In so many ways, the start of a new calendar year is only that: a new calendar. With my schedule posted on a computer desktop or phone app, I don’t have the joy of that new paper calendar each year, often a holiday gift, selected just for me. The holiday break at the year end provides some closure to old and welcome to new, but that’s it? Everything just chugs along the same as it ever was. Where’s the new? Primarily a Market baker, we at the Tiny do get to hold new in January. Our big bakes don’t begin until May leaving time to finish up the books, get our permit & licenses renewed, and d ..read more

Each day before a market, I am immersed in dough. After feeding larger quantities of starter the night before, I wake to see if that starter is ready or does it need more time. If it needs more time, I put it into a warmer environment to increase fermentation. While I wait for it, I prepare the levain containers for three of the loaf varieties. Levain is more starter, but fed to be ripe in only a few hours rather than overnight. It is considered “young” and is the engine for the PNW Country, Expresso and Whole Grain loaves. My Tangy loaf is fed straight starter from the overnight rest. This us ..read more

“The past and the present and the future, the faith and hope and charity, the heart and the brain and the body…” Schoolhouse Rock, Three is a Magic Number The importance of three was brought to light for many of my generation through the music of Schoolhouse Rock. A table needs three legs to stand, triangles have three corners, three sides and three angles, and when you add a baby to an expectant couple, it makes three. I know that Junior made our family magic when we became three. Along with all of the ancient trinities, there lies flour and water and salt. When combined, these three insigni ..read more

Wheat is not usually thought of as a seasonal ingredient. It’s not like dark red cherries, perfect peaches or truly vine-ripened tomatoes that, especially here in Western Washington, have a very short window of exquisite flavor, of texture, of color, of all the things. The wheat I use, most of it milled for me, but some I mill myself, does have limited life. Only so much of any one varietal is grown each year. Therefore, there is only so much available to be shipped to the mill or to me. When the organic Edison berries are used up, we all have to make do until the next harvest is on the books ..read more

When Marie-Antoinette [supposedly] stated that the starving people of France should eat cake rather than bread, she was not the first to use such a phrase. Qu’ils mangent de la brioche has been found in writings before the doomed-queen’s time (McNamee). The word brioche is often translated as cake, but seems a far more insidious word choice. We all know cake: light, sweet, often beautifully decorated, a luxury food, especially if made for royalty. Brioche, also light, just ever so sweet, but still bread, would be much more heartless for the queen to recommend to the starving populace. A people ..read more

It’s cheesy anymore to start a post with a definition, but to distill is to “increase the concentration of, to separate, or purify” something else. I can do cheesy. I also feel distilled. I and my crew spent four and a half days cruising the San Juan Islands in a 29-foot Ranger Tug called Serendipity. Our plan was to hit the outer islands: Matia, Sucia and Patos, then Friday Harbor, moving physically closer to our eventual last night’s mooring, before motoring back to Anacortes. Spouse piloted the boat, while Jr and I handled the mooring lines, bumpers, mooring buoys, docks and slips. We figur ..read more

Shopping a Farmer’s Market is something I’ve been doing since I started caring about where my food came from. Reading books such as Silent Spring, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, Grub: Ideas for an Organic Urban Kitchen, Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal and others, planted seeds into the soil of my heart, soil that had been there since picking veggies from my own family’s big garden each summer. I was raised planting seeds, picking rocks, pulling fresh carrots and routing ruby raspberries straight from the cane in the garden tended, during their off-work hours, by my parents, whose ow ..read more

Where wheat comes from is important to me. I have based my business around the specific wheat varietals grown in Washington and milled by Bluebird Grain Farms and Cairnspring Mills. These varieties are: Emmer, Einkorn, Sequoia, Edison, Yecora Rojo and Expresso. A variety not grown in our region is Turkey Red. Here in the United States, the heirloom wheat Turkey Red is widely grown in the Great Plains region. This hard red winter wheat has been feeding people in the U.S. since immigrants from the Crimea brought it to Kansas in the late 1870s. The grains carefully chosen for the long journey did ..read more

If you bake a lot, if your friends and family are inundated with cookies, cakes, pies and bread, you’re probably a pretty good baker. You might be an outstanding baker. You might already do all the things I’m going to mention here. That is awesome! Being a better baker, besides just a nice alliteration, can happen with practice and consistency. Everyone who’s good at something got there by doing that something a lot! Along with practice, there are a few other items to think about. Know what kind of flour(s) you’re using. Scale ingredients: weight is always more accurate than volume cups. Know ..read more

Shepherd’s Grain started a movement years ago with a campaign enabling consumers to find the farmer who contributed to a particular bag of flour. The collective of Columbia Plateau Farmer-Owners, Shepherd’s Grain was early giving consumers a link to the folks who grow their food. Fast forward to 2022. Rather than call a number on a bag of flour, I can follow farmers, millers and bakers on Instagram. I can subscribe to farmer newsletters, order flour or grain directly or have great phone conversations about where to find their products. One such farm is Moon Family Farm in eastern Washington. I ..read more