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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! 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 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 rode home from the kitchen last night chasing the edge of light. In front of me was a stripe of fading orange sky and the clouds were top lit, though their bellies were heavy with night. Behind me the clouds marched off in orderly rows into the dark. I felt like I might catch the sun, if only I rode a little faster. I was so busy looking up I nearly ran into the curb. Clouds can be dangerous that way. Today the sky is bright and empty, so perhaps I'll manage to keep my eyes on the road. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Country Rye with brotgewürz, apples, and whey Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Raspberry Lebni Tart Cardamom Roll Garden Pesto Twist Brown Butter Shortbread Granola Wednesday Market Red & White Mountain Rye Various Sweets See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker 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 left the bakery late the other night to spitting rain and quiet streets. The day had been brilliantly clear, and now, in the dark, the rain released the city's sun-warmed petrichor in a bold rush. The roads smelled of summer, of asphalt and tires and walking down to the lake through the heat of some long-ago August night to go skinny dipping in the inky water. As I rode across the bridge on Dupont, the smell of the creek rose up, cool and wet, throwing me back, for a brief, unexpected moment, to that first climbing trip in Squamish: eleven or twelve, looking up at the rock through forest-dappled sunlight and knowing the power of my body. Farther along I passed a breath of unidentifiable flowers, dark and honey-sweet, like the depth of a jungle night, and then some exotic woodsmoke that reminded me of distant mountains, of the stone-walled barley fields and honeycomb houses of Ladakh, or maybe the cinderblocks and eroded milpas of a half abandoned village, high in the Mixe. The road was empty, and I was full of sense-memories, there and gone again, quick as the passing cross streets as I rode on towards home. How beautiful the night. How beautiful the strange workings of our minds. At Market Today Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Chocolate & Hazelnut Sandwich Cookies Rhubarb & Rose Rolls Cardamom Rolls Rhubarb Bread Pudding Preorder Wednesday Pickup Red & White Mountain Rye Rosemary Sea Salt Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies   Test 1 (currently called Country Rye, because it looks like it belongs on a farmhouse table) is 85% rye and 15% wheat, leavened by both a three stage rye starter and wheat starter. I'm hoping to build a loaf with a smooth, open crumb, a little lighter than the tinned ryes, that can be plain or seeded, mixed with dried fruit or nuts, or scented with bread spice or blue fenugreek, depending on the season.
Come give it a try and tell me what you think! See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker I went walking out at Stimpson yesterday, and found in the old forest a familiar and nearly forgotten soundscape. Standing still, breathing quietly, I could hear the rain drops pattering on the sword ferns and the wind breathing between the trees. A cedar swayed with a sudden gust, groaning. Overhead, wing beats, and bird calls tangling somewhere down the hill. There were no cars, no buzzing power lines, no fly overs, no human voices. The silence was loud and alive. This, I thought, is how the world should sound. Not like the hum of appliances or the rumble of cars. Not like metal and concrete and the tinny beat of some distant stereo. This is the sound of home.  The end of the Winter Bread Subscription is a mere two weeks away, and then we're diving into another ten week Bread Subscription to accompany the first ten weeks of the Bellingham Farmers Market. Sign up so you can pick up fresh bread twice a week. And for the next two weeks, every friend you sign up will earn you a FREE LOAF of bread at the farmers market. Just have them add a note with your name at checkout.
On the menu this week for Wednesday pickup: Red & White, Mountain Rye, a lovely Blue Corn polenta bread, and Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies. And don't forget that next Saturday is the third and final Winter Market! |