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I am not, generally, an anxious person, but even I succumbed to the shriek of the news headlines last week and, in a moment of panic, rashly changed my schedule to add a second oh-shit-the-world-is-ending bake. The world isn’t ending, it’s just becoming a much harder place for those whose health and finances are insecure. I am very grateful to be among the healthy and homed, to have a vegetable garden that’s showing its first new-green growth and a bicycle that can carry me through clean air and sunshine. And I’m grateful to all of you who have gone out of your way to buy bread from this little business, which is both my livelihood and my passion. I’m trying a new distribution method with the April Bread Subscription. To support social distancing, bread (and pastry!) pickups will now be self-serve from front porches and driveways across Bellingham. For now, pickups are in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Sunnyland, and Fairhaven. If you have a (reasonably bike-able) front porch to offer in the CBD, Sehome, or South Hill, I’ll gladly add another south end pickup to the May Subscription. The Bellingham Farmers Market has put together a list of market vendors offering weekly subscriptions. Sustainable Connections has a longer list of CSAs from 2019. Signing up for farm (and bakery!) subscriptions helps small food businesses with cash flow through the lean early season. We are all deeply grateful to live in a community that supports us and our work. Thank you for keeping your spending within our community, for eating the food we grow and make, and for telling your friends and neighbors to sign up! Sophie Owner | Baker P.S. If you work in the food industry and don’t know how you’re going to float the next weeks and months, use the discount code WORKBREADWATERSALT to take 30% off your Raven Breads order at checkout. Practicalities: Pickups every Wednesday in Birchwood, Columbia, Lettered Streets, Sunnyland, Fairhaven. Orders due by Sunday for pickup the following Wednesday. Sign up by 3/22 for 6 week (3/25-4/29) Subscription. Sign up by 3/29 for 5 week (4/1-4/29) Subscription. Subscriptions: RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription TOAST subscription This week’s bake: Red & White Mountain Rye Toast: Buckwheat & Molasses Pastry: Brown Butter Shortbread P.P.S. A bakery hygiene note: Except for double bagging the exposed ends of loaves, nothing much has changed in the bakery. I still wash my hands frequently, sterilize surfaces and dishes, bake everything at 350-550°F, handle finished product with gloves or tongs, and don’t come to work sick. According to the FDA, “Currently there is no evidence of food or food packaging being associated with transmission of COVID-19,” but if you want to be extra safe, sterilize your bread in the toaster.
Dear Bellingham, The government’s public health policies are evolving so rapidly it’s hard to know what our city will look like tomorrow, never mind next week. In light of that uncertainty, I’m adding a second bake this week. Online orders will be open till midday tomorrow (Wednesday) for Friday pickup. If you’re part of the Winter Bread Subscription, your order for 3/25 will also be ready for pickup Friday. Pickups will be in Birchwood, downtown or Sunnyland, and in Fairhaven. Exact locations TBD (thank you to those of you who have offered your front porches). Pickups will be self-serve and on the honor system. If I’m able to bake next week, I will. And the week after that. If you work in the food industry and don’t know how you’re going to float the next weeks and months, please email me through the website for a 30% off discount code. I hope that you're healthy, your hands are clean, your community is strong, and your bookshelves are well-stocked. Sophie Owner | Baker Only uncut loaves are available at this time to reduce post-bake handling, and because they have the best shelf life. FAMILY WHEAT (1.4 kg / $14.30) – organic wheat, water, salt. MOUNTAIN RYE (2.3 kg / $21.30) – water, organic rye, organic wheat, organic sesame, organic flax, organic sunflower, salt, organic caraway & coriander. ALL RYE (2.3 kg / $21.30) – organic rye, organic rye berries, water, salt. For maximum shelf life, keep breads in a bread box, cut side down on the cutting board, or loosely wrapped with wax wrap or plastic to prevent them from drying out. Wheat bread will keep about 2 weeks, rye 3. Good morning Bread Eaters. It's a glorious blue-sky Sunday and I'm headed for the hills, but before I go, I wanted to give you a quick update. The near future is an unknown landscape for our community and its small businesses. I remain committed to baking your daily bread because producing beautiful, nourishing food and maintaining the connections between our farmers, millers, bakers, and eaters, feels as important now as ever. Raven Breads is lucky to be in a position to weather the economic uncertainty of the coming months without the high overhead, debt payments, and payroll that are hurting so many small businesses right now. The farmers market represents over half my annual revenue, and because of that seasonal income I operate for the first six months of the year in the red, but even if the market season is delayed, I hope to find other ways to feed you. I've been thinking about ways to make the Spring Bread Subscription safer for everyone involved. Would you like your bread bagged up in plastic? What about having more self-serve bread pickup boxes out on front porches around town? And do you have a porch on which you'd be comfortable hosting a box? If you have other ideas for better bread safety and distribution, let me know! I'll have the Spring Bread Subscription posted on the website by the end of next week. I hope that you're healthy, your hands are clean, your community is strong, and your bookshelves are well-stocked. Sophie Owner | Baker This week in the WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION: Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Korn Rye or Corn Rye? (I'm still undecided) Westphalian Pumpernickel, the Baker's Choice loaf for March 25, is available for pre-order until the end of the day. Raven Breads is hiring a farmers market rep and a bakery assistant. These two part-time jobs start in April and could be combined by the right person into a single position. If you like bread and bicycles and want to be part of this little business as it grows, check out the job postings here. Last Wednesday through Friday I moved briefly down to Burlington to prep for and teach a two day workshop for the Bread Baker’s Guild on baking with local grains. We named the workshop after the first clause of Arthur Ashe’s famous and ever useful quote—“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”—because the grain system, like every other part of the food system, is personal and political, economic and ethical, and endlessly, overwhelmingly complex. Mel, my co-teacher and the head baker at Grand Central Bakery, talked about wheat. I talked about rye. We both talked about enzymes and wet harvests, protein levels and why the commodity market is wrong about what makes “good” grain. Every time the questions got too technical we turned to our most over-qualified student, a lifelong baker and cereal scientist from OSU, and gave him the floor to expound on how nitrogen application effects protein content, or the role of the aleurone in sprouting grain. We baked breads and pastries with four kinds of wheat (Doris, Skagit 1109, Salish, Trailblazer) and two kinds of rye (Gazelle, Binto?), plus a little buckwheat on the side. Below is the recipe for the excellent wholemeal galette crust that we made for Friday breakfast and filled with roasted winter vegetables, goat cheese, and herbs, and which you’ve probably encountered at the Saturday farmers market filled with my summer fruit gleanings. Sophie Owner | Baker   ALL PURPOSE GALETTE CRUST (probably adapted many years ago from a recipe by Dawn Woodward and/or Liz Prueitt) Makes two 9-10” galettes 160g whole wheat 45g whole rye 10g dark buckwheat 2g (½ tsp) salt 145g butter, cold 65g water, cold Mix as you would any pie crust. Chill. Roll into rounds. Add sweet or savory filling (approx. 350g filling per galette). Fold in the edges and brush the crust with a little yogurt, egg, or cream for shine. Bake at 400F for 20-30 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the filling, if fruit based, is bubbling nicely. This week in the WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION: Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Rye & Oat Westphalian Pumpernickel, the Baker's Choice loaf for March 25, is available for pre-order for another week. Because this bread takes almost three times as long to make, bake, and cool as my normal ryes, the order window closes next Sunday. We are creatures of habit, and often this is a good thing. When the daily acts that make us happy—cooking, eating together, biking in all weather, reading, to name a few of mine—are habit, we do them day after day, regardless of our moods and distractions (though, off course, the same is true of unhappy acts, like my picking up my phone an average of 44 times a day). Habit carries me through my baking days, through the mixing, the shaping, the tasting and touching. Habit has me lining up my tools before every task, has me stacking dishes just so (nested, utensils on the side, lids on so the rye doesn’t dry into cement), has me shaping the first loaf and the fiftieth with the same sure touch. These habits, these ways my body knows what to do whether my mind is centered on the dough or wandering off in other directions, are part of my pleasure in the physical work. But habit is, by its nature, thoughtless. I change a recipe for an immediate reason—adding salt to the preferment in the heat of summer, let’s say—and then that change becomes routine and I carry it on indefinitely—there’s still salt in my preferments, despite the fact that it’s currently 60ºF in the commissary—or until some other circumstance forces me to adjust again. One of the best things about my winter breaks, about breaking the habits that shape my days for 11/12ths of the year, is that I come back asking, Why? Why this ratio of flour to seeds? Why Red & White wheat, rather then all hard red or all hard white? Why do I take ingredients off the pallet, stack them on a cart, roll them into the kitchen, use them, restack them on the cart, roll them back to the storage area, and return them to their pallet, rather than storing them on wheels in the first place? Why don't I schedule breaks into my bake days? Why am I still working in this windowless room? Why haven’t I built my own bakery yet? Maybe this will be my spring resolution: make good habits, as many as possible, at home and at work, and then make time to break them. Sophie Owner | Baker Did you know you can still sign up for the WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION? It runs through March 25, with pickup every Wednesday in Birchwood (the front step), Downtown (Cafe Velo), or in Fairhaven (Shirlee Bird Cafe). Sign up or order a single loaf for the week ONLINE. Along with Red & White and Mountain Rye, each week I make a different Baker's Choice bread. My choices this winter are: 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! There are 3 spots left in our March class! Sign up through the Guild website. 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! Until now, I’d always delivered to the front door of the restaurant. I’d lean my bike against one of the outdoor tables, open the trailer box, hoist two large bags of bread up into an awkward, two-arm hug, bang on the door with my elbow till the cook let me in, drop the bags on a table between the overturned chairs, and leave. Easy. But staff or schedules had changed. The restaurant was empty now on Wednesday mornings. I got directions to the basement delivery door and my own alarm code. No big deal, I thought. I could handle a change in routine. Around back, at the end of a dead end alley, I leaned my bike against a stack of kegs. The alley was empty but for me and two men drinking out of paper bags. I walked to the unmarked door, decided that perhaps this was a good place to lock my bike, walked back to my bike and locked the front wheel to the frame, walked back to the door, decided that I shouldn’t leave my pannier and helmet behind, turned back to the bike to retrieve them, returned to the door and, at last, opened it. Immediately, the alarm began to shrill. I fumbled right and then left for the light switch. It was taped over, damn it. Who tapes over the light switch in a windowless basement? The alarm was still shrieking at me. How long did I have? Finally, my hand hit a second switch. The fluorescent lights flickered on. I crossed the room quickly, scanning the walls for the alarm box. There, by the inside door. I entered my code. The noise stopped. My heart was beating too fast. I returned outside to my bike for the bread, hoisted the bags up in an awkward, two-arm hug, fumbled for the door handle, and found it locked. Bread back into the boxes, key out of my pocket, door unlocked and propped open with my pannier, bread bags hoisted and carried through the open door, pannier hooked with a blindly seeking foot, and I was in. The door slammed shut. I crossed the room, again, passing the blessedly silent alarm, fumbled open the far door, climbed the stairs (still hugging the bread), fumbled open another door, and I was in the empty restaurant. I walked to a table and dropped the bags between the overturned chairs. I had done it. But when I returned to the door at the top of the stairs I found it locked. I looked around, hopefully. The room was quiet and still entirely empty. I tried the basement door again. Definitely locked. There was nothing for it. I turned around and marched across the restaurant and out the front door. The front door started to swing shut behind me… and then it stuck. I pushed. It didn’t budge. I opened it again and tried to close it. The door jam was in the way. How was the door jam in the way? We wrestled back and forth, the door and I, until at last, with a heave, I triumphed. Now, at this point the reasonable thing to do would have been to walk around the block to the alley’s entrance, but I wasn’t feeling very reasonable. I scrambled over the patio wall instead, climbed carefully down the other side, picked my way across the blackberry thicket, and wiggled through the only gap in the chain link not sewn shut with barbed wire. I was in the alley, and, thank god, so was my bicycle. I went back into the basement one last time, rearmed the alarm, grabbed my pannier and helmet off the floor, and walked out, leaving the light on behind me. Sophie Owner | Baker THANKSGIVING ORDERS are up! Order today at market with cash or check or online with a credit card by Wednesday, Nov 20. Pickup Wednesday, Nov 27, downtown (exact location TBD) Sweets: Apple Cake - because it's my favorite and should be yours, too. Rye, buckwheat, and heirloom apples. 78% Whatcom grown by weight. Gingerbread Bundt - in all its dark and sticky glory. Breads: Rosemary Rolls - with a little toasted corn & olive oil Red & White - for a large or larger table bread Roasted Potato & Garlic - 100% Washington grown (except the salt) Harvest Miche - of wheat, rye, buckwheat, & corn  (I wish I had beautiful product photos of the Thanksgiving offerings to show you, but I never remember to make sample product to photograph beforehand, and, let's be honest, I probably wouldn't get around to it even if I did remember, so here's a sampler of the regular market treats and their grains instead) TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye Vollkornbrot Seedy Buckwheat Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Gingersnap Cookie Apple Marmalade Oat Scone Gingerbread Cake Apple Cake with Cultured Cream Orange Cardamom Bread Pudding Shortbread Buckwheat Crisps FALL BREAD SUBSCRIPTION 5 weeks remaining Every Wednesday, OCT 2 - DEC 18 Pickup downtown, Birchwood, Fairhaven This week: Mountain Rye, Red & White, CIDER RYE  (a little) Help Wanted: I quite like crawling out of my kitchen cave once a week to see your friendly faces, and also, I haven’t slept in the mountains since I started the bakery five years ago. I’m looking for a cheerful, bread-loving cyclist to take over the weekly Saturday market. Knowledge of fermentation or farming would be useful, but isn’t necessary. The abilities to work quickly, stack a balanced load, and talk enthusiastically about good food are essential. I’ll put together an official job posting next week, but in the meantime, does this describe you or someone you know? Sophie Owner | Baker  TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Herb Mountain Rye Vollkornbrot Seedy Buckwheat Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Gingersnap Oat Scone Shortbread Blackberry Rhubarb Slab Pie Wednesday bread this week: Red & White, Mountain Rye, Baker's Choice: POLENTA Sign up for the LATE SUMMER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Every Wednesday, August 7 - September 25 Tell me about kitchen thrift. Tell me about breadcrumbs and crostini, about the ribolitta of your childhood, about the almond croissants and bostock at your favorite bakery. Tell me about strata and bread pudding, about casseroles at the end of the week, about kvass bubbling on the counter, and the brødtort you once ate in Denmark and never forgot. Tell me about your grandma pressing the crumbs from the bottom of the cookie jar into a cheesecake crust and about rye slices in the pickle crock. Tell me about bread and pastry rescued and reborn. Eliminating waste is, for me, both an economic and an ecological choice. It’s easy enough in this little one-woman business to be mindful. At the end of a bake day I have an empty flour sack stuffed with burnt parchment, herb stems, and fruit scraps for the compost. Maybe a bottle to recycle, or a bit of unavoidable plastic packaging for the trash. At the end of a market day, thanks to you, I rarely have much left over, and what I do have I can easily barter or give away. But I imagine that as the business grows, so too will its potential for waste. And so I think about apple peel vinegar and orange marmalade, about cherry pits in vodka, about the small economies of cost and flavor. And I think about a cafe menu built on lost bread and pastry and the creativity of working without waste. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Rosemary Mountain Rye Vollkornbrot Seedy Buckwheat Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Gingersnap Oat Scone Hazelnut Crumb Cake Shortbread ORDER ONLINE: Wednesday's BAKER's CHOICE: Blue Corn Nixtamal Sign up for the Summer Bread Subscription, June 12- July 31 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 |
