I spent the week in a borrowed cabin on the western slope of Chuckanut Mountain. From the narrow deck I watched the sky change. I watched the water, and the boats, the islands slipping in and out of clouds. I watched a dozen kinds of birds and one busy chipmunk. When the night wind blew hard I opened the door and listened to the trees moving. When it rained, I ran up into Larabee’s tangle of trails and listened to the rain against leaves, breathing in the wet duff smell of the forest. Warm evenings I scrambled down to swim in the cold, green ocean.

Every morning I rode reluctantly north to Bellingham, and every evening, riding south through downtown and Fairhaven and onto Chuckanut Drive, I was relieved again to leave behind the concrete and cars and right angles of the city.

One morning, in the soft light just before sunrise, I stopped to watch a barred owl on the power line above the road. She watched me back, her deep set eyes shadowed. Cars blew by too fast, ruffling my feathers if not the owl’s. I felt an annoyed pity for the drivers, to be so seduced by convenience that they traded living inside world for passing through it, insulated by metal and speed.

I was drunk on clouds and trees, on the sound of rain and on orange-pink sunsets over the Olympics. I could stay here, I thought, packing my panniers for another ride north. I could stay here, just for a day or two, just for a few weeks, just for forever. A line of poetry caught my mind and held fast. “A little way away from everywhere,” I said silently to myself riding the Interurban, running past Fragrance Lake, sunning on the warm Chuckanut sandstone after a swim. “A little way away from everywhere,” I thought, drinking weak coffee and looking out over the gray blue islands as the sky lightened. Eventually, I looked the words up. Even in the woods I had a cell phone. It was a line from Mary Oliver’s “A Dream of Trees,” a poem warning against retreat from the hard and sorrowful human world. Had my subconscious purposefully pulled a piece of this poem up out of thousands of lines, the hundreds of poems I’ve read and forgotten? Or was it coincidence that on my little blue screen Mary Oliver echoed my own longing: “I would have time, I thought, and time to spare, / With only streams and birds for company, / To build of my life a few wild stanzas.”

But, of course, she goes on, “And then it came to me, that so was death, / A little way away from everywhere.” Ah, I thought, reading the poem through once, and again. Ah, well. The words felt true. I copied them out in my notebook and then sat, thinking about the peace of wild places, about what makes a good and meaningful life, about living fully inside the world. Reluctantly, I let go my soft, romantic daydream of a hermitage in the hills. There would be no hiding away in the forest from the hard-edges and injustices of the city. I would not stay forever here among the trees, but I would return.

“as the times implore our true involvement, / The blades of every crisis point the way. / I would it were not so, but so it is. / Who ever made music of a mild day?”

Sophie
Owner | Baker

TODAY AT MARKET
Red & White
Herb & Olive Oil
Mountain Rye
Vollkornbrot
Seedy Buckwheat

Malted Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap
Oat Scone with Blackberries & Plums
Plum Cake
Savory Tomato Tart
Shortbread

This week in the Bread Subscription
Red & White
Mountain Rye
Baker's Choice: Herb & Olive Oil

We spent winter break in Chile. I was nineteen, shy, too self-conscious to use what little high school Spanish I had, and eager to explore. It was my first trip abroad without parents or school. After three weeks of backpacking and buses we returned to Santiago, a little grungy and tired but no worse for wear. In the hours before our flight home, we stashed our packs in the lockers at the train station and went wandering. Somewhere on that city ramble I bought a bag of pan de miel from a street vendor. They were like honey hardtack, I think: round, hard, and the size of my palm. They were probably just white flour, baking soda, water, honey, and a pinch of salt. If I ate them now, I doubt I'd recognize the taste. But the idea of them has stuck in my memory. When I remember that trip, I remember the murals of Valparaíso, the lonely beauty of Torres del Paine, the windy beaches and hand-cut shingles of Chiloe, the volcanoes and deep gorges and the massive araucaria. And I remember that last day: the sunshine, my hunger, and the pleasure of eating flat, hard, honey biscuits.

See you soon.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

TODAY AT MARKET
Red & White
Mountain Rye + Vollkornbrot
Ring Rye (from the winter bread subscription)
Seedy Buckwheat (a recipe from my winter bakery tour, incidentally cereal-free)

Chocolate Malt Chocolate Chip Cookie
Bittersweet Chocolate Cookie
Gingersnap
Scone
Hazelnut + Sour Cherry Cake
Brown Butter + Nibby Buckwheat Shortbread

WEDNESDAY BREAD
Sign up through the end of May or order a single loaf.
Red & White
Mountain Rye
Rosemary Sea Salt (wheat)

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 have been back now for two weeks, after two weeks of travel. The traveling days were bright and distinct. Even the mundane hours—long train rides, waiting in airports, sitting on rooftops under a different sky—are heavy threads of memory. Whereas these days at home have been light and comfortable, and so ordinary I could snip them out of the fabric of my life, and leave not even a wrinkle to mark the mending.

See you at market.

Sophie
Owner | Baker

​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.
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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!

My year is like a mountain. In the fall, I climb, up and up towards that last, tired scramble through the holiday scree. Here, in winter, I stop to rest at the peak, catching my breath and admiring the view stretching out in all directions. Through spring and summer I descend, running faster and faster, limbs loose, feet skidding as I pick up momentum, all my attention focused on the path just ahead.

Taking in the winter view, to stretch the simile, I look out over the past year's business, and ahead to the coming years'. I spend more time writing, number crunching, and dreaming. I visit other bakeries for ideas and inspiration, and for the pleasure of talking to people who share my peculiar passion for fermenting flour. These past few days, I've been driving down the I-5 corridor, stopping along the way to talk and watch and, occassionally, help to bake bread. The glimpses into different approaches to baking and business are galvanizing. The friendships with other bakers give me hope. And each stop sharpens my vision of my own bakery's future, filling in details I didn't know were missing, and brightening the colors.

Tomorrow I'll drive back to Bellingham (in my new/old truck!) to bake your bread and translate what I've learned on this quick trip into the business plan I'm writing for the next iteration of Raven Breads.

On the menu for the coming weeks are:

Wednesday 2/28
OAT & HONEY ($8) Sweet, tender, and perfect for toast.
MOUNTAIN RYE ($7)
VOLLKORNBROT ($8)

Wednesday 3/7
MÉTEIL ($8) A beautifully crackled rye/wheat country bread.
MOUNTAIN RYE ($7)
VOLLKORNBROT ($8)

Wednesday 3/14
CINNAMON TWIST ($8) Because who didn't love cinnamon sugar toast as a child?
MOUNTAIN RYE ($7)
VOLLKORNBROT ($8)

Sophie
​Owner | Baker

​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