The year has turned. It is time to put the garden to bed. Already I've trimmed the thyme and hacked down the reaching arms of the oregano and sylvetta arugula. Red clover is coming up between the tomatoes. The winter's greens and root crops, planted in the blazing summer when rain was still a dream, are sturdy now, if still half-sized. The sunflowers crowded along the back fence are a glorious splatter of yellows and orange against the darkening sky. I've been reluctant to cut them down to dry for seed, and while I've lingered, admiring, the birds have delicately picked away at their faces, while the squirrels--always less mannerly--gobble them up and scattered their dry bones across the yard. I've been saving the easy seeds sporadically through the summer--poppy, calendula, sweet peas--but forgot in our short window of Indian Summer to pull in the old runner and pole beans, dried black on the vine. The hairy vetch and favas, supplanted in all but a few patches by the winter greens, are likewise soggy. Perhaps I can string up the long vines to dry in the sunroom, over the boxes of blushing, not-quite-ripe tomatoes. I love the garden this time of year, a little wild from summer neglect, and smelling of wet earth. In the winter the garden is a dream built of seed catalogs and graph paper; in the spring it is new green and hope; in the summer the garden is a cornucopia, spilling out into late evening dinner parties at the picnic table, and preserving projects that steam up the kitchen; now, in the fall, the garden is quiet. Not dead quiet, thinking quiet. There is time now to breath in the dirt and leaves, to stop and admire the bright bouquet of late flowers, volunteering beside the path, or the geometry of drying seed pods. In the spring and summer the garden is a product of my winter's planning, but the wild fall garden, it seems to me, belongs to itself. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black Sesame Palmier Apple Tart Shortbread Granola Wednesday Preorder, due by Sunday night Harvest Rye: Apple + Hazelnut Mountain Rye Shortbread See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker Despite years of retraining, I have yet to fully convince my sleeping mind that Saturday is a work day, like all the rest. I rarely manage the anxiety, let alone that useful bolt of panic, that on other mornings throws me out of bed. And so, though my alarm went off in full dark, I didn't make my unhurried way awake till the sky lightened outside my window. I moseyed through tooth brushing and coffee. I contemplated the clouds. (All this, mind you, after the hour I'd planned to leave for the bakery). And now here I am, at my laptop and, unsurprisingly, entirely out of time for any meaningful sort of reflection. Today, it's just the menu. If you happen to have any tricks for getting up in the dark as our days tip towards night, I'm open to suggestions! Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black Sesame & Fennel Palmier Plum Kuchen Apple Tart Shortbread + Granola Wednesday Pre-Order, due by Sunday night Oats & Honey Mountain Rye Brown Butter Shortbread Happy autumn!
Sophie Owner | Baker I would like to keep this time, when the house is quiet, and I sit by the window looking out at the flowering quince and the witch hazel, both long past their bloom, at our neighbor's tidy roofline, and at the morning light rising through the trees as the steam rises from the mug in my hands. I would like to keep it with me. I would like to fold it up as neat as a letter and put it in my pocket, to take out and read over when the world gets loud. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot The last Country Rye (probably) Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black Sesame & Fennel Palmier Cardamom Apple Tart Plum Kuchen Shortbread Granola Wednesday Preorder Wild & Seedy! Mountain Rye Shortbread Good morning. See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker POSTSCRIPT: OVERHEARD
Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a cover story for The Atlantic this week on our white president. It is, like everything he writes, thoughtful and thought provoking. It started with a bread lesson. "Will you teach me to make bread?" one of my housemates asked. "Yes," I said. And then, after a pause, added slyly, "if teach me to use the sewing machine." And so the house skillshare, scheduled for an unspecified day in the dark of winter, was born. Now every time one of us demonstrates an interesting talent, that too is added to the list. Mixing craft cocktails. Speaking French. We have rather a lot of odd knowledge bumping around our collective heads. By the time winter comes, we may have to establish a school. Thinking about what parts of this craft are most essential to a home baker has been rather like pruning a knowledge tree. Each twig is budding with possibility, but to see the scaffolding of sturdy branches underneath, one must cut away the small wood. Only, how small is too small? What if the twig is especially lovely? I spend so much of my life looking out from between the branches that I sometimes can't see the tree for the leaves.. Out of this pruning and practice, I hope to emerge with some better sense of how to communicate the making of bread, or at least, the making of my bread. It is a specific variety, this tree of mine. A gnarly, russeted, late fall apple, perhaps, rather than a tidy dwarf tree with easy, smooth fruit. Or maybe I flatter myself. My bread is no Karmijn de Sonnaville. At least, not yet. Anyway, I think, after I get over my old terror of standing in front of the class (and standing around my kitchen with friends should be a good start), I would like to teach some bread classes. It is all very well to tell you what goes into my loaves, but even better to show you. What do you think? Would you like to learn something more of wholegrain sourdough? Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black Sesame & Fennel Palmier Croissant Cinnamon Twist Granola + Shortbread Wednesday Order (due by Sunday night) Cinnamon Raisin Mountain Rye Brown Butter Shortbread See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker POSTSCRIPT: OVERHEARD
Need one last push to get you off Facebook? Read this rather terrifying piece from the LRB. It's another glorious blue day, the market breads and pastries are exceptionally handsome, I'm headed to the mountains tomorrow with friends to eat huckleberries and swim in icy alpine lakes, my tea is steeped and steaming, and oh, I'm glad to be here! Unfortunately, there's no time to sit and revel in weekend anticipation because I need to go set up the market stand, so, down to business: The Fall Bread Subscription starts up this coming Wednesday! You can sign up at market today or online until tomorrow. Don't forget! The first bread in the Baker's Choice lineup is a celebration of the late summer harvest, with herbs and caramelized onions. Later in September you'll get Wild & Seedy, Oat & Honey, and Cinnamon Raisin. And who knows what wonders await you in October! Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Croissant, Danish, Cinnamon Sugar Twist Black Sesame Palmier Shortbread Granola Wednesday Pickup Garden Bread: Herb + Onion Red & White Mountain Rye Shortbread See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker POSTSCRIPT: OVERHEARD(I’m introducing a new postscript to my weekly newsletter with the best of what I’ve read or listened to in the past week(ish). As with most of what I write here, this is only tangentially connected to baking, in that I listen to dozens of hours of podcasts and audiobooks every week to turn off the anxiety-inducing white roar of the commissary kitchen, and for the pure pleasure of having someone tell me stories.)
Were I to write a book, I would want to write a book such as this: On Immunity is the perfect interweaving of personal and political, of narrative and fact. Whatever you think of vaccines (you can guess, I'm sure, where I stand on the matter), it is a beautiful book. |
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