Back when it was cold, back in the beginning of the week, before the rain, when the chill eased through the uninsulated walls of my upstairs bedroom and I slept curled under all my blankets in a tiny island of body heat, the bed a cold sea around me, I woke to frost. The grass was frosted, and the brittle leaves of kale and cabbage in the garden. The fennel, just tufting up between last year’s dead stalks, was wilted and rimmed with white. The gravel in the drive was frosted, and the cars, the garbage cans, the old leaves scattered by the walk. Ice crunched satisfyingly underfoot. The sun is slow to reach us this time of year. It was late morning before light crept all the way to the back fence. When I walked out to the garden at midday to pick my lunch, I found the deep shadows still frozen. The house threw a long, straight frost shadow. The pine and rhododendrons dappled frost across the grass. The trash bins drew precise, frosty parallelograms, the cars, rounded white rhombuses on the gravel. If I had stood in the yard all morning, watching the little puffed up birds flick between bush and fence as the sun warmed my back, I too could have grown a frost twin: a long, cold shadow self, reaching north towards the dark. Sophie Owner | Baker THIS WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order by Sunday night to pick up Wednesday, Jan 23 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Rugbrød - This hearty tinned bread, made with 100% Whatcom rye, is built on rugbrod recipes sent to me by the Dutch baker Tim van Dalen and French baker Thomas Teffri-Chambelland. The perfect base for smørrebrød (open-face sandwiches). NEXT WEEK's WEDNESDAY BREAD Order this week for pickup Wednesday, Jan 30 Red & White Mountain Rye Baker's Choice: Famer's Bread - a crusty rye & wheat boule, inspired by the Austrian bauernlaib. WINTER BREAD SUBSCRIPTION Sign up to get a loaf every Wedneday through March 6 RED & WHITE subscription MOUNTAIN RYE subscription BAKER's CHOICE subscription: a new rye every week Order ONLINE and pickup on Wednesdays from: Downtown: Cafe Velo, 120 Prospect, 9am - 7pm Fairhaven: Shirlee Bird Cafe, 1200 Harris, 7:30am - 5pm Birchwood: the front step, 8am - 8pm The garden is wild with last year’s seeds. Cornfield and California poppies, calendula, phacelia, red, white, and yellow clover, wall rocket, fennel, and hairy vetch claim the borders and pathways, grow in flowering thickets over the uncultivated edges of vegetable beds, riot in the corner where the old compost heap lay. Yellow spears of mullein shoot up through the old fishing net we hung as a deer fence. Ours isn’t a huge garden—ten by ten meters, perhaps—but the wild edges make it feel deep and secret. Were I still today the fairy expert I was at five, I might know those edges differently, but the knowledge of magic is long lost to me. Instead, I admire practical things: the peas trellis heavy with vines, the tidy rows of leeks and lettuce, the bank of self-seeded calendula with flowers in every warm color, from safety vest orange to dusky pink and soft, butter yellow. I read a book on sustainable agriculture last week that argued that the keys to success in farming were diversity and the elimination of waste, and I thought, these seem like good practices for any business, especially one so marginal as a bakery. Out in the garden in the gray light of dawn, picking my breakfast, my eyes kept sliding back to the poppies, impossible red against the muted colors of morning. Maybe there’s a bakery lesson in this, too, I thought. Maybe a business, too, can have an orderly, productive center, and deliberately uncultivated edges, were imagination and unexpected beauty can grow. See you soon. Sophie Owner | Baker TODAY AT MARKET Red & White + Garden Herb Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies Oatmeal Marmalade Scone Strawberry Buckwheat Scone Rhubarb Strawberry Galette Shortbread WEDNESDAY MARKET Red & White Oat & Honey Mountain Rye Malted Chocolate Chip + Bittersweet Cookies Scone, Shortbread, Galette 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) Already, I can feel the earth tilting towards summer. All across the lawn, the crocuses are punching up through the moss and grass, opening the closed fists of their flowers to the sun. Through the leaf mulch and dead stalks of cover crop, the first fava beans are uncurling in the garden. Soon, the daffodils will follow. When I walk the between the vegetable beds, mapping imagined crops with my stride, I daydream of delicate cotyledon and the first true leaves, of muddy knees and muddier boots, of weeds and rain and a riot of new-green growing up from the wet earth. No matter that yesterday I passed children skipping ice shards across frozen puddles as I walked downtown, my jacket zipped all the way to my throat, and my hands held close in my pockets. No matter that we still face five more months of rain. It’s almost time to plant the first peas and greens, to scatter poppy seeds, and tuck sweetpeas in along the fence line. The calendar may call this the depth of winter, but for me, February has always marked the beginning of spring. Wednesday 2/14 CHOCOLATE ($10) A bittersweet black bread, with dark cocoa, Theo milk chocolate chunks, and candied orange peel. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 2/21 TOASTED SESAME ($8) Umami and crunch. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) Wednesday 2/28 OAT & HONEY ($8) Sweet, tender, and perfect for toast. MOUNTAIN RYE ($7) VOLLKORNBROT ($8) See you soon!
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! When I was born, my parents planted a tree. It was a leggy little Macoun scion on semi-dwarf rootstock, and they stuck it into the summer lawn of dandelions and dry grass, back by the chain link fence that separated our house from the neighbors'. Remarkably, it thrived. All the years of my childhood, as I tended vegetable beds and imaginary worlds in the back yard, it stood over me. In the summer, I picked the hard, green apples and carved them into tiny bowls for my fairy feasts, setting them alongside raspberry goblets and plates made of leaves. In the early fall, I scrambled up the tree to pick under-ripe apples, and weeks later, returned to gather wormy windfalls. These I dissected for my father's pies, carefully scooping out the bruises with the curved end of a potato peeler, before cutting out their rotten hearts. The Macoun has become my Platonic apple ideal. It is a beautiful apple, blushed dusky purple over green, with dense, white flesh. It fits comfortably in hand, and has a satisfyingly tangy-sweet crunch. It makes good pies. When I look for apples for the bakery, weighing their density in my palm, pressing to feel for firmness or give, tasting for a little sour and bitter beneath the sweet, the Macoun, or perhaps my memory of it, is my guide. The back fence is now wood, and half hidden by a riot of dark-leafed perennials. The rest of the seedy lawn was long ago paved over with a patio, or turned to make way for more vegetable beds. The trees in the neighbors' yards have grown, as trees do, making a living wall to either side and giving the garden something of the feel of a forest glade, hidden away from the concrete and sirens of the city. And at the center, despite years of alternating neglect and over-pruning, my Macoun still stands, reaching its watersprouts towards the retreating sun. I have a limited market lineup today because I figured a lot of you are probably still too full from Thanksgiving to think about baked goods. If you've recovered from your tryptophan-induced stupor, come early to get your bread and pastry before they sell out! Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Gingerbread Shortbread Granola Wednesday Preorder Wild & Seedy (again- because it's my favorite) Mountain Rye Shortbread Gingerbread See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker POSTSCRIPT: I went to see Dave Montgomery speak at Village Books last month. He's a UW geomorphologist and who looks like The Dude and won a MacArthur for his side project writing about ag soils. His latest book, Growing the Revolution, falls in scope between Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, which took a birds eye view of agricultural erosion over millennia, and The Hidden Half of Nature, which started an exploration of soil microbiology in his Seattle yard. Growing the Revolution makes a compelling case for conservation agriculture and for using soil health as the metric by which we measure good farming. His case studies span the globe and farming practices, from Kansas cash-cropping to Ghanaian slash and burn subsistance farming. And if that isn't enough to catch your interest, how about the fact that this is an optimistic book about the environment? You heard me right. I just used optimistic and environment in the same sentence without irony. Read it.
I walked out to the garden last night in the dark, finding my way by memory and the faint light of the neighbor's porch light. The ground beneath my boots had the springy feel of wet and well-aggregated soil. Crouching between the beds, I felt my way along the rows of carrots and beets for the biggest roots. They came out easily, with just a gentle tug at the base of the leaves, and I added them to my dinner basket, leaving the tops behind to mulch the cold ground. This morning I woke to the memory of a poem about moles by William Stafford, skimming just out of reach around the edges of my mind. I grasped at it for a while, but though I could remember the recognition and mild distaste I felt when I first read it as a child, I could find nothing of its shape or cadence. (Recognition, because Stafford has always spoken to me; distaste because moles are not especially romantic creatures. If I were to image myself an animal—and since I had not yet unlearned magic, this seemed a reasonable thing to do—I would rather it have been an elephant, or an owl). Eventually I got up from my warm nest of blankets and crossed to the bookshelf. And there it was: "Love the earth like a mole, / fur-near. Nearsighted." I was still smiling when I walked downstairs and out the back door to stand in the dark, breathing in the wet-earth smell at the beginning of a new day. "...each day nuzzle your way. Tomorrow the world." Saturday Market Red & White, Cinnamon Raisin, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black Sesame Pear Cake Gingerbread Shortbread + Granola Wednesday Preorder Red, White, & Blue Corn Nixtamal Mountain Rye Gingerbread Shortbread THANKSGIVING ORDER Rosemary Sea Salt loaves + rolls Burnt Sugar Pumpkin Pie Gingerbread Bundt Thanksgiving specials are up on the online store, and I'll have order sheets today at market. Let the feasting season begin! See you soon! Sophie Owner | Baker POSTSCRIPT: Overheard
Honestly, I wanted this post on the Shocking Revelations! about sexual misconduct by powerful men to have more snark, and it's pretty damn snarky already. Still, it does a better job then most of the mainstream coverage at capturing the frustrated rage I feel every time I read another expression of outraged surprise that such behavior was known and abided. Because seriously, surprise? What misogynistic rock have these pundits been living under to miss the fact that womxn face violence and intimidation and harassment by men with grabby little hands ALL THE FUCKING TIME? The year has turned. It is time to put the garden to bed. Already I've trimmed the thyme and hacked down the reaching arms of the oregano and sylvetta arugula. Red clover is coming up between the tomatoes. The winter's greens and root crops, planted in the blazing summer when rain was still a dream, are sturdy now, if still half-sized. The sunflowers crowded along the back fence are a glorious splatter of yellows and orange against the darkening sky. I've been reluctant to cut them down to dry for seed, and while I've lingered, admiring, the birds have delicately picked away at their faces, while the squirrels--always less mannerly--gobble them up and scattered their dry bones across the yard. I've been saving the easy seeds sporadically through the summer--poppy, calendula, sweet peas--but forgot in our short window of Indian Summer to pull in the old runner and pole beans, dried black on the vine. The hairy vetch and favas, supplanted in all but a few patches by the winter greens, are likewise soggy. Perhaps I can string up the long vines to dry in the sunroom, over the boxes of blushing, not-quite-ripe tomatoes. I love the garden this time of year, a little wild from summer neglect, and smelling of wet earth. In the winter the garden is a dream built of seed catalogs and graph paper; in the spring it is new green and hope; in the summer the garden is a cornucopia, spilling out into late evening dinner parties at the picnic table, and preserving projects that steam up the kitchen; now, in the fall, the garden is quiet. Not dead quiet, thinking quiet. There is time now to breath in the dirt and leaves, to stop and admire the bright bouquet of late flowers, volunteering beside the path, or the geometry of drying seed pods. In the spring and summer the garden is a product of my winter's planning, but the wild fall garden, it seems to me, belongs to itself. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black Sesame Palmier Apple Tart Shortbread Granola Wednesday Preorder, due by Sunday night Harvest Rye: Apple + Hazelnut Mountain Rye Shortbread See you soon!
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