Sometimes I'm dumbfounded by the ignorance and ego that let me start this little bakery with no professional experience. What on earth was I thinking, to begin so far from the beginning, without the traditional five or fifteen years of work under a master baker learning the ancient craft? I've made so many unnecessary mistakes, reinvented the wheel a half a dozen times, at least, when I could have simply learned from the wheelwright. But then, had I taken a more traditional path, I might have known too much. I might have known the ease of white flour and of yeast. I might have known the sales value of baguettes, airy levains, and pale, sweet pastries. I might have known where one should compromise ethics in favor of cost when sourcing ingredients. And knowning all that, I doubt I could have stumbled through the months and years of ugly wholemeal, sourdough bread. I would have turned away after the tenth or fiftieth bake of dense wheat bread, after the rye collapsed, yet again, and back to the safety of tradition. I would not be here, with wholemeal, sourdough loaves that are good and getting better, feeling my way, slowly, towards an understanding of bread that is beautiful and uncompromised. Today at Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black & White Sandwich Cookies (nibby chocolate wafers with fresh vanilla marshmallow!) Raspberry & Rose Rolls Orange Cream Raisin Rolls and a few packages of Membrillo For Wednesday Pickup Red & White Mountain Rye Oats & Honey Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies There's time to sit back and contemplate the lightening sky while I drink one last cup of tea, and then I'm off to pack up and roll over to the market.
See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker We used a new Haggadah this year at our family Seder. It included, among the familiar stories and prayers, a few intriguing historical notes. My favorite, of course, was about bread. As the Gentiles among you may or may not know, Passover is the celebration of the Jews' escape from slavery in Egypt. During the week of Passover, more observant Jews than I eat only unleavened bread, or matzo, because, the story goes, our ancestors left in such a hurry there was no time for the bread to rise. The holiday is also the time for spring cleaning, when all traces of bread and flour are swept from the house, along with the dust of winter, to welcome a new season. But, I learned from our new Haggadah, long before the Angel of Death passed over Egypt, farmers in the Middle East were celebrating the spring harvest with Khag Ha-Matzot, the festival of unleavened bread. Old dough, made from the last year's grain, was thrown out, and a celebratory bread was made from the new harvest. The old dough would have contained the wild yeast culture, carefully nurtured over the course of the year, with a little dough held back each bake to innoculate the next batch, and so the festival bread, made entirely of fresh grain, was unleavened. The Jews incorporated this agricultural tradition of renewal into Passover's celebration of a people's rebirth. Passover ended last Tuesday, though, so don't worry. You can come sample today's bread and pastry lineup without guilt! Today at Market: Red & White, Mountain Rye, and Vollkornbrot (not smoky this week) Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Orange Cream Raisin Rolls Cardamom Rolls with yogurt-rose glaze Bostock, made with orange syrup, raspberry jam, and hazelnut cream and the last of the Granola until I get a new batch of oats For Wednesday Order: Red & White and Mountain Rye Bauernlaib, a beautiful, Austrian rye boule Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies And I'm off to market.
See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker I don't think I ever quite got to sit down yesterday. I leaned, certainly. Hip leaned against the work bench, butt leaned against the wall, perhaps even forehead leaned, once, against the refrigerator door. But no sitting. I could still feel the pulse beating in the soles of my feet this morning when I woke up. The upside of all this upright behavior is that I have for you a truly stunning market lineup on this Judeo-Christian holiday weekend. All the usual breads and pastries are in fine form, but I also have Kulich in a beautiful crown braid, vanilla marshmallow eggs (so long as they come successfully out of their molds this morning), and forest-scented meringues, made with spruce tip sugar and douglas fir extract. The last are even nearly Kosher for Passover, if your diet allows a bit of accidental flour dust. At the market today: Red & White, Mountain Rye, Smoky Vollkornbrot Kulich, an Eastern European Easter Egg bread Bittersweet & Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Rose & Yogurt Glazed Cardamom Rolls Orange Cream Raisin Rolls North Forest Meringue Marshmallow Eggs For Wednesday pickup: Red & White, Mountain Rye, Polenta Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies And look at that! The rain's let up with the sunrise; only the eaves are dripping. I can see blue sky through the trees. Across the yard, the neighbor's flowering quince and witch hazel are bright streaks of color contrast in the growing light. There are cut flowers all over our house, an exuberant spring pleasure I'd half forgotten during the long winter. Even above the hum of the refrigerator, I can hear the birds.
For all that my legs are still heavy with the weight of yesterday, and my eyes are sticky with sleep, I find myself so heart-full and happy to be up in this beautiful day I keep grinning out the window. In just a moment, I'll stand to pack my panniers to ride out under the lightening sky. Somewhere on the upstairs bookshelf I have the perfect Stafford poem for this feeling, but right now the only one that comes to mind is "Yes," a little poem that never fails to make me smile. Good morning! See you at the market in a few hours. Sophie Owner | Baker I bake in the noise and chaos of a shared kitchen. We work to an industrial soundtrack. The fluorescent lights and condensers are a base note of white noise. Then the oven comes on, fan whoopwhoopwhooping, slightly off center, and someone throws the switch to the hood. It roars. The dishwasher is a soft-steady beat, like percussion brushes. Objects come together with force: metal clatters on metal, glass tumbles with ceramic, plastic falls with a hollow thump. People call out, mumble, shout. This is likely why kitchens are so often aggressive spaces: our roaring, chaotic soundtrack sends cortisol flooding our brains, hour after hour, day after day, till everything blurs white with the noise. But in the mornings I have the kitchen to myself, quiet except for the static of lights and refrigerators. I hear rain falling down the drain pipe next to my work bench, and sometimes a seagull calling overhead. I hear the garbage truck clunking down the alley. And often I'll set my phone in a metal mixing bowl to amplify the sound and listen to the news. Yesterday morning I was listening to a conversation between Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klein, a brutal piece on Trump's war on the earth, that left me hopeless and tender. There was no time to step outside and breath through the panic under the open sky, so I thought instead of the mountains. I thought of fairy moss ankle deep under madronas, of the slow spread of lichen over rock, of the sensuous curve of smooth trunk revealed by peeling, papery bark. I thought of the way clouds pile up against the Chuckanuts and tangle with the tops of the islands. I thought of rain on cedar leaves, of nurse logs, of crumbling wood and persistent, tiny trees pushing cotyledon through the duff. Calm spread through me like roots, taking hold. I returned to the rising dough. Today's Market Menu Red & White, Mountain Rye, Smoky Vollkornbrot, Cinnamon Raisin Bittersweet Chocolate & Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Cardamom Rolls with Rose & Yogurt Glaze Orange Cream Raisin Rolls Granola and North Forest Meringues, little clouds scented with spruce tips and fir. For Wednesday Order Wild & Seedy, Red & White, Mountain Rye Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies (half dz) Pesach Special: North Forest Meringue (half dz) See you soon!
Sophie p.s. Next week, in honor of Easter, I'll be making beautiful braided egg bread (aka challah) and rainbow-sugared marshmallow eggs, so make sure you add a trip to the market into your weekend plans! And so it begins! Today is the start of the main season farmers market. Barring catastrophe, summer weddings, or the inescapable lure of mountain adventure, I'll be down at the corner of Railroad and Maple ever Saturday from now till Christmas! Whew. That's a lot of Saturdays. My whole family is ascending (right? you can't really descend northward) for this, the first official Saturday of the 25th Bellingham Farmers Market Season, so all you curious customers can come peer and point at them today. Or, you know, just say hello. On the menu today: Red & White Mountain Rye Smoky Vollkornbrot (finally) Malted Chocolate Chip cookies crisped to buttery perfection decadent Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies sticky Cardamom Rolls with Yogurt & Rose Glaze Orange Raisin Rolls (pains aux raisins, perhaps? But don't as me to pronounce that) sourdough Brioche with Nettles & Feta Also Granola And Toast See you soon!
Sophie |
BY SUBJECT
All
|