate was in front of her, though, she would hardly touch it. “My eyes were bigger than my stomach,” she would explain, apologetically. At the library, my eyes are bigger than my stomach. Or maybe my imagination is bigger than the hours of the day? I collect armfuls of books, overloading my bike panniers and strapping extras to the back rack. When I’m inside the stacks, I never think of the books by my bed, half-read, or of the unread books on my bookshelf. The pull of possibility inside those uncracked spines is too strong. I never read all the books I check out, just as I never read all the books I buy. I sometimes wish, whimsically, that I could shut myself up in my house for a week and read a stack from top to bottom and bookend to bookend, but of course, life intrudes. And besides, the library is calling. There are so many books yet to explore. Wednesday 2/7 WINTER GARDEN ($8) A celebration of all the green herbs in the winter garden. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 2/14 CHOCOLATE ($10) A bittersweet black bread, with dark cocoa, dark chocolate chunks, and candied orange peel. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 2/21 SPROUTED EINKORN ($8) This ancient wheat is grassy and sweet. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Sophie
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