Where Does My Food Come From?
An Annual Report
The word “local,” like “artisan” and “natural” before it, is a victim of its own success. You can see it proliferating down the grocery isles and across marketing campaigns. The more popular (and profitable) it gets, the more confused its meaning becomes. Is a food “local” if it’s made here, from scratch, with commodity ingredients grown in Kansas or Ontario or Mexico or China or, most likely, all four? What if it’s sourced and mixed and parbaked in a factory somewhere else, but baked and served here: is that local? Is 5% locally grown enough? 50%? What are the geographic boundaries of “local” anyhow?

When I say I want to support the local food system through this business, here is what I mean:

In 2019 I bought 67% of Raven Breads’ ingredients (by dollar) from producers in Whatcom, Skagit, and King Counties. This number doesn’t include the value of locally produced ingredients, like Whatcom milk and cream, bought through a third party, or the value of the fruit harvested in the back yards and abandoned orchards of Bellingham (every blackberry, cherry, plum, fig, pear, apple, and quince that went into the pastries and bread), so the true value of locally produced ingredients was probably closer to 75%.

Of course, not all of my ingredients produced here are grown here. Of the flours I buy from Fairhaven Mill in Skagit (49%), only the rye and pastry wheat are grown in Whatcom County. The hard red wheat is grown near Walla Walla. The hard white wheat and buckwheat currently come from out of state. And the chocolate that I buy from Theo Chocolate in Seattle (8%) is made with cacao and sugar grown by farmers in Latin America and Africa.

Butter (12%), as existentially important to pastry as flour is to bread, is still a sourcing failure. Unless you count Organic Valley, we don’t have any local, organic dairies making bulk butter, so my organic, cultured cream butter comes from a large producer in Oregon. Seeds, spices, oils, sugar, and molasses (13%) come from a natural food distributor based out of Eugene, and though I always* buy organic and/or Fair Trade ingredients when purchasing through a distributor, some of these products are likely coming from the commodity organic market, making them only a small step above their conventional counterparts.

I try to keep my sourcing as transparent as possible, so please, ask questions. And ask questions about sourcing and supply chains of the other restaurants, food trucks, food producers, and grocery stores you support. The way we eat shapes the world. Soil erosion, CO2 emissions, nutrient runoff, groundwater depletion, farm worker rights, slavery, animal rights, antibiotic resistance, immigration policies: these may seem like abstract, distant issues, but they’re on our plates and in our coffee cups every day. I don’t think it’s possible to eat without causing harm, but keeping the geographic distance and the length of the supply chain between us and the farms that feed us short makes understanding the true cost of the food we eat a little easier. What we understand, we may love. And when we love our food and the soil, the climate, the people and animals who produce it, we may work harder to protect them.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

*Except when the organic/FT option is out of stock, an unfortunately frequent occurrence when working with a small distributor.

The WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION runs January 22 - March 25.
Sign up ONLINE.

RED & WHITE subscription ($7 / week)
MOUNTAIN RYE subscription ($7 / week)
BAKER's CHOICE subscription ($8 / week)

BAKER's CHOICE menu:
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!

Start Where You Are:
Using & Troubleshooting Local Grain
Instructors: Mel Darbyshire & Sophie Williams

Come learn tools for assessing, baking with, and troubleshooting local whole grains. Leaving the commodity market to support local farms and mills often means dealing with grains that vary from field to field, farm to farm, and harvest to harvest.

In this class we’ll bake with wheat and rye flours of variable quality, using sensory evaluation and the batch specs to choose products and adapt formulas to best suit our grain. We’ll talk about how growing conditions effect grain quality, how grain quality effects baking properties, and what to do with a bad harvest.

March 5-6, 2020
Thursday 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Friday 9 am - 4:00 pm

The Bread Lab
11768 Westar Lane - Burlington, WA 98233

Registration Deadline:  Sunday, March 1st
Skill Level:  Intermediate to Advanced

SIGN UP now open to the public

I’m a day and a half late sending this out, I know, but I’m likely the only one keeping track. We spent Friday forgetting the sun, driving from the fresh snow and dazzling blue skies of Mazama down below cloud cover, along the river through bare winter hills, and up over the passes to the West Side and rain. Yesterday I headed south early to Olympia for the Cascadia Grains Conference, a full day of workshops and conversation with farmers, millers, bakers, maltsters, and distillers, returning to Seattle well after midnight, my mind buzzing with thoughts of dryland farming, crop rotations, small grain systems west of the Cascades, and infrastructure gaps.

The conference marked the end of my winter break. After four weeks of running, skiing, walking, and cycling, of extravagant dinners, of home baking just for fun, of books and sleep, it’s time to return to Bellingham and to work. The WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION starts this week (order by tonight if you’d like bread Wednesday). Those long deferred bakery plans need tending to. There’s real estate, equipment, and financing to research, permits, paperwork, and pictures to sort, all those worthy books on management, accounting, business, and small grain farming to read: more than enough to keep me busy through the winter when I’m not baking your bread.

Mel Darbyshire, the head baker at Grand Central and a champion for local agriculture, and I will be teaching a class at The Bread Lab in early March on baking with local grains. It’s currently only open to Guild members, but should open to the general public within the next week or so.

And that’s the update, folks.

See you back in north country.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

The WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION starts January 22 and runs for 10 weeks through March 25.
Pickup in Birchwood (the front step), Downtown (Cafe Velo), or in Fairhaven (Shirlee Bird Cafe).
Sign up ONLINE.

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!

Start Where You Are: Using & Troubleshooting Local Grain
Instructors: Mel Darbyshire & Sophie Williams

Come learn tools for assessing, baking with, and troubleshooting local whole grains. Leaving the commodity market to support local farms and mills often means dealing with grains that vary from field to field, farm to farm, and harvest to harvest.

In this class we’ll bake with wheat and rye flours of variable quality, using sensory evaluation and the batch specs to choose products and adapt formulas to best suit our grain. We’ll talk about how growing conditions effect grain quality, how grain quality effects baking properties, and what to do with a bad harvest.

March 5-6, 2020
Thursday 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Friday 9 am - 4:00 pm

The Bread Lab
11768 Westar Lane - Burlington, WA 98233
Registration Deadline:  Sunday, March 1st
Skill Level:  Intermediate to Advanced

How could I resist? They taste like baked apples.Check the social media tomorrow for pictures of the winter apple rye bread that's currently rising on the counter beside me in a dish towel lined bowl. And in the meantime, here's the recipe, made fresh this morning, so you, too, can warm your home with a good, hearty bread.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

WINTER APPLE RYE
makes 1 large or 2 small loaves

PREFERMENT
150 g warm water
150 g ryemeal
10 g sourdough

Mix together and leave overnight (10-16 hours) in a warm place, until the mix has a strong, pleasantly sour taste.

FINAL DOUGH
275 g water, hot from the tap
350 g ryemeal
10 g salt
500 g apples, chopped or grated
all the preferment
(optional: a handful of toasted, chopped walnuts)
(optional: a handful of raisins or other dried fruit)

Mix all the ingredients together. Scoop into an oiled tin or a well floured basket. Proof until the dough is expanded and cracking and feels fragile when pressed (3 to 6 hours, depending on the temperature of  your dough and home). Before the loaf has fully risen, preheat your oven all the way up. Bake hot for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 325F and bake for another 75 minutes, or until a thermometer in the bottom of the loaf reads 200F. Let cool completely before slicing.

The WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION starts January 22 and runs for 10 weeks through March 25.
Pickup in Birchwood (the front step), Downtown (Cafe Velo), or in Fairhaven (Shirlee Bird Cafe).
Sign up ONLINE.

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!

Snow in the northern shadows but the sunshine is dazzling clear and the pavement dry. There's a drainage pond to our left. "Stop!" I call up to C, who's riding a few yards ahead. "The geese are walking on water!" And my astonished delight is no less when I realize a breath later that the water is a sleek sheet of ice because the geese are skiing, breasts forward, necks tucked back, taking careful, gliding steps across the pond—step glide, step glide—their black feet spread wide. A mallard skis past, post-holing once in her rush to reach the ducks lapping the small, dark circle of water under the trees. And the biggest goose turns back, in a hurry now, or over-confident. His head comes a little forward. He leans towards shore. And just like an amateur skier bent forward into a rise, his feet slide backwards with each step. Step slip. Step slip. Going nowhere fast.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

The WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION starts January 22 and runs for 10 weeks through March 25.
Pickup in Birchwood (the front step), Downtown (Cafe Velo), or in Fairhaven (Shirlee Bird Cafe).
Sign up ONLINE.

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!

Getting towards dusk and the sky is a crow highway. They fly over in twos and twenties,
dropping south, wing-beating, gliding, dipping and rolling like ravens. They’re gathering at the old boat house where they strut and hop over the lawn, blacken the trees, fluff and shake in the shallows.

The sky is dream blue: pale and streaked white yellow purple with thin clouds. To the north and east, the mountains glow. The ducks are rafted up on the lake, the stragglers flying in low and hard, skidding to a bright spray stop on the water. There’s a single cormorant standing in black silhouette above a white buoy, and here, on the snag exposed by the winter-low water, a stiff-legged painted turtle immobilized by the cold.

All the way home I’m running against traffic, northbound as the crows fly south in the lowering dark.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

The WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION starts January 22 and runs for 10 weeks through March 25.
Pickup in Birchwood (the front step), Downtown (Cafe Velo), or in Fairhaven (Shirlee Bird Cafe).
Sign up ONLINE.

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!

I can't write you an essay this morning because I've spent more of the past 48 hours than I care to count baking (is this what they mean by Grain Brain?). I'm going to have to let the bread and pastry speak for themselves this week.

I know it's raining but come to market anyway. It's our last till April.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

TODAY AT MARKET
Red & White
Mountain Rye
Vollkornbrot
Seedy Buckwheat

Chocolate Babka
Pain d'Epices
Gingerbread Cake

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap Cookie
Hazelnut Snowballs
Apple Ginger Scone
Shortbread
Buckwheat Crisps

WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION
Sign up ONLINE or with cash/check at market
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!

10% of this month's retail sales will go to organizations working for social and environmental justice.

“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.

This has been a good year. The business continues to grow, despite my failure to hustle, which means I've gotten to feed more people the food that I love. I've made dear new friends and deepened old friendships. I've found time for books and learning, time for powerful conversations, time to live inside my body, time for wild places and for wonder.

This has been a hard year. Finding balance between work, community, and my personal life is a constant challenge, and one that has, this year, sent me sliding dangerously close to burnout. My climate grief is a steady ache; thinking about the future, about the world our insatiable hunger is making, fills me with sorrow and fear. Deafened by the drumbeat of suffering and greed in the daily news cycle, I stopped reading the newspaper entirely and retreated to longform journalism and books.

In thanks for the good things the year has brought, in celebration of the close of another season, and in acknowledgment of all the times, tired or distracted by work, I failed to show up for our community, I'll be donating 10% of retail sales this month to organizations working for social and environmental justice. I have a handful of projects in mind, but if you have suggestions, especially for organizations working at the intersection of food and justice, I'd like to hear them.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

There are only three more markets this year! The last is the Saturday before Christmas. We'll be closed from Dec 22 until the Winter Bread Subscription starts up on Jan 22. Place orders ONLINE with a credit card or at MARKET with cash or check.

HOLIDAY SWEETS
(Preorder for pickup at the last market, Dec 21)

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 (inspired by all the books I've been reading recently about rambling through the British countryside.)
Plus Malted Chocolate Chip, Bittersweet Chocolate, Gingersnap, and Shortbread Cookies.

FILL YOUR PANTRY!
(Preorder whole loaves for pickup at the last market, Dec 21)

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
Black Bread (limited)

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap Cookie
Hazelnut Snowballs (limited)
Apple Scone
Gingerbread Cake
Shortbread
Buckwheat Crisps
Pain d'Epices (test bake)

We will NOT BE AT MARKET today.

Order Mountain Rye, Red & White, or Baker's Choice  (this week it's a Finnish-inspired Black Bread!) online for Wednesday pickup.
​
See you at the market next Saturday.

It happens this way sometimes after deep emotion. It happens this way after rage or sorrow, after wonder or happiness: I find myself adrift, feeling tender and inexplicably melancholy. Long hours in the closed box of the commissary didn’t help. Thinking about my mormor while I mixed made me cry. Listening to an interview with Robert Macfarlane as I shaped the loaves filled my chest and squeezed my throat with longing. When I queued up a song from the interview, a song washed up from the widening ripples of Macfarlane’s book, Landmarks, the music broke over me like a wave, leaving me drenched and breathless.

At the end of my midweek deliveries I stopped at the cafe to drink espresso and reread my favorite chapters of Landmarks, wrapping myself in the room’s familiar warmth while familiar people came and went around me. But at home in my quiet house, the melancholy again pressed close. Instead of opening my laptop to start the week’s administrative work, I curled up in the sunshine on my bed and fell asleep.

I woke rested and restless. I lay for a while, staring out the window at the sunlit trees, and then got up and went downstairs, tied on my running shoes, and took off for the water. The wind cooled my face and throat, slid into my curled palms and up the inside of my arms, chilled the sweat in the crease of my elbows. I breathed through my mouth, tasting wet earth and leaf mold on the back of my tongue. The bay, when I reached it, was a brilliant blue darkening out towards the paler blue islands, under a white blue sky. The water and sky, the bright snowberries and the glossy, red rosehips in the hedgerows, the peaks of Baker and Twin Sisters gleaming over the hill behind me, the little brown rabbit watching from the striped shadows of dried chicory and thistle on the hillside, they were all beautiful.

My left shoe was squeaking, a small, surprised noise every time I rolled forward on the ball of my foot. I ran to the top of the park and let gravity pull me down, arms loose, stride wide, feet pounding. And then up the steep, washed-out trail beside the stairs, pushing hard with quads and lungs. Down and up, down and up, till my muscles shivered and I gasped for breath.

After the last climb I took off my shoes, tied the laces together, and tucked my socks inside. I walked home barefoot, feeling the cold earth, feeling the gravel too sharp for my shoe-soft soles, feeling the ungiving pavement and the wet moss at the border between lawn and street that squeezed out icy water like a wrung sponge.

“We have come to forget that our minds are shaped by the bodily experience of being in the world,” Macfarlane wrote, “—its spaces, textures, sounds, smells and habits—as well as by genetic traits we inherit and ideologies we absorb. We are literally ‘losing touch’, becoming disembodied.”

I did not have the work-productive Wednesday I’d planned, not the day of spreadsheets and email; it was a good day. By evening, as I stood talking to friends in our steamy kitchen, I felt settled. “Living in one sense at a time to live all the way through” had anchored me again to my body, and my body to the world. See you at market, maybe.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

I had meant to start prep for THANKSGIVING ORDERS this week, but I'm nothing if not predictable: I haven't yet begun. Which means orders are still open if you need bread or pastry for your holiday table. Pickups Wednesday 11/27 at Cafe Velo between 9am and 7pm.

Sweets: Apple Cake, Gingerbread Bundt
Breads: Rosemary Rolls, Red & White, Roasted Potato & Garlic (and Mountain Rye, but it's under the regular Wednesday Bread heading, just to make the process more convoluted)

Also, we will NOT BE AT MARKET next Saturday, 11/30, because I want to eat dinner Thursday with my family, when I'd otherwise be starting fermentation for the market.

TODAY AT MARKET
Red & White
Rosemary Cornmeal (for stuffing! and eating, of course)
Mountain Rye
Vollkornbrot
Seedy Buckwheat

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap Cookie
Apple Scone (jamless, strawberry jam, marmalade)
Gingerbread Cake
Apple Cake with Cultured Cream
Shortbread
Buckwheat Crisps