We have so many plants! E brought up our Skagit Conservation District order yesterday and this morning, as soon as I post this email, we're biking out to pick up our Whatcom CD order and then we'll be planting and planting and planting our tiny, bareroot natives into hedgerows. I want to jump forward five years, just to catch a glimpse of the hedges filling in and full of birdsong, but being short a time machine I'll have to settle for watching them grow the slow way.

If you missed it on the bakery's social media, I have an interviewed in last week's Rise Up! podcast about the Raven Bakery past, present, and future. You can listen to it from the link above or through your podcast app of choice.

And finally, the Spring Bread Subscription is up and will be 10% off through April 2nd (which also happens to be our first Saturday farmers market of the year!). Pickups every Wednesday in the neighborhoods, as usual. You know the drill, or if you don't you can read about it here.

Happy Sunday. I hope you, too, have a day full of spring promise.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

After weeks of sluggish dough and frustratingly long days in the bakery I finally realized the problem wasn't the cooling temperatures but my sourdough culture itself. At some point I must have let it get too hot or too cold or too acidic and the community of yeast and bacteria became unbalanced. I pulled my backup sourdough culture out of the fridge and added it to the mix, and voilà, this batch of bread rose beautifully and on schedule.

If you bake your own sourdough bread, keep a little backup sourdough! You can start a new culture from flour and water in a week or two, but why wait if you don't have to? Cold and low water availability are two very good ways to slow down fermentation. I use both, taking a spoonful of ripe sourdough and mixing it with flour until its the texture of dry crumbs, then storing those crumbs in a jar in the fridge. Every 2-12 months (whenever I remember) I refresh the jar. But you can also keep a jar of wet sourdough in the fridge, protected by the a layer of alcoholic "hooch" that forms on top, or a ball of stiff sourdough buried in flour, or dried sourdough flakes at room temperature. There's no wrong way, as long as it works.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

I mix all the bread and pastry by hand, or, occasionally, with the dubious help of a home stand mixer. I’m good at mixing. My hands are paddles at the ends of my arms. My fingers squeeze. My back stays straight, my wrists rigid. I can mix hundreds of kilos without injury, week after week. I know the touch of every dough and batter intimately, all the way to my elbows.

I like hand mixing the wheat doughs, judging their strength and hydration as I fold and squeeze. I don’t mind mixing the ryes, though they’re so sticky I have to scrape them off my arms and from between my fingers with a plastic rib and then scrub with the rough side of the dish sponge. Only the chocolate chip cookie dough truly makes me wish for a mechanical mixer. It’s thick and inelastic and I jam my fingers on chocolate disks. The thing is, I have a mechanical mixer. Soon I’ll have two! I just need to build a bakery to put them in. There’s an old workhorse of a Kemper spiral mixer that I picked up from a closing bakery packed away in E’s barn because it’s too big for the restaurant kitchen where I bake. And even now a Hobart planetary mixer, fully refurbished and painted a brilliant blue, is getting packed on a pallet to be shipped west. Where I’ll put it I don’t yet know.

I’ve been watching the Fountain District, my favorite of the commercial districts and the only one in central Bellingham without a bakery, for three years, hoping to find a space. So far nothing, or at least nothing that could be built out on any kind of sane budget, has opened up. So I’ll look towards Sunnyland, towards the CBD, towards Sehome or Roosevelt, towards the industrial parks at the edges of town. Retail bakery, wholesale bakery, commissary kitchen? I’ve written the story of a neighborhood bakery/cafe in the Fountain District so many times I know it by heart; it’s time to revise the plot, or perhaps rewrite it entirely. If nothing else, I need a place to put these large and lovely machines.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

Sometimes it all goes right. Shape, color, texture, finish, the weight in my hand: all just the way I want them. But perfect bakes are rare. More often the tops are too dark, the bottoms too light. Or the loaves curl up high and tight in the unsteamed oven and blow out their sides. Or there’s a hole through the center, so that if you cut off the ends and hold a loaf to your eye you can peer down it like a spyglass. Or the rye gaps. Or the skin of the wheat tears as it rises. There are a dozen mistakes to make, a hundred, a new mistake for every day and every bake.

Back when I was young and just beginning, the ugly loaves were a personal shame. Someone, or everyone, had convinced me that results, and not effort, were the measure of one’s worth; mistakes were to be feared and avoided. This is a stupid way to live in the world. I’m still working to unlearn it.

These days I note the imperfections in my bakes with curiosity and the occasional pinch of annoyance for a mistake I should have known better than to repeat. I discount the ugly loaves and send the lot off to be eaten. Maybe with a deck oven and a mixer, or with another decade to master my craft, every bake will be beautiful. Maybe. Probably not. The grain changes with the harvest. The weather changes with the season. The sourdough changes, or the baker. Or nothing big changes and still the bread is different because even the most domesticated sourdough is still a little wild.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

Nina lives in the Gulf Islands. She found my name in a zine her daughter brought her, Baking for Biodiversity, by the Portland writer and baker Katie Gourley. She liked that I run the bakery by bicycle—she thought I milled my flour by bicycle, too!—and so she called up her local library and asked the librarian to find my phone number. She doesn’t have a tv, a computer, or a cell phone; she listens to Amy Goodman in the morning on a Bellingham radio station, and sometimes a little music afterwards if it’s any good. Doesn’t have a car and, at 80, no longer rides her bike. She bakes bread every other week—pain sauvage, “because I’m wild!”—in a 94 year old electric, cast iron oven in her 100 year old house. She is a photographer. She mentioned, in passing, that in her youth, in London, she photographed The Beatles.

Pain sauvage is wild fermented bread, made without commercial yeast or sourdough. The dough ferments with the yeast and bacteria present in the grain. This is how idli is traditionally made, and injera. I heard once of a baker in Italy who left his mixing bowl of dough to wild ferment every night. I’ve never made a wild fermented wheat bread, so I’m copying out Nina’s instructions here as told to me, with all her particulars. If you decide to make her pain sauvage, you will, of course, need to adapt the ingredients and process to your own kitchen.

NINA's PAIN SAUVAGE

Day 1
Mill 1/3c rye, 1c emmer, and 1c red fife wheat into coarse meal. Mix with an equal volume of very cold water and ferment overnight at approximately 20°C for 20 hours.
Mix 4c red fife wheat flour with 4c water. Ferment overnight at approximately 20°C for 20 hours.

Day 2
Mix the overnight ferments, 3tsp sea salt, and 6c of red fife wheat flour with a wooden spoon. Let sit for an hour. Knead for 5 minutes, and then stretch and fold every hour for 5 hours. Leave out for another three hours or so before putting the dough into the refrigerator overnight.

Day 3
Take dough out, let sit for half an hour.
Turn dough onto a table dusted with bran. Cut into 4 pieces.
Grease 4 round, glass pans and place dough into them. Scatter flax seed on top.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 600°F. Turn off. Wait half an hour. Turn back on to 600°F. This process takes about 2 hours. When the oven is hot the second time cover the pans and put them in the oven. Turn the oven down to 500°F. After 35 minutes, take off the covers. Bake for another hour.

There’s nothing fancy about this pie. No elaborate spice blend. No family secrets. Just very good ingredients put together into a very good pastry. That fantastically flaky crust is made with a blend of wholemeal spelt & buckwheat from Fairhaven Mill, organic butter, and lard rendered from Well Fed Farms pastured pigs. The filling is a mix of interesting apples gleaned from 19th century orchard remnants around Bellingham, with just enough butter and sugar to round out their flavor, and a splash of cider vinegar made from the bakery’s apple scraps.

You can order pie, among other things, in the online store. Orders due by Sunday night. Self-serve pickup next Wednesday in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, or Fairhaven.

In thanks for the abundant land we live on and in acknowledgement of violence and coercion of the Point Elliott Treaty, 10% of Wednesday’s sales will go to the Lhaq'temish Foundation.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

P.S. If pie is too sweet for your taste, here's a Black Friday rant from a couple years ago.

TODAY AT MARKET and NEXT WEEK FOR MARKET PREORDER
10am – 2pm, 1100 Railroad Ave

BREAD:
Red Wheat ($7.50 / 720g)
Elwha River Spelt ($8 / 750g)
Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g)
Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g)
Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g)
Sourdough Stuffing ($6)

SWEETS:
Gingerbread Cake ($6) - There was massive and inexplicable cake collapse. The gingerbread supply is limited today.
Gingersnap Cookies ($5 / 2)
Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies ($5 / 2)
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies ($5 / 2)
Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz)

MENU for WEDNESDAY, NOV 25
Order by Sunday night for pickup the following Wednesday.
Pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Happy Valley/Fairhaven

Red Wheat ($7.50 / 720g, $15 / 1.5kg)
Mountain Rye, cut or whole ($7.50 / 750g, $22.50 / 2.3kg)
Rosemary Cornmeal "Toast" ($8 / 750g)
Gingerbread ($16 / serves 3-4)
Heirloom Apple Pie ($30 / serves 6)
Cookies: Chocolate Chip Hazelnut, Bittersweet Chocolate, or Gingersnap ($15 / 6)

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

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

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.

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.