How do you measure a year? Is it in friends made? Dollars earned? Mountains climbed? The following are my attempt to sum up 2017 for Raven Breads, and, by extension, myself. These two short lists do not, of course, tell the whole story, but I think they at least offer a decent summary. 2017 IN (approximate) NUMBERS 1. Loaves of bread baked: 7200 2. Pounds of butter consumed: 384 3. Miles bicycled for work: 1200 4. Money spent on bicycles: $311 5. Hypothetical cost of equivalent car ownership + travel: $2900 6. Sales increase from 2016: 50% 7. Annual sales donated: 1%* 8. Hours of continuing education: 80 9. Longest bake day: 21 hours 10. Shortest bake day: 10 hours 2017 IN WORDS Writing the weekly newsletter in the early hours before market, and after a long Friday bake, is not particularly conducive to deep thinking or copy editing. Some mornings I get lucky and have an idea that has already fermented to ripeness while I bicycled or baked, and needs only to be written down. Other mornings I sit staring at my computer, mind blank as the screen in front of me. The following are a few of my favorite early morning writings from the past year. Perhaps next year I’ll compose my newsletters earlier in the week so I can sleep in and still have time to edit on Saturday mornings. But probably not. 1. The Soundtrack: Noise and Quiet in the Kitchen 2. A Road Less Traveled 3. Sense Memory 4. Lost Magic 5. Dreaming Up 6. Urban Harvest 7. A Story for Every Hour 8. Golden Days 9. Morning Ritual 10. How to Love the Sky in Winter During the winter months, bread will only be available by pre-order. Sign up for the ten week bread subscription to pick up a loaf every Wednesday, January 10—March 16, in Birchwood, downtown, or in Fairhaven. WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new wheat bread every week. MOUNTAIN RYE subscription: the market favorite. VOLLKORNBROT subscription: all rye all the time. THE COMING YEAR I’m grateful and amazed by all the support and enthusiasm and undeserved patience you’ve given me over the past four years. This little business is growing beyond the capacity of a single baker in a shared kitchen. It’s time to step (or stumble) forward into the next iteration of Raven Breads. Plus, I miss seeing the sky every day. I want to work behind windows! Where that next step will land me, I don’t yet know, but I plan to spend the coming months working my way through recipes, reading lists, and business plans. And, of course, baking bread! Food businesses are not known for their high rate of success. A food business burdened by as much hope and idealism as Raven Breads faces greater challenges still. A number of you have generously offered to look over my plans once I have them in order, but more business mentors are always welcome! For all the hours I spend working alone, this little bakery owes its success as much to all of you as it does to any skill or stubbornness of mine. Thank you for a wonderful year of bread and learning. I’ll see you in 2018! Sophie Owner | Baker * 2017 cash and in kind donations went to the following:
From the water-stained and sticky pages of the kitchen notebook. 11:50 am, Dec. 22, 7 hours into the last bake of the year, and still unfailingly optimistic that I'll be home in time for dinner: The sun came up without my noticing, shut away as I was in the blind fluorescence of the kitchen. It is a brilliant day, clear and cold as any morning on the east side of the mountains. Inside, the last of the rye is baking; the wheat batards are proofing in their baskets; the brioche—what a foolish task I set myself, hand mixing whole grain brioche!—is slowly coming alive in the refrigerator; and the cookies are mixed, balled, and spread in equilateral triangles across an endless stack of sheet pans. After the chaos and scramble of the morning, I find myself, suddenly, back in control, standing at the beginning of afternoon with the rest of the day’s work neatly laid out before me, tidy as a checklist. There are a few minutes, now, to make a cup of tea and step out with my notebook. Soon the timer will go off, and I’ll return inside to unload the oven, and to clear up the morning’s traffic jam at the dish pit, but for a moment longer I can stand under this glorious sky, warming my palms against the curve of my mug and breathing in the bright air. 4 pm, Dec. 22, 11 hours into the last bake of the year, and still optimistic I'll get a full night's sleep: All the daylight fled before I had another chance to step out. Perhaps down by the water, with the bay a giant mirror to reflect the sky, there is day yet, but here, between concrete and high walls, the dark is very near. It startles me to walk out of the constance of the timeless kitchen and discover that outside, the world has turned and another day is disappearing into the west. 1 am, Dec. 23, 20 hours into the last bake of the year, and so wobbly I almost crash my bike turning out of the alley as I ride for home: . . . . . All that to say that I’ve baked you a feast for the LAST FARMERS MARKET of the year. Come down to explore the holiday crafts and treats, and to stock up on bread and pastries for the coming weeks! I won’t be baking again until the Winter Bread Subscription starts in mid-January. If you haven’t already, come sign up for a subscription today at the market, or do so online! Otherwise, you’ll have to suffer through a long, dark season of white bread while you wait for the farmers market to resume in April. Last Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate + Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Triple Snap Ginger Cookies Hazelnut + Brown Butter Shortbread Chocolate Hazelnut Babka Morning Bun North Sea + Black Forest Gingerbread Kabocha Tart Granola Winter Bread Subscription Jan 10 - Mar 14 Baker's Choice Subsciption Mountain Rye Subscription Vollkornbrot Subscription See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker This winter, when I have more than a sleepy hour or two before market to write, I think I’ll take this space to explore food politics. “But Sophie,” you protest, “it’s bad enough that you ramble on about frost and fairies. Why ruin a perfectly nice bread business with politics?” Why? Because eating is political. Because good food starts in the dirt, not in your kitchen, and has a lot of ground to cover between the two. Because food brings people together, and in our food system we practice our greatest inhumanity. Because food is an easy starting point from which to explore hard subjects, from climate change, erosion, and emasculated frogs to labor rights, misogyny, and the privatization of our democracy. Because winter is a time for slowing down and thinking deep, and after the market ends next Saturday, I’m looking forward to doing both. But before next Saturday, I have a lot of fabulous baking to do. Along with all the sugar and spice, I’ll also be baking whole loaves of rye to tide you over till mid-January, when the bread subscription starts. Orders for the last market are DUE MONDAY, and can be placed online or today at market. The Winter Bread Subscription SALE ends today! Sign up at market or on the website for 10% off your 10 week subscription. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate + Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Brown Butter + Hazelnut Shortbread Gingerbread Apple Cake Granola Wednesday Preorder Cardamom Orange Mountain Rye Holiday Specials / Winter Hoarding for pickup at the last market 12/23 Chocolate Hazelnut Babka North Sea Gingerbread Black Forest Gingerbread Brown Butter + Hazelnut Molasses Shortbread Triple Snap Ginger Cookies Whole Mountain Rye Whole Vollkornbrot Winter Bread Subscription - 10% OFF Today Every Wednesday, Jan 10 - March 14 Baker's Choice Mountain Rye Vollkornbrot See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker Have you gone out to explore on this cold morning? You don't have to go far. Our back garden is a fairy tale dream, like the Snow Queen swept through in the night on her white sleigh. The mud paths between the beds are crunchy underfoot. Frost rims the leaf mulch, tats lace through the fennel and carrot fronds, and grows in spiky halos around dried seed heads. The cabbage leaves are patterned with a thousand radiating crystals. The white edge of the chicory leaves looks like the fur trim on a fine, dark coat. If I still played with fairies, I would have a day's worth of magic to explore in our little garden. But I lost sight of such magic long ago, so instead I'm off to market. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Apple Raisin Twist Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie - LIMITED! Chocolate order stuck in Burlington Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Black Forest Gingerbread Red Kuri Tart Shortbread Wednesday 12/13 Preorder Kabocha (tender, golden, roasted squash bread) Mountain Rye Gingerbread + Granola CHALLAH! Holiday Specials / Winter Hoarding for pickup at the last market 12/23 Chocolate Hazelnut Babka North Sea Gingerbread Black Forest Gingerbread Brown Butter + Hazelnut Molasses Shortbread Triple Snap Ginger Cookies Whole Mountain Rye Whole Vollkornbrot Winter Bread Subscription - 10% OFF Every Wednesday, Jan 10 - March 14 Baker's Choice Mountain Rye Vollkornbrot See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker POSTSCRIPT: a baker's education
I picked up the most astonishing cookbook through InterLibrary Loan this week. Reading old cookbooks is a fascinating view into the often forgotten history of home life, but Elena Molokhovets' A Gift to Young Housewives is a window into another culinary world altogether. It's just... amazing! Young, Russian housewives are instructed to "cool to the temperature of milk fresh from the cow" or thin to the texture of "red whortleberry pureé." But it's more than cute anachronisms. There are also astonishing instructions like: "stir briskly with a spatula for a long time... a process that will take at least 2 hours" (can you imagine the arms on these girls?); and tricks (kitchen hacks, The Internet would call them) like straining the yeast out of the bottom of the beer barrel to make bread, or sealing a jar with dough. So far I've only flipped though, but I'm looking forward to digging deep into this strange and wonderful book tomorrow! Here is my hypothesis: it isn’t the gray that makes our winters feel oppressive, it’s the built environment. If you spend your days working in an office from dark to dark, or tucked away in your house, hiding from the rain, these short, wet days are grim indeed. And when the sky presses low, as the asphalt presses up, and the walls of brick and stone and wood close in from all sides, I too feel trapped. But that, I think, is the fault of the asphalt and walls, and not the sky. On wild winter days, when the wind blows hard, and the rain comes down sideways, and the damp cold slides deep into you and settles there to wait for spring, the city is a miserable place to be. But go out walking on the beach, along the dark strip of pebbles between seaweed and driftwood. Turn up your collar and lean into the wind, till your eyes tear and your cheeks flush. Breath in the cold and brine. The sea is violent and alive, white caps racing for shore. The beach is strewn with treasures. Or trash. Bring a bag to collect the storm’s flotsam, whatever it may be. And when the storm lifts, and the clouds race over you—altocumulus over cumulus, and the brief glimpse of the cirrus high above—those are the days for open spaces. The brown, stubbled fields of the Skagit Flats have their own, subtle beauty in winter, and above them, the sky is wide and bright, even on an overcast day. But best of all are the low, gray days, with their steady rain. In the city, the nimbostratus is a dull blanket, the rain inexhaustible and exhausting. But go out walking in the woods. Find old woods, if you can, with Douglas firs and red cedars wider than your outstretched arms, and an open understory. Layer up with wool, and leave your rain coat behind. It’s hardly raining under the trees, more a dripping mist, and the plastic is loud. Without it, you can hear the forest: rain hitting the leaves of sword ferns, the wind breathing through the trees, and off and above, a raven chuckling. The low clouds catch on the hills and treetops, pooling and whisping away. If you stand still, in just the right place, you might even have a moment alone with the forest, no freeway rumble or flyover, no stereo boom or human voices, just the wind and rain moving over the landscape, and the quiet sound of your own breathing. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Apple Cakes (two kinds!) Gingerbread Shortbread Granola Wednesday Preorder Malted Farro Mountain Rye Gingerbread + Shortbread Holiday specials are up on the website, and the Winter Bread Subscription will be up soon as well. I'll have signup sheets for both at the market starting next week.
See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker |
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