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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 I am glad to hold my work in my hands. In a life awash in distractions—thoughts, words, screens—the bread is an anchor. Here, the wet clay of rye, sticky, malleable, and patient. There, the delicate wheat. The doughs are alive and particular. This one wants firm, decisive handling, but that one—be gentle! I mix every dough, up to my forearms, stirring and squeezing flour and water into a smooth mass. I shape every loaf, tipping each with cupped hands into a pan or basket to rise. And when I unload the oven, I examine the bread, noting its triumphs and imperfections: the bloom of a razor-cut line in the crust, the pale, soft sides where two loaves nosed too close together, the curving profiles, the cracks and color. No matter how long the day, no matter how tired I am, no matter how overwhelming the news spinning out of the radio, the sight of the loaves lined up to cool on the rack makes me pause in gratitude. Here is tangible work. Here is what I made with muscle and nerve and the touch-memory of my hands. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie Oatmeal Fig Scone Apple Quince Galette* Gingerbread* Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread THANKSGIVING ORDERS (For pickup Wednesday, Nov 21, at 1313 N State St.) Apple Quince Pie (serves 8 / $28) Gingerbread Bundt with Pear Caramel (serves 12 / $42) Rosemary Potato Bread (720 g / $8) *Sample the Thanksgiving sweets today at market before you place your order! Customers often worry they won't make it through a whole loaf of bread by themselves, and ask if they can freeze the remainder. I’m always slightly baffled by the question—the answer is yes, you can, though I prefer not to freeze rye since it thaws crumbly—because I can easily eat a half a loaf by myself in a day, and surely, if I can eat half a loaf in a day, anyone can eat a whole loaf in a week. The breads I bake are no baguettes, to stale to rocks in a day or two. They keep well. The acid from sourdough prevents staling, and the extra moisture held in the bran of the whole grain flours keeps the loaves soft enough to cut for well over a week. Even so, the breads change as they age. With time, the crumb sets more firmly and begins to dry out; the flavors mellow. Personally, I like my breads best 4 or 6 days after they’re baked, when they’re firm enough to cut whisper thin for an optimum 1:1 bread:butter ratio. Though they’ll keep for days yet, at around a week I start looking for ways to recycle my old loaves. There are, after all, new loaves piling up, and the old heels can start to look sad, sitting forgotten at the back of the cutting board. The following are some of my favorite things to do with old (7-12 day) bread: OLD RYE (Because rye is so dense, it’s more or less impossible to cut once completely dry, so always store your bread with the cut ends covered, and take action before your loaves have fully petrified.) Croutons: Cube the bread. Toss in a skillet over medium high heat with a generous pour of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. Stir frequently, until the sides are seared deep gold. These are excellent on salad, but don’t always last long enought to make it into the bowl. Crisps: Slice the bread as thin as you can (if you happen to have a meat slicer, this would be an excellent time to use it). Leave dry or toss with oil. Spread out in a single layer on a baking sheet, and toast in the oven on low heat (~300°F) until the slices are lightly browned and completely dry. Eat as crackers, or break up over salad or soup. These will keep in a sealed container for months. OLD WHEAT (Though not necessary, lightly toasting the bread first will add flavor to any dish.) General Hot Dish: Use sliced bread in place of noodles in your favorite casseroles. I particularly love old bread lasagna. If you can wrap your mind around the extraordinary amount of butter, try layering old Red & White with Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce, grated Pecorino Romano, and mozzarella. Remember that the bread will absorb more liquid than would cooked noodles. Use a heavy hand with the sauce. Strata: Mix cubed bread, sauteed or roasted vegetables, chopped herbs, cheese, and perhaps pancetta or sausage in a buttered glass dish. Mix equal parts milk and egg, plus a little salt and pepper, and pour over the dish until the bread is fully submerged when pressed down. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours, or, better yet, overnight. Top with cheese and bake at 350°F until the custard is set in the middle, about 40-60 minutes. This was my grandmother’s favorite addition to Sunday brunch. It’s a great way to use up leftover odds and ends, and in the morning all you need to do is move it from the refrigerator into the oven. I know it's supposed to drizzle this afternoon, but come to market anyway for a new loaf, and some of these beautiful fruit tarts. See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + The Whole Garden Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Strawberry Buckwheat Scone Rhubarb Strawberry Galette Sour Cherry Hazelnut Tart Shortbread No WEDNESDAY MARKET this week "But you are bakers, not scientists," Thomas reminded us as he finished explaining a graph of amylase activity and temperature. The whiteboard was covered with such graphs, as was the easel to its right. This science, he wanted us to remember, was a tool to add to our baking arsenal, alongside taste, smell, memory, and tradition. It could not define our work. At this point in the march of knowledge, a master baker still knows more with his hands about making good bread than do all the scientific publications combined. We were midway through a weeklong course titled Modern Bread Theory: A Scientific Focus, but because we were bakers, not scientists, we spent most of our days in the San Francisco Baking Institute's sprawling warehouse bakery, putting those classroom lectures into practice. I was lured by the science's apparent clarity. This view of wild fermentation, defined in pH, temperature, and well-understood enzymatic reactions, felt so readily masterable. I know, after all, now to read and synthesize scientific literature. It's what I was academically trained to do. But again and again, I watched Thomas put his hands on (or in) the dough to asses it's molecular workings through touch. "It's ready," he might tell us, "hurry." Or, "Turn the mixer up to second for a few minutes." Those hands, with their twenty years of baking practice, knew things I would never learn by reading. And besides, I'm not a scientist anymore. I'm a baker. Science, now, is not the end in and of itself, but a tool to better understand the practical workings of the world. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Apple Cake Gingerbread Shortbread Wednesday Preorder WILD & SEEDY! Mountain Rye Shortbread Gingerbread See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker Good morning! I've been fussing with my recipes the past few weeks, working to improve texture and flavor. The Country Rye is now little lighter, and warmly scented with brotgewürz (bread spice made, in this case, from toasted caraway, anise, fennel, and coriander). The Mountain Rye is a little dryer and more sour- just enough so, I hope, to stave off future epidemics of widespread collapse. My old standby cornmeal and yogurt cake has been brightened with a tart-sweet layer of raspberry and rhubarb for spring. And half the nibby chocolate sandwich cookies are squeezing cajeta, instead of hazelnut cream, because I couldn't resist making caramel from the goat milk I got in trade at the last market. Plus, the Bittersweet Cookies are looking especially fine today. I'm never sure why, but sometimes they open into dramatic, beautiful cracks, and this is such a time.  Country Rye, with the rye:wheat ratio lowered from 85:15 to 75:25 for extra lift, and a touch of spice. Yesterday's bake was long and productive. I was in constant motion, reaching for the next task almost before I'd completed the one before me. I couldn't quite imagine how I'd stayed busy for so many continuous hours, so when I got home I wrote out the day's schedule. If you'd like a glimpse into A Day in the Life of a Market Baker, TAKE A LOOK! And if you happen to have a background in production management, or are just a very organized person, and have ideas for how I might increase my efficiency and shorten my days, I'm all ears! Well, ears and aching feet. At Market Today Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Nibby Sandwich Cookies with Cajeta Chocolate Rolls and Cardamom Rolls Rhubarb Raspberry Upside Down Corn Cake Preorder Wednesday Pickup Red & White Mountain Rye WILD & SEEDY! Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker We used a new Haggadah this year at our family Seder. It included, among the familiar stories and prayers, a few intriguing historical notes. My favorite, of course, was about bread. As the Gentiles among you may or may not know, Passover is the celebration of the Jews' escape from slavery in Egypt. During the week of Passover, more observant Jews than I eat only unleavened bread, or matzo, because, the story goes, our ancestors left in such a hurry there was no time for the bread to rise. The holiday is also the time for spring cleaning, when all traces of bread and flour are swept from the house, along with the dust of winter, to welcome a new season. But, I learned from our new Haggadah, long before the Angel of Death passed over Egypt, farmers in the Middle East were celebrating the spring harvest with Khag Ha-Matzot, the festival of unleavened bread. Old dough, made from the last year's grain, was thrown out, and a celebratory bread was made from the new harvest. The old dough would have contained the wild yeast culture, carefully nurtured over the course of the year, with a little dough held back each bake to innoculate the next batch, and so the festival bread, made entirely of fresh grain, was unleavened. The Jews incorporated this agricultural tradition of renewal into Passover's celebration of a people's rebirth. Passover ended last Tuesday, though, so don't worry. You can come sample today's bread and pastry lineup without guilt! Today at Market: Red & White, Mountain Rye, and Vollkornbrot (not smoky this week) Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Orange Cream Raisin Rolls Cardamom Rolls with yogurt-rose glaze Bostock, made with orange syrup, raspberry jam, and hazelnut cream and the last of the Granola until I get a new batch of oats For Wednesday Order: Red & White and Mountain Rye Bauernlaib, a beautiful, Austrian rye boule Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies And I'm off to market.
See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker There are many things to do with old bread. If it's not too hard, you can thin slice it and bake it with a little fat (olive oil, butter, lard...) to make crackers, or cube it up for croutons. You could even toast and crush it into bread crumbs, I suppose, if you didn't mind the unholy racket of your food processor. Or you can practice the peasant trick of adding leftover bread to soup, as with Italian ribollita. The last is especially nice in this wet, soupy season. But the most interesting of all the old-bread repurposings, I think, is to re-ferment it into a drink. Kvass, or kwas, or квас, is a slavic soda made from old bread. Actually, after digging deeper into the astonishing, meandering mind of Sandor Katz, I learned that kvass can refer more generally to northern European low-alcohol fermented drinks, like the beet kvass you might use for borscht, or lettuce kvass, which was once a common summer drink among my Ukrainian ancestors, before the shtetls were exterminated by the Holocaust (I'll admit, I'm skeptical of the deliciousness of lettuce soda, but am willing to try this summer when greens are abundant). I am far from a kvass expert, but if you'd like to try this strange and lovely drink for yourself, the general idea is simple:
 On the new bread front, I'm baking Red & White, Mountain Rye, and Wild & Seedy this week. Order HERE by 10 am tomorrow for Wednesday pickup.
Happy Sunday! Sophie |
