How do we know who we are, except by how we live? Marilynne Robinson asked in my ear. I stopped, elbow deep in the dough, because it was, I realized, the very question I ask myself every day in a dozen different ways. It is the heart of small, everyday decisions about how to move through the world, and large, existential decisions about work and place and community. Who do I want to be, and how do I live as that better self? And then the forward march of Robinson's powerful mind and the immediacy of the task in front of me pulled me back into motion. Sometimes someone else articulates a thought or feeling you didn't know you had until you heard it said, and then it's so obvious, so fundamental, that you cannot imagine it unknown. We live much of our lives feeling alone in ourselves, even when surrounded by other people. The reminder that we are never truly alone, that someone else in the world, or many someones, holds in themselves the same experience, can come with a profound sense of recognition. It is a beautiful intimacy, to be so connected, even if it is across satellites, over centuries, or though the pages of a book. When I was young I was baffled by the singularity of being myself. Why am I only this girl, and no one else? I asked. It seemed to me that I might just as easily wake up tomorrow in another mind and body. A soul was such an essential thing to be tied forever to so ephemeral and mundane a vessel (though of course I understood this in much simpler terms—if only I had kept a journal at eight!). This was also a time when I thought often about death—my own—with great curiosity and no fear. It was certainly the most mystic period of my life, in those early days of self-consciousness, when I could not understand myself separate from the universe, before I learned the designated boundaries of self and mind. And why, I wonder, did the adult world feel it so imperative to teach me those boundaries? Why did they insist I learn to be alone? Perhaps when I reach for poets like William Stafford and Mary Oliver, when reading Wendell Berry fills me so deep with joy and grief that the familiar words bring me to tears, I am reaching also for this forgotten understanding of myself in the world. I read a psychology paper sometime early in my undergraduate arguing that we cannot have complex feelings without the words to articulate them. At the time we were also reading about deaf children raised without sign language, and the idea that their lack of language might leave them trapped not only in literal but also in mental silence was so hurtful that I wanted to reject the entire field of cognitive linguistics out of hand. Now, looking at the way that words have shaped my understanding of myself, I find the hypothesis compelling. How do we know who we are, except by how we live? Or maybe, how do we decide how to live, except by defining ourselves? At Market Today Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies S'mores on Nibby Chocolate Wafers Cardamom, Dark Chocolate, and Raspberry Rolls Rhubarb Polenta Upside Down Cake Granola Preorder Wednesday Pickup Red & White Mountain Rye Cinnamon Raisin Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker This is my favorite time of day, just after sunrise, when the human world is quiet and the birds are loud, when all the hours and their possibilities are laid out before me like a gift. And oh, look at the sun rising through the trees! Perfect. I hope your weekend is full of the outside, because blue skies like these are meant to be walked under. At Market Today Red & White, Mountain Rye, Country Rye Vollkornbrot with Hazelnuts Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Nibby Chocolate & Caramel Sandwich Cookies Dark Chocolate Rolls Cardamom Rolls Corn & Lime (but not nixtamal!) Cake Preorder Wednesday Pickup Red & White Mountain Rye Polenta Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies See you soon, at our beautiful outdoor market!
Sophie Owner | Baker Good morning! I've been fussing with my recipes the past few weeks, working to improve texture and flavor. The Country Rye is now little lighter, and warmly scented with brotgewürz (bread spice made, in this case, from toasted caraway, anise, fennel, and coriander). The Mountain Rye is a little dryer and more sour- just enough so, I hope, to stave off future epidemics of widespread collapse. My old standby cornmeal and yogurt cake has been brightened with a tart-sweet layer of raspberry and rhubarb for spring. And half the nibby chocolate sandwich cookies are squeezing cajeta, instead of hazelnut cream, because I couldn't resist making caramel from the goat milk I got in trade at the last market. Plus, the Bittersweet Cookies are looking especially fine today. I'm never sure why, but sometimes they open into dramatic, beautiful cracks, and this is such a time. Yesterday's bake was long and productive. I was in constant motion, reaching for the next task almost before I'd completed the one before me. I couldn't quite imagine how I'd stayed busy for so many continuous hours, so when I got home I wrote out the day's schedule. If you'd like a glimpse into A Day in the Life of a Market Baker, TAKE A LOOK! And if you happen to have a background in production management, or are just a very organized person, and have ideas for how I might increase my efficiency and shorten my days, I'm all ears! Well, ears and aching feet. At Market Today Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Nibby Sandwich Cookies with Cajeta Chocolate Rolls and Cardamom Rolls Rhubarb Raspberry Upside Down Corn Cake Preorder Wednesday Pickup Red & White Mountain Rye WILD & SEEDY! Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker I left the bakery late the other night to spitting rain and quiet streets. The day had been brilliantly clear, and now, in the dark, the rain released the city's sun-warmed petrichor in a bold rush. The roads smelled of summer, of asphalt and tires and walking down to the lake through the heat of some long-ago August night to go skinny dipping in the inky water. As I rode across the bridge on Dupont, the smell of the creek rose up, cool and wet, throwing me back, for a brief, unexpected moment, to that first climbing trip in Squamish: eleven or twelve, looking up at the rock through forest-dappled sunlight and knowing the power of my body. Farther along I passed a breath of unidentifiable flowers, dark and honey-sweet, like the depth of a jungle night, and then some exotic woodsmoke that reminded me of distant mountains, of the stone-walled barley fields and honeycomb houses of Ladakh, or maybe the cinderblocks and eroded milpas of a half abandoned village, high in the Mixe. The road was empty, and I was full of sense-memories, there and gone again, quick as the passing cross streets as I rode on towards home. How beautiful the night. How beautiful the strange workings of our minds. At Market Today Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Chocolate & Hazelnut Sandwich Cookies Rhubarb & Rose Rolls Cardamom Rolls Rhubarb Bread Pudding Preorder Wednesday Pickup Red & White Mountain Rye Rosemary Sea Salt Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Test 1 (currently called Country Rye, because it looks like it belongs on a farmhouse table) is 85% rye and 15% wheat, leavened by both a three stage rye starter and wheat starter. I'm hoping to build a loaf with a smooth, open crumb, a little lighter than the tinned ryes, that can be plain or seeded, mixed with dried fruit or nuts, or scented with bread spice or blue fenugreek, depending on the season.
Come give it a try and tell me what you think! See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker |
BY SUBJECT
All
|