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I wish I had bread rhapsodies for you, or even some photos of the market bake (it’s a good one), but I took no pictures yesterday and with the baking done my mind has turned towards the garden. There are so many urgent spring projects: fencing, brick setting, sheet mulching, planting, propagation, the noxious weeds to dig and dig and dig again.
Last weekend we buried more lawn under cardboard and manure and planted the beginnings of our berry beds with highbush blueberries, black and red currants, and strawberries. A friend delivered a few lingonberries last night, and a German wine grape. Right now, sitting at my desk with the window cracked let in birdsong and the bright morning air, I’m fighting the impulse to go outside and put roots into the cold, damp earth. But first the farmers market. If I have dirt under my fingernails you'll know I gave in to the green song of growing things and snuck out for a quick dip in the garden before biking downtown. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker The earth moves more quickly at the equinox, or at least it feels that way as we tilt towards winter. Each day is shorter, the light cooler, the night colder. The other morning I woke to blue skies and rode out into a bank of fog that capped the hill and pooled in the hollow of downtown, leaving our house bare in the pale sunshine.
It’s a lovely morning. Over the traffic roar and refrigerator hum I can hear a chickadee whistling in the back yard (are our ears tuned particularly to birdsong, to pull their frequencies out from all the human clatter?). Yesterday’s bake went beautifully, mostly. The rye breads—all three kinds! Mountain, Vollkorn, and Ring—rose well; the wheat loaves bloomed; the cookies are crisp; the plum scones tender; the apple cake as perfect a fall pastry as I’ve yet baked with its sweet-tart fruit, earthy buckwheat and rye, and hint of warm spice. Only the gingerbread went awry, collapsing as it cooled. I’m not sure I have the patience to nurse this temperamental cake through another season. Delicious as it is, it may be time to retire it in favor of a less fragile recipe. Ezra’s setting up the stand as I write. I’m off to ride the morning’s deliveries and then I’ll circle back to the Depot. It’s been a long time since I spent a full day at market, wallowing as I’ve been the luxury of two day weekends. I’ll see you there. Sophie Owner | Baker  The figs are done, the blackberries sour with rain and cool weather. But the prune plums are ripe, purple skins dusted with yeast and insides a delightful, juicy yellow. I’ve been running our dehydrator for a week drying down my first harvest, one batch after another. The early saucing apples are near their end, the denser fall apples starting to sweeten. I’ve seen pears beginning to drop on my rides through the city and grapes darkening with color. This is the most bountiful time of year for a gleaner. In city parks, alleys, the edges of parking lots and along parking strips, in private gardens, there’s fruit ripening. Everywhere, fruit. Don’t be afraid to knock on your neighbors' doors and ask to scramble up their trees. The worst that will happen is baffled rejection. The best, a winter larder stocked with sunshine. This week’s snack cake is made with our Gravensteins and an earthy mix of buckwheat and rye. The oat scones are contrasting tender, sweet pastry with tart, juicy plums. There’s an apple rye bread coming up in the Fall Bread Subscription and I’ve been wondering about grape pastries. Soon it will be time for gingerbread cake. I’ve put up ten gallons of apple sauce so far in preparation. And now it's time to make toast and perhaps one last cup of coffee, pack up my panniers, and ride home from the farm before Chuckanut gets too busy. I'll see you at market in a few hours! Sophie Owner | Baker  Rye & Buckwheat Apple Snack Cake Rain, and underneath the faint smell of decay. Fall is coming. I pulled the down comforter out of the cupboard last night, though I didn’t use it. I feel an animal urgency to put up the summer’s bounty against the coming dark. I want more time to go stomping through the blackberry brambles and scrambling up fruit trees, more time to gather and glean, to process, ferment, dehydrate, and can, but time is always short in the long days of summer. There’s bread to bake and deliver, and more bread after that. So if your garden is too much, if the figs are dripping with wasps or the apples dropping or the grapes rotting on the vine, perhaps we can barter bread for fruit? Or you could take a jam tithe. That would work, too. Sophie Owner | Baker  FALL BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Every Wednesday Sept 2 - Dec 16 16 weeks / 16 loaves Pickups in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Happy Valley/Fairhaven RED WHEAT Subscription ($120) - whole wheat table bread MOUNTAIN RYE Subscription ($120) - seedy rye & wheat TOAST Subscription ($128) - a new tinned loaf every week 9/2 - Oat & Honey 9/9 - Toasted Sesame 9/16 - Polenta 9/23 - Buckwheat & Molasses 9/30 - Wild & Seedy Oct-Dec TBD 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) *Small batch this week. Come early. Mountain Rye ($7.50 / 750g) Vollkornbrot ($8 / 750g) Seedy Buckwheat ($8 / 420g) SWEETS: Gingersnap Cookies ($5 / 2) Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cookies ($5 / 2) Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies ($5 / 2) Blackberry / Peach Snack Cake ($5) Brown Butter Shortbread ($9 / half dz) This time of year, without the market to meter my weeks, time goes fluid. Work days and rest days overlap and trade places. There is always more to do but no one besides myself to note its doing. Bake days, with their set schedule and clearly defined goals—this many bags stamped and labeled, this many loaves mixed and baked—are a welcome escape into order and external accountability. A weekend spent clearing the garden of last year’s debris in preparation for spring is even more tangibly satisfying. Soon enough the market will resume and I’ll be wishing for the freedom of winter, but for now I wander between work and leisure, feeling vaguely guilty about the hours wasted in between. So it goes, slow season to busy, and always looking forward to the change ahead.   Speaking of the coming season, Raven Breads is hiring for the Saturday market and the bakery. These two part-time jobs start in April and could be combined by the right person into a single position. If you like bread and bicycles and want to be part of this little business as it grows, check out the job descriptions HERE. Sophie Owner | Baker This is the last day to subscribe to the remaining weeks of the WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION, though you'll still be able to order single loaves going forward. Baker's Choice Subscription: March 4: Alpine Spice Rye March 11: Rye & Oat March 18: Korn Rye or Corn Rye? March 25: Westphalian Pumpernickel “What’s your favorite fruit?” you asked me. I stuttered and stalled. My favorite fruit? How could I ever choose just one? But I have an answer now: satsumas. If I had a box I would sit down right here and eat them all, one after another, the peels scattered like petals on the floor around me, till my teeth felt matte and my tongue stung with the acid. Yesterday at the store I bought only a foolish handful, and ate them all standing at the end of the checkout line, waiting for the cashier to weigh up the rest of my groceries. Next week, when these firm haychiya soften and glow jewel orange against the light, my answer will be persimmon. And at the end of the long, fruitless spring, when the first tiny strawberries appear at market, how could I not love them best? But apricots. But mangoes sucked down to loose skin under the equatorial sun, and that first real banana, creamy and fragrant like no Cavendish I’d ever tasted. But blueberries by the fistful. But dense, floral apples and sun-hot figs. But Himalayan blackberries that smell like all the cracked sidewalk summers of my childhood. I’ve loved each, loved the soft hard heavy feel of them, loved breathing in their taste as it opened on my tongue, loved their colors and the textures of their skin. And is my love less for being so bright and brief, for turning as the seasons turn so that it always faces this moment, now, and the perfect fruit I’m holding in my hand? Sophie Owner | Baker This is the second to last market of the year! We'll be closed from Dec 22 until the Winter Bread Subscription starts up on Jan 22. Place orders for the last market ONLINE with a credit card or at MARKET with cash or check. Preorders (menu listed below) are due by TOMORROW for pickup at the last market, Saturday, Dec 21 HOLIDAY SWEETS Gingerbread Bundt Chocolate Babka Pain d'Epices (made with honey, rye, and spices, mixed and aged for 18 months!! to deep, sweet complexity.) Hazelnut & Oat Snowballs Apple Oat Scones. Plus Malted Chocolate Chip, Bittersweet Chocolate, Gingersnap, and Shortbread Cookies. FILL YOUR PANTRY! Red & White (1.5 kg) Mountain Rye (2.3 kg) Vollkornbrot (2.3 kg) Seedy Buckwheat (1.3 kg) WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Every Wednesday for 10 weeks, Jan 22 - March 25 Pickup in Birchwood, Downtown, or in Fairhaven RED & WHITE subscription ($70) MOUNTAIN RYE subscription ($70) BAKER's CHOICE subscription ($80) BAKER's CHOICE menu: all rye all winter long! Jan 22: Rugbrod Jan 29: Ring Rye Feb 5: Apple Rye Feb 12: Harvest Miche 1 Feb 19: Harvest Miche 2 Feb 26: Black Bread March 4: Alpine Spice Rye March 11: Rye & Oat March 18: Korn Rye or Corn Rye?? March 25: Westphalian Pumpernickel! TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Mountain Rye Vollkornbrot Seedy Buckwheat CHOCOLATE BABKA Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Gingersnap Cookie Hazelnut Snowballs Apple Scone Gingerbread Cake Shortbread Buckwheat Crisps PAIN d'EPICES I'll be donating 10% of sales this month to organizations working for social and environmental justice. Last Sunday we climbed above treeline and into the dusty blue of high mountain sunshine where the larches blazed orange gold and Cascade blueberries lit the hillsides in red fire. Just below Maple Pass, the mountains around us alive with light, another hiker let out a wild whoop, and the mountains echoed back his joy. We need a language of place, I think, to speak the wonder of this landscape. A verb for the way the late autumn sun backlights turning leaves. Another for the blue fading of mountains, each line of peaks paler than the one before till they disappear into the sky. I want a word for the sudden temperature change when you walk from sunshine into shadow, and one for the pockets of cool air held in low, damp places. What is the word for stones sunk into frost heaved ground, for the lacy trim of ice crystals along the edges of leaves, for the way bare branches rimmed in ice glitter in low sunlight? In his beautiful, demanding book on the importance of landscape language, Robert Macfarlane writes, "by instrumentalizing nature, linguistically and operationally, we've largely stunned the earth out of wonder. Language is fundamental to the possibility of re-wonderment, for language does not just register experience, it produces it. The contours and colors of words are inseparable from the feelings we create in relation to situations, to others, and to places." If we spoke the language of the mountains and sound, would we name the daily wonder of this place? Would we see our landscape more clearly, love it more deeply, and protect it more fiercely in a changing world?   TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Scone Buckwheat Scone Gingerbread Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION (Pick up bread every Wednesday Sept 5 - Nov 21. Sign up anytime.) Buckwheat & Honey Mountain Rye Today is the last day of summer, and it promises to be a decidedly unsummerlike day. I woke in the dark to the sound of wind, where a month ago I would have woken in the cool, white light of dawn. There’s rain in the forecast. For weeks I’ve been gathering in the last of the sun’s gifts: plums from the back alleys, rosemary from my grandmother’s garden, tomatoes, apples and pears, blue fenugreek, and grapes. The back porch is a chaos of canning supplies, dehydrators, harvest totes, dried herbs waiting to be stripped of leaves, dried flower heads waiting to be stripped of seeds, unripe tomatoes pulled reluctantly from the garden, fermenting crocks, and empty glass jars. This is the bulwark of flavor I build every year against the coming dark. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookies Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Harvest Cookies Oatmeal Scone Apple Cake Shortbread WEDNESDAY BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Blue Corn Nixtamal Mountain Rye This time of year, with the dark still a near memory, each new spring day is a surprise. Biking past trees in exuberant bloom, waking up to daylight, stepping out of the bakery after long, fluorescent hours into a bright evening, pressing seeds into the warm earth: each is a new delight. A ruby throated humming bird has laid claim to the rosemary in the back garden. He comes often. I hear him first: the whir of wings, a tiny cheep, and look up to see the irridescenct flash of his green head. And then he turns, or I do, and the sun catches him full in the throat, and he blazes. See you at market. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + Rosemary Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Buckwheat Rhubarb Scone Black Sesame Buckheat Scone Shortbread PRE-ORDER for Wednesday 5/9 (place order by Sunday night for Wednesday pickup) Oat & Honey ($8) Mountain Rye ($7) Vollkornbrot ($8) PRE-ORDER for Mother's Day (place order by Thursday, pickup at the Saturday market) Scones, half dz ($24) And so the season ends. I'll be baking one last round of winter bread next week for pre-order and pickup, and then I'm taking off for a few weeks, before the market season and the next Bread Subscription begin. Throughout my early twenties, winter was my wandering season. For a month or three I'd travel the states by bike or plane, or I'd move to a foreign city and settle in to explore. That season, too, has ended. This bakery demands too much of my time to allow such wide wanderings. But a few weeks I can manage. I'll be back at the beginning of April, tired from being always an outsider in a foreign culture, but reluctant still to return to the comfort and easy familiarity of the Northwest. And that's the conundrum of travel, is it not? The farther you go, the more wonderful and strange it is to come home. BREAD MATTERS: Wednesday 3/14 CINNAMON TWIST ($8) Because who didn't love cinnamon sugar toast as a child? MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) There will be NO BREAD available between 3/14 and 4/4, when the SPRING BREAD SUBSCRIPTION starts. The SPRING BREAD SUBSCRIPTION runs April - May. You can sign up ONLINEor download this FORM and mail it back with a check. BAKER's CHOICE subscription ($72) MOUNTAIN RYE subscription ($63) VOLLKORNBROT subscription ($63) Raven Breads will be back at the SATURDAY FARMERS MARKET every weekend starting 4/7! Until next month,
Sophie Owner | Baker |