 Late afternoon, nine hours into Friday’s bake, I pulled the last of the bread and pastry out of the oven and thought, Ah, well, that wasn’t so bad after all. As I slid loaves onto the cooling rack I daydreamed about biking home under the open sky, about laying under the pine tree in the backyard in the golden light of evening, breathing in the day, about a good dinner. And then, of course, the bag stamping, label cutting, product bagging, label sticking, box packing, washing, sweeping, mopping, and wiping down took another six hours, and I was so tired riding home in the dark I forgot to look for stars. Still, it was a good day. A good bake, too, as you’ll find out soon enough when you come to market! See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET and NEXT WEEK FOR MARKET PREORDER 10am – 2pm, 1100 Railroad Ave BREAD: Red & White ($7.50 / 720g) Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g) Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g) Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g) SWEETS: Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies ($5 / 2) Gingersnap Cookies ($5 / 2) Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies ($5 / 2) Oat Scone with Strawberries ($5 / ea) Cornmeal Rhubarb Snack Cake ($5 / ea) Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz Next WEDNESDAY PICKUP Self-serve pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, and Fairhaven. Address and directions with your pickup reminder email Wednesday morning. Order by Sunday night. Red & White Mountain Rye Toast: SMOKY RYE & WHEAT Sweets: HAZELNUT BISCOTTI + LEMON POPPY POUND CAKE I always feel uneasy when new bakers ask me how to bake bread. I know what they want. They want a recipe like the ones you find in any modern cookbook, exacting and thorough, a recipe that says: mix so many ounces of flour, water, salt in this way for so many minutes; ferment for so long; shape just like this and you’re guaranteed a perfect loaf. But I can't give them a recipe. A recipe for sourdough is at best a teaching story, at worst a confusion of jargon and measurements that make baking sound more like nuclear engineering than the making of your daily bread (I’ve been guilty of the latter myself). All I can give them are approximations and metaphors: add some water, wait, and then, if you’d like, add a little more; ferment till the dough pops like rice crispies when pinched between your fingers; the bread is ready to bake when it feels light and delicate under the palm of your hand, unless it’s cold from the refrigerator, and then your guess is as good as mine. All I can tell them is to try and then try again. “When is my sourdough ready to use?” the new baker asks. “When it’s risen and just beginning to fall,” I say, and then stop to think. “But not always. That only works if it’s wet. Really, you need to taste it.” “Taste it?” says the new baker, his lip curling in mild distaste. “Yes!” Now I’m getting excited. This is a much better explanation. “Taste it! Your sourdough is ready when it’s bubbly and tastes bright sour, but not overpoweringly sour.” He stares at me in confusion. I deflate. “Well,” I say at last. “You can try dropping a spoonful in water. If it floats you know your bread will rise, eventually.” Even after six years and so many thousands—tens of thousands?—of loaves my own bread still refuses to be confined to neat recipes. Sure, I start with formulas measured out in careful grams and a fermentation schedule laid out in quarter hour intervals so I can track all my doughs across the day. But then my sourdough is young and mild so I add a bit extra to each batch; or the kitchen is warmer this week, even with the hood on, and I’m hurrying all morning to catch up; or the wheat dough I’m mixing feels different—less elastic, maybe?—so I hold back a little water, just to be safe. Even if the weather, the flour, the temperature of the water from the tap are all exactly the same from one week to the next, the doughs change. I still depend as much on intuition and attention as on those formulas and schedules. I still try, and sometimes fail, and try again. Sophie Owner | Baker   TODAY AT MARKET and NEXT WEEK FOR MARKET PREORDER 10am – 2pm, 1100 Railroad Ave BREAD: Red & White ($7.50 / 720g) Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g) Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g) Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g) SWEETS: Gingersnap Cookies ($5 / 2) Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies ($5 / 2) Oat Scone with Strawberries ($5 / ea) Rhubarb Cardamom Snack Cake ($5 / ea) Lemon Poppy Pound Cake ($20 / loaf) Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz) Hazelnut Shortbread ($9 / half dz) Next WEDNESDAY PICKUP Self-serve pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, and Fairhaven. Address and directions with your pickup reminder email Wednesday morning. Order by Sunday night. Red & White Mountain Rye Toast: WILD & SEEDY Sweets: BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE COOKIES + BLACK & WHITE SESAME CAKE  TODAY AT MARKET and NEXT WEEK FOR MARKET PREORDER 10am – 2pm, 1100 Railroad Ave BREAD: Red & White ($7.50 / 720g) Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g) Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g) Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g) SWEETS: Gingersnap Cookies ($5 / 2) Chocolate Chip & Hazelnut Cookies ($5 / 2) Oat Scones with Strawberries ($4.50 / ea) Oat Scones with Sour Cherry Jam ($4.50 / ea) Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz) Hazelnut Shortbread ($9 / half dz) Signup for the MAY BREAD SUBSCRIPITON Sign up by Sunday night to pick up a loaf every Wednesday in May from a front porch in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, or Fairhaven (see map below for locations). RED & WHITE subscription ($30) MOUNTAIN RYE subscription ($30) TOAST subscription (aka Baker's Choice) ($32) 5/6 Toast: Toasted Corn 5/13 Toast: Wild & Seedy 5/20 Toast: Smoky Rye & Wheat 5/27 Toast: Buckwheat & Molasses Next WEDNESDAY PICKUP: Self-serve pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, and Fairhaven. Address and directions with your pickup reminder email Wednesday morning. Order by Sunday night. THIS WEEK'S BAKE: Red & White Mountain Rye Toast: TOASTED CORN Sweets: BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE COOKIES + CORNMEAL RHUBARB CAKES It rained all day. I spent the hours hunched resentfully over my computer, wishing I had real work—bread to bake, or deliveries to ride—anything more tangible than the sisyphusian and, I often think, meaningless tasks of sorting and responding to emails, checking the webstore, updating spreadsheets. In the evening, having spent a busy day doing nothing, I went out to the garden to weed. It was a stupid night to weed. The rain had stopped, the sky above me pale blue in the lowering light, but the soil was still wet and soft. Any plant pulled up and not immediately tossed into my basket, and from my basket onto the compost pile, would begin to reroot. By morning it would once more be growing cheerfully skyward. Ignoring this, I bent over the farthest bed and began to pull up cornfield poppies by the handful. I love these bright, prolific flowers and, planted once, they self-seed aggressively, as any self-respecting annual should. Sometimes I daydream about abandoning the fussy rows of vegetables, with all their pests and diseases and special needs, and letting the volunteer flowers take over, leaving the garden to the poppies and calendula already blanketing the beds, the borage, the red and orange sunflowers pushing up fat cotyledon, the nasturtiums and phacelia sprouting along the fence line, the swath of coriander growing across the bed where last fall we let it go to seed, the amaranth and tomatillos in the back corner. The chives would continue their forward march. The mint, which already makes regular stealth forays towards the lawn, would soon escape it’s brick walled prison and sprawl outward. Snow crocuses would creep in from the grass. The dandelions and bronze, fronding fennel would run riot. In the herb beds, the echinacea, well-rooted now, would grow on unperturbed, thrusting coneflowers towards the sky. The sorrel and rhubarb, too, would carry vigorously on. Only the Mediterranean herbs—thyme, lavender, the spindly sage—would perish, withering in the shade of the invaders. Even a garden of volunteers needs tending. Left to their own devices, the semi-domesticated annuals soon overcrowd each other, sprouting in spindly clumps that grow into spindly plants, leaves and flowers dwarfed by hunger. So I massacred poppies, even as I daydreamed. But, with visions of a wild and colorful garden blooming in my mind’s eye, I left the bodies lying where they fell. See you at market in a few hours. Sophie Owner | Baker  TODAY AT MARKET and (mostly) NEXT WEEK FOR PREORDER 10am – 3pm, 1100 Railroad Ave BREAD: Red & White ($7.50 / 720g) Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g) Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g) Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g) SWEETS: Gingersnap Cookies ($2.5 / ea) Chocolate Chip & Hazelnut Cookies ($2.5 / ea) Oat Scones ($4.50 / ea) Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz) Hazelnut Shortbread ($9 / half dz) Signups for the MAY BREAD SUBSCRIPITON are up. A loaf every Wednesday in May. Self-serve pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, and Fairhaven. RED & WHITE subscription ($30) MOUNTAIN RYE subscription ($30) TOAST subscription (aka Baker's Choice) ($32) Next WEDNESDAY PICKUP: Self-serve pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, and Fairhaven. Address and directions with your pickup reminder email Wednesday morning. Order by Sunday night. THIS WEEK'S BAKE: Red & White Mountain Rye Toast: Oat & Honey Sweets: BITTERSWEET CHOCOLATE COOKIES! I make a lot of lists. Every morning I make a task list for the day. Sometimes I add tasks after the fact just so I can cross them off. I make prep lists for the bakery, and when the days get really long I make detailed action lists so that I can tumble my tired body from one check mark to the next without thought: wipe table, stamp bags, cut labels, wash hands & glove, cut/bag bread, pack bread, wipe table, sweep, etc. But I make less practical lists, too. Things I’m Grateful For lists, Aimless Love lists, Good Things lists, like this: Some good things this week: After a late night baking and an early morning biking deliveries across town, a long nap under the pine tree in the backyard, body warm in the sunshine, face turned to the tree’s shadow. Gathering nettles, fiddleheads, and horsetails in the parks, because even here in the city our land is abundant. Sitting on a sandstone outcrop at the top of the valley, listening to the wind come hurrying through the treetops and E, reading me Mink River till his voice gives out. Raven call. Racing seagulls down Northwest on my bike. The seagulls always win. You might try it, if you don't already. See you at market in a few hours. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET and NEXT WEEK FOR PREORDER 10am – 3pm, 1100 Railroad Ave BREAD: Red & White ($7.50 / 720g) Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g) Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g) Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g) SWEETS: Gingersnap Cookies ($2.5 / ea) Milk Chocolate Chip & Hazelnut Cookies ($2.5 / ea) Oat Scones ($4.50 / ea) Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz) Ginger Tea Cake ($4.5 / slice) WEDNESDAY PICKUP Self-serve pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, and Fairhaven. Address and directions with your pickup reminder email Wednesday morning. Order by Sunday night. THIS WEEK'S BAKE: Red & White Mountain Rye Toast: Buckwheat & Molasses Sweets: Goodbye Winter Parsnip Cake + Hazelnut Shortbread We're having a small but mighty farmers market today at the Market Depot from 10-3. Come do your (bi)weekly shopping for vegetables, meat, mushrooms, eggs, cheese, honey, and bread. We will be maintaining physical distancing between stalls and limiting the number of customers on the lot. All food will be prepackaged or bagged by the farmer. Come with a shopping list so you can move quickly through the market and be prepared to pay with exact change, a credit card, or a cash app like Venmo. You can read the full safety guidelines laid out by the Market and the Whatcom County Health Department here. Thank you for shopping at the farmers market, signing up for CSAs, stopping by popup farmstands, and ordering bread for neighborhood pickup. Thank you for planting seeds, raising backyard chickens, and culturing sourdough. I am grateful to have this work, to be able to feed you even when the world goes sideways, and to be a part of such a strong and resilient food community. See you soon, maybe. Sophie Owner | Baker  TODAY AT MARKET 10am – 3pm, 1100 Railroad Ave BREAD: Red & White ($7.50 / 720g) Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g) Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g) Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g) SWEETS: Gingersnap Cookies ($2.5 / ea) Milk Chocolate Chip & Hazelnut Cookies ($2.5 / ea) Oat Scones with Strawberry Jam ($4.50 / ea) Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz) Ginger Tea Cake ($3 / slice) The farmers market hasn't yet decided on next week's vendors. Check social media or the webstore for updates. If I'm going, I'll have the preorder menu up by Monday. WEDNESDAY PICKUP Self-serve pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, and Fairhaven. Address and directions with your pickup reminder email Wednesday morning. Order by Sunday night. THIS WEEK'S BAKE: Red & White Mountain Rye Toast: Toasted Sesame Sweets: Black & White Sesame Cake + Cacao & Buckwheat Shortbread The Farmers Market is opening next Saturday, April 11. This new iteration of the market will be much smaller—30 stalls instead of 105—and all outdoors. Priority to fill those stalls is given to farmers, but on the 11th and perhaps for a few Saturdays after that, while most farms have little to harvest, Raven Breads will be at market. Per the new Whatcom County Health Department guidelines, all of my bread and pastry will be pre-packaged. Please read the new safety guidelines on the Bellingham Farmers Market website before coming to shop. Sophie Owner | Baker  WEDNESDAY PICKUP After talking to many of you and to the Whatcom County Health Department, I've decided that closed paper bags are the best and safest packaging option. I will not be double bagging with plastic going forward. Self-serve pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, and Fairhaven. Address and directions with your pickup reminder email Wednesday morning. Order by Sunday night. APR 8 - 29 BREAD SUBSCRIPTION: RED & WHITE subscription - whole wheat sourdough MOUNTAIN RYE subscription - seedy wheat & rye TOAST subscription - a new tinned loaf every week, perfect for making buttered toast THIS WEEK'S BAKE: Red & White Mountain Rye Toast: Rosemary Polenta Sweets: Ginger Tea Cake + Hazelnut Biscotti SATURDAY FARMERS MARKET April 11, 10am – 3pm, 1100 Railroad Ave Preorder by Wednesday night or buy at market. BREAD (uncut 16” rye and buckwheat loaves available only by pre-order): Red & White ($7.50 / 720g) Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g) Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g) Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g) SWEETS (pre-orders by the half dozen): Gingersnap Cookies ($2.5 / ea) Milk Chocolate Chip & Hazelnut Cookies ($2.5 / ea) Oat Scones with Strawberry Jam ($4.50 / ea) Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz) PAYMENT OPTIONS Preorders for Wednesdays and Saturdays: - Credit card. Credit card fees apply. - Check by mail. No fees, but you’ll need to send it well in advance to meet the order deadline. At the Farmers Market: - Credit card. Credit card fees apply. - Smartphone cash app*: Venmo or Square Cash. No fees if your bank account is linked to the app. - Check. No fees. - Cash. No fees. Please bring small bills and change. *Cash app transfers are not protected like credit or debit card payments. You should only use these apps with individuals and businesses that you know and trust. It’s harder on these overcast days. The house presses close, and the sky. But still, when I push the window open, creaking in its century-old frame, birdsong spills in. The peas are pressing up in the garden. Along the untended fenceline volunteer poppies, phacelia, and mullen vigorously disregard the lingering cold. Under the woody remains of last year’s growth, the herbs that died back over winter are unfurling: winter savory, oregano, lovage, echinacea, hyssop, and mint. Even the dandelions in the garden paths feel hopeful with their flower buds held close like fists, ready to punch into glorious yellow bloom. Growing a garden is a solid sort of pleasure. It holds you to the earth, whether that earth is in a handful of pots on your apartment balcony or in a sprawling yard like ours. While the newscycle cries Armageddon and people walk around wearing latex gloves like talismans against evil, new life unfolds in the garden. As the days stretch toward summer, the garden stretches roots and leaves, flowers and fruits, untroubled by news and politics, untroubled by anything but the sun and soil and the the work of your hands. In a few weeks or months, you can eat that love and sunshine for dinner. Sophie Owner | Baker  Garden resources: Did you know Village Books is taking online orders? The two most dirt-stained and page-bent gardening books in my collection are Seattle Tilth’s Maritime Northwest Garden Guild and Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, but they have many others besides. The Community Food Coop carries a limited selection of seeds from Uprising and High Mowing. If the seed racks are as empty as the grocery shelves, you may need to look online. Uprising Seeds should, obviously, be your first stop since they’re right here in Whatcom. Other great Pacific Northwestern seed companies include: Adaptive Seeds, Siskiyou Seeds, Deep Harvest Farm, and Wild Garden Seed. You may need to buy some of your own gardening tools, but more likely than not your neighbors have everything you’ll need. Perhaps, in this time of anxiety and isolation, community can grow alongside your garden. Dear Bread Eaters, I need your help to make the self-serve pickups work. I had to refund nearly 10% of sales last week to customers who arrived to find their orders had been taken by someone else. I don’t want anyone walking home empty handed, nor can I afford the shrink when I’m facing down a second quarter of operating in the red. If you have suggestions for how to make the system (which currently consists of an order sheet with names and orders inside every box) easier to navigate and less error-prone, tell me, please! - Sophie How to get bread & pastry: Place your order in the ONLINE STORE. Self serve pickups every Wednesday in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, South Hill, and Fairhaven. Orders due by Sunday for pickup the following Wednesday. Sign up by 3/29 for the 5 week April Bread Subscription. Subscriptions: RED & WHITE subscription - whole wheat sourdough MOUNTAIN RYE subscription - seedy wheat & rye TOAST subscription - a new tinned loaf every week, perfect for making buttered toast This week’s bake: Red & White Mountain Rye Toast: Oat & Honey Pastry: Cardamom Coffee Pound Cake + Gingersnap Cookies I am not, generally, an anxious person, but even I succumbed to the shriek of the news headlines last week and, in a moment of panic, rashly changed my schedule to add a second oh-shit-the-world-is-ending bake. The world isn’t ending, it’s just becoming a much harder place for those whose health and finances are insecure. I am very grateful to be among the healthy and homed, to have a vegetable garden that’s showing its first new-green growth and a bicycle that can carry me through clean air and sunshine. And I’m grateful to all of you who have gone out of your way to buy bread from this little business, which is both my livelihood and my passion. I’m trying a new distribution method with the April Bread Subscription. To support social distancing, bread (and pastry!) pickups will now be self-serve from front porches and driveways across Bellingham. For now, pickups are in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Sunnyland, and Fairhaven. If you have a (reasonably bike-able) front porch to offer in the CBD, Sehome, or South Hill, I’ll gladly add another south end pickup to the May Subscription. The Bellingham Farmers Market has put together a list of market vendors offering weekly subscriptions. Sustainable Connections has a longer list of CSAs from 2019. Signing up for farm (and bakery!) subscriptions helps small food businesses with cash flow through the lean early season. We are all deeply grateful to live in a community that supports us and our work. Thank you for keeping your spending within our community, for eating the food we grow and make, and for telling your friends and neighbors to sign up! Sophie Owner | Baker P.S. If you work in the food industry and don’t know how you’re going to float the next weeks and months, use the discount code WORKBREADWATERSALT to take 30% off your Raven Breads order at checkout. Practicalities: Pickups every Wednesday in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Sunnyland, Fairhaven. Orders due by Sunday for pickup the following Wednesday. Sign up by 3/22 for 6 week (3/25-4/29) Subscription. Sign up by 3/29 for 5 week (4/1-4/29) Subscription. Subscriptions: RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription TOAST subscription This week’s bake: Red & White Mountain Rye Toast: Buckwheat & Molasses Pastry: Brown Butter Shortbread P.P.S. A bakery hygiene note: Except for double bagging the exposed ends of loaves, nothing much has changed in the bakery. I still wash my hands frequently, sterilize surfaces and dishes, bake everything at 350-550°F, handle finished product with gloves or tongs, and don’t come to work sick. According to the FDA, “Currently there is no evidence of food or food packaging being associated with transmission of COVID-19,” but if you want to be extra safe, sterilize your bread in the toaster.
Dear Bellingham, The government’s public health policies are evolving so rapidly it’s hard to know what our city will look like tomorrow, never mind next week. In light of that uncertainty, I’m adding a second bake this week. Online orders will be open till midday tomorrow (Wednesday) for Friday pickup. If you’re part of the Winter Bread Subscription, your order for 3/25 will also be ready for pickup Friday. Pickups will be in Birchwood, downtown or Sunnyland, and in Fairhaven. Exact locations TBD (thank you to those of you who have offered your front porches). Pickups will be self-serve and on the honor system. If I’m able to bake next week, I will. And the week after that. If you work in the food industry and don’t know how you’re going to float the next weeks and months, please email me through the website for a 30% off discount code. I hope that you're healthy, your hands are clean, your community is strong, and your bookshelves are well-stocked. Sophie Owner | Baker Only uncut loaves are available at this time to reduce post-bake handling, and because they have the best shelf life. FAMILY WHEAT (1.4 kg / $14.30) – organic wheat, water, salt. MOUNTAIN RYE (2.3 kg / $21.30) – water, organic rye, organic wheat, organic sesame, organic flax, organic sunflower, salt, organic caraway & coriander. ALL RYE (2.3 kg / $21.30) – organic rye, organic rye berries, water, salt. For maximum shelf life, keep breads in a bread box, cut side down on the cutting board, or loosely wrapped with wax wrap or plastic to prevent them from drying out. Wheat bread will keep about 2 weeks, rye 3. |
