Good morning, bread eaters. Three quick notes:
1. Tomorrow is your last chance to sign up for the November-December Bread Subscription. If you want bread midweek, or just want to mix things up with all the fun flavors you can no longer get at the farmers market, this is your chance! Pickups in Birchwood, downtown, and in Fairhaven every Wednesday from next week till the week before Christmas. 2. I will not be at market today! I finished up my week long class on bread science and theory yesterday (it was amazing! More on that next week) and am visiting a few Bay Area bakers before heading back north. 3. But even if you decide not to sign up for the full bread subscription, you can still order a loaf of Mountain Rye or Cinnamon Raisin for Wednesday pickup, and I'll be back at the market next weekend (and inside, no less!). See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker "I should take more time to be bored," I wrote to my friend, thinking about how rarely I'm alone with myself and the world, without a book, or a phone, or even a pen and notebook for distraction. "If you're bored," she wrote back, "you're not paying attention." I’m not paying attention most of the time. I let my days become habit, let familiarity carry me forward while my mind wanders. How often am I entirely present to routine tasks: to mixing dough, or to eating dinner, or even to greeting a friend? Stepping out of the back door of the kitchen yesterday with my bike, I looked up at the sky and smiled. The sun was shining, and I was in its light. I was absurdly pleased with myself for escaping that windowless space. That I'm my own boss, and was pulling one over on no one but myself, did nothing to lessen my satisfaction. The trees on the hill were glowing yellow-green-orange, soft-edged in the humidity, like a tinted, just-out-of-focus photograph. Clouds blew by, moving fast. I passed a garden overrun with dozens of crows, and stopped to watch four of them jockeying for position as queen of the sunflower. One flew up and landed beside me on the fence, so close I could see the glossy pattern of her feathers. She turned an eye on me, then flew away. I rode on, startling a flock of starlings, who swept up in a smooth comma from street to wire, so beautiful my chest filled. “There are moments,” I thought, “when the body is as numinous as words." Back inside the clatter and roar of the kitchen, I took a moment to grieve the loss of all that beauty and light. And then I reached out and put my hand on the dough, feeling the life inside, the microbes expanding the alveoli with each exhale, as they breathed in the oxygen those glowing trees breathed out, and turned it into rising bread. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Gingerbread Shortbread Granola It's going to be a little wild out today, but you hardy northwesterners aren't scared of the rain (I hope). Put on your boots and rain coat, and come to market!
Sophie Owner | Baker Finally, it's time for gingerbread! If you've forgotten this rather astonishing cake, it's everything a grown-up gingerbread should be: serious, complex, not too sweet. It's bitter-dark with Chuckanut stout and coffee, spiced with ginger, black pepper, cardamom, and clove, sweetened with roasted apples and blackstrap molasses, and with the deep earthiness of buckwheat. Last year I called it Seriously Gingerbread because, as noted above, it's a serious cake, but I'd like to rename it. Something to invoke dark, fairytale forests, I think. If you've been reading Brothers Grimm or The Once and Future King, and have a clever reference handy, bring it with you to market! This is the last week of the first Fall Bread Subscription. You can sign up for the November-December Bread Subscription on the website or at market. Wednesdays, if you haven't noticed, are when I bake all the best flavors you can no longer find at market, like Wild & Seedy, Cinnamon Raisin, Polenta, and Oat & Honey. I'll be gone for the last week of October for a week-long class on the science of bread (how cool is that!!), missing both preorders on the 25th and market on the 28th, so remember to stock up this coming Wednesday and Saturday! Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black Sesame & Fennel Palmiers Gingerbread Shortbread Granola Wednesday Preorder Roasted Pumpkin Mountain Rye Gingerbread Shortbread See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker I know October's only just begun, but I'm wearing a wool hat, plus felted vest and slippers right now, sitting at my computer, typing this, and last night, riding home in the dark, I was racing dried leaves down the street as the wind blew cold at my back. The darkness is closing in from both sides of the day. I've been thinking about holiday menus--pies, challah, that fabulous North Sea Gingerbread--and daydreaming the blazing blue and white of the Methow Valley after snow (that last, I think, is entirely the fault of the wool hat, which holds many cold memories). I've put the November-December Bread Subscription up on the website, and will have signup sheets at the market. November seems like an impossible month, when only a moment ago we were running around in bright sunshine and diving into every available body of water, but it is, in fact, only a few rainy weeks away. Get out your puddle stomping boots and rain jackets! The Saturday Farmers Market and Wednesday Bread Subscription march on, rain or shine, all the way to Christmas. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Birnenkuchen (sourdough cardamom pear cake!) Plum Anise Torte Black Sesame Palmier Brown Butter Shortbread Granola Wednesday Pre-Order Polenta Mountain Rye Shortbread See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker POSTSCRIPT: OVERHEARD
For the bread nerds and food curious among you, there's a new podcast series from the Heritage Radio Network and Nathan Myhrvold's Modernist Cuisine about bread! Listening to the first episode made me intensely curious about Modernist Bread, the five volume, 2500 page, $500+ opus of which the podcast is only the smallest taste. Can one order such extravegant books through Interlibrary Loan? Or is there a book collector among you with a copy I could explore? |
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