Can you ever be all the way outside in the city? Can you be outside when you stand on a concrete floor, walled in by buildings, with the roar of traffic ebbing and flooding like the tide, changing birdsong and your brain, and the the petro-smell of too many cars rising up from the roads with every warm rain? , Last night I rode home under a hot pink sunset, keeping one eye on the sky, the other on the cars and the boozy sidewalk crowds. The night was sound and color around me. I remembered other night rides. I remembered riding through the country night and feeling the air change. The hollows were cool damp, already collecting mist, and the night smells were as loud as the frog choruses: forest mulch and fir, nootka rose, dust, flowering clover and meadow grass, and the warm smell of the cattle. It made me feel so wildly alive, pedaling through the complicated dark, with only the shadows of the hedgerows to mark the road, and not a single headlight to break the night all the way home. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Buckwheat Strawberry Scone Rhubarb Strawberry Galette Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Toasted Sesame Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Scone, Shortbread, Galette 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) NOTES FROM MOROCCO: We came down from the mountains fast. Hassan drove the taxi with focus and deliberation, both hands heavy on the wheel. He didn’t slow for school children or blind, cliff-side corners. He played chicken with donkey carts and heavily loaded trucks, and won. The High Atlas were austere and very beautiful. I wanted to linger over the flash-flood gorges cutting deep and rust-red into yellow hillsides, the steep, diagonal bands of uplifted sedimentary rock, the almond orchards blooming fresh pink against rocky fields, and the brilliant green of the terraces, but each time I thought to ask Hassan to slow I hesitated, nervous to disturb his concentration, and the scene was gone. The villages we flew past were the same and different. This high, all were built in the traditional boxy style: tall earth and stone walls, white-washed windows, flat roofs with dry plant fringes to wick away the rain. And each was entirely of its place, the houses built from the rock and dirt excavated to make their foundations. Villages built on red earth had rammed, red earth walls and flat, red earth roofs, villages on grey-green hillsides were laid with tight-fitted, grey-green slate, yellow hillsides made yellow houses, grey made grey, orange made orange. Once, we passed a village straddling geographic time, and it was striped, pink houses on bottom, yellow on top, just like the sedimentary layers below. We drove by riverside villages with fields terraced, precariously, directly into the floodplain, and ridgeline villages with fields walled into the steep hills below. We drove along the top of a fairy-tale gorge that plunged down to our right, deep and deeper to an unseen river. The village sat high on the valley wall, a honeycomb of tan houses against tan rock and a few, tough junipers. Below the village, the grain terraces fell down down down, all the way to the gorge bottom, glowing heart-stopping green, like tiny, emerald scales. We drove below a rust-red village on a rust-red hill, growing up out of a forest of huge prickly pear, below the deep, blue sky. The combination reminded me, strongly and disorientingly, of the American Southwest. We drove through villages with empty streets, streets filled with children just out of school, streets blocked by flocks of sheep and goats, unperturbed by the impatient taxi inching too-close behind. We drove through villages with men lounging in doorways, men slumped together on steps, gossiping, men leaning together against sunny walls, the pointed hoods of their djellabas raised against the wind. We drove through games of street football, the boys scattering before Hassan’s horn. We drove past women and girls hauling water, carrying brush, tugging along reluctant children and donkeys, and crouched by cold creeks washing laundry and beating rugs. We drove till the hills gentled, the fields grew wider and more casually terraced, cinder-block and concrete replaced rammed-earth and stone, and we could see the central plain stretching out into city smog below. We drove out of the mountains, and their harsh and wild beauty. I wasn’t ready. I wanted to turn back. But already the road was straightening and widening, and Hassan was picking up speed. Sophie Owner | Baker BREAD MATTERS: The SPRING BREAD SUBSCRIPTION starts Wednesday. This is your last chance to sign up! BAKER's CHOICE subscription ($72) MOUNTAIN RYE subscription ($63) VOLLKORNBROT subscription ($63) Available by pre-order for Wednesday, 4/4: WILD & SEEDY ($8) MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) And Raven Breads will be back at the FARMERS MARKET every weekend, starting next Saturday! 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.
Already, I can feel the earth tilting towards summer. All across the lawn, the crocuses are punching up through the moss and grass, opening the closed fists of their flowers to the sun. Through the leaf mulch and dead stalks of cover crop, the first fava beans are uncurling in the garden. Soon, the daffodils will follow. When I walk the between the vegetable beds, mapping imagined crops with my stride, I daydream of delicate cotyledon and the first true leaves, of muddy knees and muddier boots, of weeds and rain and a riot of new-green growing up from the wet earth. No matter that yesterday I passed children skipping ice shards across frozen puddles as I walked downtown, my jacket zipped all the way to my throat, and my hands held close in my pockets. No matter that we still face five more months of rain. It’s almost time to plant the first peas and greens, to scatter poppy seeds, and tuck sweetpeas in along the fence line. The calendar may call this the depth of winter, but for me, February has always marked the beginning of spring. Wednesday 2/14 CHOCOLATE ($10) A bittersweet black bread, with dark cocoa, Theo milk chocolate chunks, and candied orange peel. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) 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) See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker What is the shape of your best day? Mine starts on the dark side of 5 am, when I wake, look at my watch, and decide go back to sleep. Hours later, in the gray gloaming, I wake again, and reach for my book. There is no hurry. Breakfast will wait. When I get up on my best day, I put on water for tea and turn on the oven. I mix eggs, milk, and flour. I melt half a stick of butter in a skillet and pour in the batter. While the pancake rises, I sauté sliced apples in butter. I only burn a few. On my best day, I go back to bed after breakfast. I curl up by the window and read until noon. I finish one book and start another. The clouds thin to pale blue. The sunshine climbs over me till I’m all in light. Later, I go for a long walk. The snow is soft and reaches a few inches shy of my boot tops. I walk along the river, under black cottonwoods and alders, and the occasional ponderosa. The willow thickets are deep red. I listen to the water and watch my feet. There are tracks crisscrossing the snow in all directions. I follow a river otter’s tracks for a while till I come out onto the cobbled riverbank. Then I follow a deer. I see neither otter nor deer, but many birds. The great horned owl is asleep in her cottonwood snag, or at least, I think she’s asleep. She is exactly the same brown-gray as the bark, and I see no hint of yellow eyes. On my best day I make hot chocolate and take my mug and a book out onto the porch to catch the last of the light. I fold a blanket around my legs, like an invalid in one of the old, upright British novels I used to love so well. I read until the light begins to fade. Or maybe I just sit and watch the trees and the whitening sky. It doesn’t matter. This is my day to do with as I please. When darkness folds around the house at the end of my best day, I am inside where it is warm and bright. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will think of obligations, but tonight I am full on stories and sunshine and good food. There is no space left for work or worries. Steam rises from the mug in my hand, smelling of mint and chamomile. I sit back to watch the fire. This is the shape of my best day. Winter Bread Subscription Today is the LAST DAY to sign up! BAKER's CHOICE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription VOLLKORNBROT subscription Wednesday Preorder Wild & Seedy Mountain Rye Vollkornbrot I'll be back on the west side and delivering the first of the Winter Bread Subscription this Wednesday to Birchwood, downtown, and Fairhaven.
Happy eating! Sophie Owner | Baker 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 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 "I should take more time to be bored," I wrote to my friend, thinking about how rarely I'm alone with myself and the world, without a book, or a phone, or even a pen and notebook for distraction. "If you're bored," she wrote back, "you're not paying attention." I’m not paying attention most of the time. I let my days become habit, let familiarity carry me forward while my mind wanders. How often am I entirely present to routine tasks: to mixing dough, or to eating dinner, or even to greeting a friend? Stepping out of the back door of the kitchen yesterday with my bike, I looked up at the sky and smiled. The sun was shining, and I was in its light. I was absurdly pleased with myself for escaping that windowless space. That I'm my own boss, and was pulling one over on no one but myself, did nothing to lessen my satisfaction. The trees on the hill were glowing yellow-green-orange, soft-edged in the humidity, like a tinted, just-out-of-focus photograph. Clouds blew by, moving fast. I passed a garden overrun with dozens of crows, and stopped to watch four of them jockeying for position as queen of the sunflower. One flew up and landed beside me on the fence, so close I could see the glossy pattern of her feathers. She turned an eye on me, then flew away. I rode on, startling a flock of starlings, who swept up in a smooth comma from street to wire, so beautiful my chest filled. “There are moments,” I thought, “when the body is as numinous as words." Back inside the clatter and roar of the kitchen, I took a moment to grieve the loss of all that beauty and light. And then I reached out and put my hand on the dough, feeling the life inside, the microbes expanding the alveoli with each exhale, as they breathed in the oxygen those glowing trees breathed out, and turned it into rising bread. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Gingerbread Shortbread Granola It's going to be a little wild out today, but you hardy northwesterners aren't scared of the rain (I hope). Put on your boots and rain coat, and come to market!
Sophie Owner | Baker |
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