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When I was a child I built forts. I built forts with curtains and couch pillows, with driftwood, within the branches of my favorite climbing trees. I tunneled into deep snow and nested under bushes. Sometimes the forts were only sketches: this stump is the table; that red cedar the wall; the front door is here, between two stones; those bits of sea glass, smooth beach rocks veined with pink and green, feathers, and drying seed pods lined up along the log are my treasures. Other times the forts were solid, like the one I built in the woods behind my mormor’s house with cedar branches, sheets of moss, and the upended roots of a toppled fir. A few years ago I went walking through those woods and found the lean-to’s remains. Its roof was collapsed and mossy, the stones marking its door unmoved.  A treehouse, long abandoned, behind my mormor's house Over the years of searching for a bakery space I’ve found many nonstarters—spaces too small, too inaccessible, too contaminated, too expensive—and a few possibilities. For each possibility I sketch out floor plans. As a child I walked and climbed and crawled through my creations. Now I trace my way across the screen from sink to mixer, mixer to table, table to rack, rack to oven. Drawing a floor plan, it turns out, feels a lot like building a fort: you make an abstract representation of a space, whether from rocks and branches or lines on a page, and fill in the details with your imagination. Sophie Owner | Baker  Digital bread fort This essay is adapted from a 2017 newsletter.  When I was a child, I saw the magic at work in everything. The door between the physical and imagined was open and the world was full of wonder. There was little difference between the magic of tide pools, methodically explored in Tevas and fleece on an overcast afternoon, laminated species key in hand, and the magic of a backyard fairyland, where I might spend equally serious hours exploring the fairy kingdom and serving feasts from the garden in raspberry goblets and bowls carved from hard, green apples. I found worlds in the secret colors inside clam shells, in the geode's prickly center, in the lush abstractions of Georgia O'Keefe's erotic flowers, which I carried in a pocket-sized art book that must have come from a museum gift shop. I kept beach stones and horse chestnuts for pets.
But, of course, I grew up. In biology and physics classrooms we learned beautiful theories, but never spoke of wonder. In English class we read fiction, but wrote only critical essays. Each subject in turn closed its door on imagination. I learned many things in school, but forgot magic. Looking the other day at the wild topography of the rye breads, I felt an upwelling of the old wonder. The loaves cooling on the rack before me were as beautiful as any purple-hearted clam shell. They were made with intellect—with a practical understanding of temperature and time, of enzymes, yeast, and bacteria—and with the visceral knowledge of long practice. Science and intuition, fact and metaphor, both. Bread baking, I thought, might be a kind of practical magic. Sophie Owner | Baker  Back when it was cold, back in the beginning of the week, before the rain, when the chill eased through the uninsulated walls of my upstairs bedroom and I slept curled under all my blankets in a tiny island of body heat, the bed a cold sea around me, I woke to frost. The grass was frosted, and the brittle leaves of kale and cabbage in the garden. The fennel, just tufting up between last year’s dead stalks, was wilted and rimmed with white. The gravel in the drive was frosted, and the cars, the garbage cans, the old leaves scattered by the walk. Ice crunched satisfyingly underfoot. The sun is slow to reach us this time of year. It was late morning before light crept all the way to the back fence. When I walked out to the garden at midday to pick my lunch, I found the deep shadows still frozen. The house threw a long, straight frost shadow. The pine and rhododendrons dappled frost across the grass. The trash bins drew precise, frosty parallelograms, the cars, rounded white rhombuses on the gravel. If I had stood in the yard all morning, watching the little puffed up birds flick between bush and fence as the sun warmed my back, I too could have grown a frost twin: a long, cold shadow self, reaching north towards the dark. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Jan 23 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Rugbrød - This hearty tinned bread, made with 100% Whatcom rye, is built on rugbrod recipes sent to me by the Dutch baker Tim van Dalen and French baker Thomas Teffri-Chambelland. The perfect base for smørrebrød (open-face sandwiches). NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Jan 30 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Famer's Bread - a crusty rye & wheat boule, inspired by the Austrian bauernlaib. WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Sign up to get a loaf every Wedneday through March 6 RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new rye every week Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm I used to build forts in these woods. Sometimes, they were only sketches: this stump is the table; that red cedar is the wall; the front door is here, between two stones; those bits of sea glass, smooth beach rocks veined with pink and green, feathers, and drying seed pods lined up along the log are my treasures. I always walked in the front door. Other times the forts were more solid, like the lean-to I built against the upended roots of a toppled fir. I stole sheets of moss from the forest floor, and laid them over the slanted roof, hoping they would grow over the whole structure.  The problem with forts, whether built in the forest, or in the living room with curtains and couch pillows, or piled from driftwood, or tunneled into deep snow, is that all the pleasure is in the building. Once you’re done, you have a dark cave of some sort. Often, it’s rather damp, and maybe your knees are wet from kneeling to line up stones along the invisible interior walls, and it’s probably raining (in my memory of childhood summers, it always rained through the 4th of July), and breakfast was a long time ago. For hours and hours you’ve worked with intense, imagination-fueled focus, unheeding of the damp creeping up from the wet hems of your sleeves, caught up fully in the wonder of your creation. Only now, with the construction complete, does your concentration waver. Maybe you crawl inside the lean-to and sit for a minute, looking around in the dim light at the mud and sticks, and the little treasures tucked into the tree roots' crooked fingers, while the wet drips down your hair and inside your shirt collar. Maybe you fuss for a minute more, moving things just so, but the purpose is gone. So you crawl out again, and thrash your way back through the woods, and home for lunch. Wednesday 2/21 TOASTED SESAME ($8) Umami and crunch. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 2/28 OAT & HONEY ($8) Sweet, tender, and perfect for toast. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 3/7 MÉTEIL ($8) A beautifully crackled rye/wheat country bread. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Sophie Owner | Baker P.S. The monthly winter farmers market is today! Raven Breads won't be there, but you should still go and wander through the Market Depot, if only to give yourself a good reason to leave the house on this rather damp Saturday.
When I was born, my parents planted a tree. It was a leggy little Macoun scion on semi-dwarf rootstock, and they stuck it into the summer lawn of dandelions and dry grass, back by the chain link fence that separated our house from the neighbors'. Remarkably, it thrived. All the years of my childhood, as I tended vegetable beds and imaginary worlds in the back yard, it stood over me. In the summer, I picked the hard, green apples and carved them into tiny bowls for my fairy feasts, setting them alongside raspberry goblets and plates made of leaves. In the early fall, I scrambled up the tree to pick under-ripe apples, and weeks later, returned to gather wormy windfalls. These I dissected for my father's pies, carefully scooping out the bruises with the curved end of a potato peeler, before cutting out their rotten hearts. The Macoun has become my Platonic apple ideal. It is a beautiful apple, blushed dusky purple over green, with dense, white flesh. It fits comfortably in hand, and has a satisfyingly tangy-sweet crunch. It makes good pies. When I look for apples for the bakery, weighing their density in my palm, pressing to feel for firmness or give, tasting for a little sour and bitter beneath the sweet, the Macoun, or perhaps my memory of it, is my guide. The back fence is now wood, and half hidden by a riot of dark-leafed perennials. The rest of the seedy lawn was long ago paved over with a patio, or turned to make way for more vegetable beds. The trees in the neighbors' yards have grown, as trees do, making a living wall to either side and giving the garden something of the feel of a forest glade, hidden away from the concrete and sirens of the city. And at the center, despite years of alternating neglect and over-pruning, my Macoun still stands, reaching its watersprouts towards the retreating sun.  I have a limited market lineup today because I figured a lot of you are probably still too full from Thanksgiving to think about baked goods. If you've recovered from your tryptophan-induced stupor, come early to get your bread and pastry before they sell out! Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Gingerbread Shortbread Granola Wednesday Preorder Wild & Seedy (again- because it's my favorite) Mountain Rye Shortbread Gingerbread See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker POSTSCRIPT: I went to see Dave Montgomery speak at Village Books last month. He's a UW geomorphologist and who looks like The Dude and won a MacArthur for his side project writing about ag soils. His latest book, Growing the Revolution, falls in scope between Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, which took a birds eye view of agricultural erosion over millennia, and The Hidden Half of Nature, which started an exploration of soil microbiology in his Seattle yard. Growing the Revolution makes a compelling case for conservation agriculture and for using soil health as the metric by which we measure good farming. His case studies span the globe and farming practices, from Kansas cash-cropping to Ghanaian slash and burn subsistance farming. And if that isn't enough to catch your interest, how about the fact that this is an optimistic book about the environment? You heard me right. I just used optimistic and environment in the same sentence without irony. Read it.
If I were a painter, I would paint the sky. I would paint the white edge of dawn, and then the wisp of cirrus across a pale summer morning. I would paint the racing altocumulus, the delicate scud of cirrocumulus, the cumulonimubus sailing like naval fleets across the prairie. In the winter, I would paint a thousand gentle grays. Gray-yellow. Gray-purple. Gray-green. Even the heavy nimbostratus would hold wonder. I would go to the desert and for a year paint nothing but the deep blue bowl above me. Blue, that series would be called, and it would redefine my understanding of the color. And I would paint the night sky, of course. I would paint the edge of a summer night fading pale green to dusty orange, and Venus flirting with the crescent moon against the darkening ómbre. I would lay back in a mountain meadow, high in the clear blue air, and paint the wheeling stars, one by one, as they spun above me. As I spun below them. As we spun together. Oh, but I miss the sky. Perhaps because I am so much a creature of the earth—steady and solid—it is not the dirt I ache for these long days baking in the fluorescent box of the kitchen, but the sky. Being cut off from the light and air and weather is like being lost from the world. Someday, when (if) I have my own bakery, I will have big windows. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black Sesame & Fennel Palmier Strawberry Rhubarb Roll Garden Pesto Twist Croissant Granola Wednesday Market Country Rye & Mountain Rye Pastries See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker When I was a child, I saw the magic at work in everything. The world was full of wonder, and the space between the physical and imagined was slim. There was little difference between the magic of tide pools, methodically explored in Tevas and fleece on an overcast afternoon, laminated species key in hand, and the magic of a backyard fairy land, where I might spend equally serious hours exploring the fairy kingdom and laying out offerings of flowers and tiny feasts in bowls carved from hard, green apples. I discovered worlds in the secret colors inside clam shells, in a geode's prickly center, in the lush abstractions of Georgia O'Keefe's erotic flowers, which I carried in a pocket-sized art book someone must have picked up at a museum gift shop. I kept beach stones and horse chestnuts for pets. But, of course, I grew up. In biology and physics classrooms, we learned the most beautiful theories, but never spoke of wonder. In English class, we read fiction, but wrote only critical essays. In turn, each subject closed its door on imagination. I learned many things in school, but forgot magic. Looking yesterday at the wild topography of the rye breads, I felt a sudden upwelling of nostalgia. The boules cooling on the rack before me were as beautiful as any purple-hearted clam shell. What stories might they hold? But it was a foolish question. If there are stories in my loaves, I will never find them now, grown up and educated as I am. And so I shook away the unsettling sense of loss and returned to my work. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Nibby Chocolate & Hazelnut Sandwich Cookies Cardamom Rolls and Cinnamon Rolls Polenta Cake Granola Wednesday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Rolls of some variety Possibly something with strawberries Granola See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker I bake in the noise and chaos of a shared kitchen. We work to an industrial soundtrack. The fluorescent lights and condensers are a base note of white noise. Then the oven comes on, fan whoopwhoopwhooping, slightly off center, and someone throws the switch to the hood. It roars. The dishwasher is a soft-steady beat, like percussion brushes. Objects come together with force: metal clatters on metal, glass tumbles with ceramic, plastic falls with a hollow thump. People call out, mumble, shout. This is likely why kitchens are so often aggressive spaces: our roaring, chaotic soundtrack sends cortisol flooding our brains, hour after hour, day after day, till everything blurs white with the noise. But in the mornings I have the kitchen to myself, quiet except for the static of lights and refrigerators. I hear rain falling down the drain pipe next to my work bench, and sometimes a seagull calling overhead. I hear the garbage truck clunking down the alley. And often I'll set my phone in a metal mixing bowl to amplify the sound and listen to the news. Yesterday morning I was listening to a conversation between Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klein, a brutal piece on Trump's war on the earth, that left me hopeless and tender. There was no time to step outside and breath through the panic under the open sky, so I thought instead of the mountains. I thought of fairy moss ankle deep under madronas, of the slow spread of lichen over rock, of the sensuous curve of smooth trunk revealed by peeling, papery bark. I thought of the way clouds pile up against the Chuckanuts and tangle with the tops of the islands. I thought of rain on cedar leaves, of nurse logs, of crumbling wood and persistent, tiny trees pushing cotyledon through the duff. Calm spread through me like roots, taking hold. I returned to the rising dough. Today's Market Menu Red & White, Mountain Rye, Smoky Vollkornbrot, Cinnamon Raisin Bittersweet Chocolate & Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Cardamom Rolls with Rose & Yogurt Glaze Orange Cream Raisin Rolls Granola and North Forest Meringues, little clouds scented with spruce tips and fir. For Wednesday Order Wild & Seedy, Red & White, Mountain Rye Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies (half dz) Pesach Special: North Forest Meringue (half dz) See you soon!
Sophie p.s. Next week, in honor of Easter, I'll be making beautiful braided egg bread (aka challah) and rainbow-sugared marshmallow eggs, so make sure you add a trip to the market into your weekend plans! |