,It’s been years since I’ve spent a day alone. Not without people alone, or at least, not only that. I mean alone without conversation, without books or screens or radio for company, without work. Often, the minutes of my bike commute are the only time I spend alone all day, and even those I sometimes interrupt with a text message or a quick, pointless check of Instagram. In the clutter and noise of my daily life I begin to think distraction is normal. I begin to think that productivity is important, forgetting that being present—to my work, to a conversation, to rain and sky and the strength of my body when I run—is what matters most. Often, it’s artists and writers who speak about stillness as a daily practice, about making time for meditation or boredom, for daydreaming or walking without direction, but I think such time alone is something we all need. I remember the last day I spent alone. I was still living in the islands. It was Yom Kippur, late fall and damp cold. I drove the truck to Shark Reef and walked out to the rocks above San Juan Channel where I sat for hours, watching the water, the sky, two sea lions cruising north against the tide. I sat and thought about my mormor, who had died that February, and about other things I’ve long forgotten. But eight years later I still remember the feeling. I still remember the anxiety of having nothing to do, nothing to distract me; I remember the beauty and stillness of that gray, fall day, and the wonder of being part of it. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye Vollkornbrot Seedy Buckwheat Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Gingersnap Oat Scone Gingerbread Cake Apple Cake with Cultured Cream Shortbread Buckwheat Crisps (I tried to make you Pan de Muerto, too. They look beautiful, but I ate one this morning and... I forgot the salt. So instead you'll be getting bread pudding next week.) FALL BREAD SUBSCRIPTION 9 weeks remaining Every Wednesday, OCT 2 - DEC 18 Pickup downtown, Birchwood, Fairhaven This week: Mountain Rye, Red & White, POLENTA I meant to keep writing during my winter bakery tour. I did write, some—notes, recipes, lists—I just didn't write with the focus or direction to send out the weekly newsletter. Time moves differently without the routines of work and home to mark its passage. A day of travel can hold a week’s worth of noticing, the way a moment of surprise or danger can jerk you out of the half-sleep of habit and into full, startling wakefulness. And yet, even as time stretched to accommodate the density of sensations—new landscapes, new smells, new foods, new conversations and ideas—I found myelf unmoored from the calendar. Saturdays came and went, unnoticed. My laptop, a clunky old Toshiba that no longer holds a charge, sat unopened at the bottom of my bag. I set out on this trip in search of inspiration and ideas and found them. I visited bakers happy with the freedom and efficiency of their cottage businesses, and others grateful for the impact their bustling, 24-hour operations allowed them as employers, producers, and buyers. I met bakers who worked through the night to deliver product hot from the oven, and others who never woke before five, choosing to sell bread the next day for the sake of their sanity and sleep. I visited wholesale bakeries, market bakeries, retail bakeries, and bakeries that combined all three. I met bakers who milled their own flour and others who purchased from nearby farmer-millers or from a regional mill, bakers with wood-fired ovens and others working with huge, gas deck ovens, radical, whole-grain evangelizers and practical businesswomen who appreciated the approachability and ease of white flour. Sometimes I stayed out of the way, watching and sidestepping workers, sometimes I was right in the thick of production, revising recipes, mixing, shaping, and loading the oven. I ate so much bread and butter I had to let out my belt. Home again after visiting so many diverse baking businesses, I find that though I’m still thoroughly daunted by the prospect of building a retail bakery, I'm feeling more resigned to my ignorance than paralyzed by it. What I don’t yet know—and my unknowing is vast and deep—I can learn. Hopefully. The Spring Bread Subscription starts next Wednesday and runs through the end of May. The Baker’s Choice is made up of breads I tasted or talked about on this bakery tour, from dense, seedy ryes to a tender, wholemeal brioche. Sign up for the whole nine weeks, or just order bread (at a slightly higher price) one week at a time. For those who are curious about rye baking and science, I’ve posted the first in what I hope will be an ongoing series of Up Rye Zines on the website (free) and in the webstore ($5.50). It’s a thoroughly nerdy project that I’m very excited about, and not only because researching rye bread makes for an excellent distraction from financial projections, loan applications, and hunting for commercial real estate. The market season starts up again next weekend! Hopefully we'll have a Saturday as glorious as this one, but I’ll be there, rain or shine, with a full lineup of breads and pastries. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker “There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by,” Annie Dillard wrote. I think about this as I work. It is not a good day. I am tired to the soles of my feet. The work pulls me deeper into the night and won’t let go. I trudge on. I daydream about good days: the exuberant pleasure of a day spent swimming in the ocean, or reading books, or sitting over long, leisurely meals with friends. I think about good days as I load and unload the oven, as I stack dishes from the drying rack, as I sweep and mop the floor, wipe down the counters, scrub the sinks, and carry the compost out into the dark alley. They’re Sundays, all, and sweet and sunlit in my mind. But of course, I don’t live a life of Sundays. I wouldn’t, even if I could, though the weeks between are often blurred by schedule and repetition. Is that what Dillard meant? That the days of sun and pleasure are easy enough to find, if you have the time and inclination. It is adding up the days between, weaving the hours and their mundane tasks into the fabric of a meaningful life, that is the great and difficult work. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing…Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern." See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Blackberry Scone Buckwheat Peach Scone Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Toasted Sesame Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Scone, Shortbread, etc. I have been back now for two weeks, after two weeks of travel. The traveling days were bright and distinct. Even the mundane hours—long train rides, waiting in airports, sitting on rooftops under a different sky—are heavy threads of memory. Whereas these days at home have been light and comfortable, and so ordinary I could snip them out of the fabric of my life, and leave not even a wrinkle to mark the mending. See you at market. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White, (Smoky!) Vollkornbrot Mountain Rye, seconds* Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Shortbread Scones PRE-ORDER 4/14 Toasted Farro + Hazelnut ($10) Mountain Rye ($7) Vollkornbrot ($8) *I managed to overferment and collapse the entire batch of Mountain Rye. It will be on super sale, for those who don't mind a flying roof on their bread. This means that solid rye loaves (Vollkornbrot) are in limited supply, so come early if you want one! "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 I would like to keep this time, when the house is quiet, and I sit by the window looking out at the flowering quince and the witch hazel, both long past their bloom, at our neighbor's tidy roofline, and at the morning light rising through the trees as the steam rises from the mug in my hands. I would like to keep it with me. I would like to fold it up as neat as a letter and put it in my pocket, to take out and read over when the world gets loud. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot The last Country Rye (probably) Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black Sesame & Fennel Palmier Cardamom Apple Tart Plum Kuchen Shortbread Granola Wednesday Preorder Wild & Seedy! Mountain Rye Shortbread Good morning. See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker POSTSCRIPT: OVERHEARD
Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a cover story for The Atlantic this week on our white president. It is, like everything he writes, thoughtful and thought provoking. |
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