The Tiny Kitchen
Bread & Lessons
New
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 develop new offerings. As a Cottage Food Operation, part of our process is to have all items approved by the WSDA before we can produce them. Labels must be created and vetted by our inspector. Having the gist of a recipe is easy as ingredients are listed by volume. Fine tuning those ingredients into a Tiny Kitchen product takes time and brain energy. This is what we’re doing now.
Since our labels must be approved ahead of time, much thought goes into what we might want to make at anytime during the year, what items might be seasonal, what customers might want to try. New variations of scones, biscotti, shortbread are on deck. We’re adding granola and quick breads to the roster, as well as a new chocolate rye cookie – yum! All of the new needs to be fine tuned and finished by end of April. Folks who order from our mailing list will get first dibs on new as we offer up what’s available any given week. This is hard work but good work, fun work when we enjoy our successes with a cup of coffee. Happy New Year!
Dough Day
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 usually gives the loaf more of the quintessential sourdough tang.
Once the levains are mixed and left to ferment, I mix the big batch of Tangy loaves. This initial mix starts the trajectory of my day. I will be stuck in, chained to my kitchen from that point until early in the evening, if all goes to plan. Making bread feeds my soul. The processes of dough day to the pulling of loaves from the oven, while not compulsion, have become something I must do. That being said, I often dread dough day, knowing everything is fixed without variation: measuring correctly temperatured water, initially mixing dough before the mandatory autolyse rest, finishing that mix adding the levain, more water and salt. Setting timers to dictate stretches & folds & temperature checks is followed by mixing a different batch, starting the process anew in each bus tub. The little chalkboard has start times and estimated preshape times so things don’t jumble together at any point. One person can only process so many loaves before the subsequent batches sit too long, verging on over-proof. It can feel like tyranny. It is the tyranny I dread. This tyranny begins to subside when that batch of Tangy loaves is shaped, resting cold in bannetons for the night. One down, three to go. Satisfaction begins to seep in around the edges of my mind and heart.
Most folks have no idea the time and effort that produce naturally-fermented, hand-mixed, hand-shaped bread. They may balk at the price tag of $8 to $10. I overhead one market visitor say “$9? I could make that for 2.” I silently invited him to do so. I silently invited him to give an entire day of his life, to give his mind and muscles to the process, to increase his anxiety as to the ready-ness at each step, to put his faith in the process: the time and the temperatures, the touch and the texture of the dough, for $2. “Yeah. Knock yourself out.”
At the start of this dough day, I saw a quote from Jeffrey Hamelman. Jeffrey H. is a (one of the few in the USA) Certified Master Baker, former head baker at King Arthur and author of Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, and an occasional contributor to the Bread Baker’s Guild of America’s online forum. He offered this after composing it for the opening words at a conference. These words are why I do what I do, why I endure each and every Dough Day. I leave you with them.
Before there is a loaf there is a baker. Before the baker there is a miller. Before the miller there is a harvest. Before the harvest there is planting and tending. Our bread begins with the farmer. The farmer and the baker are the beginning and the end of the visible bread; they are great pillars of sustenance, of profound importance to society. The chain of grain at last leaves the hands of the baker and the bread continues its journey into countless bellies, before it again enters the earth and the cycle begins anew.
The breath of our ancestors is in each loaf.
When someone offers you a slice of bread, look her in the eyes and take it with both hands.-Jeffrey Hamelman, Certified Master Baker, author of Bread
Magic Number
“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 insignificant ingredients undergo an alchemy like no other. Yeast, bacteria, enzymes, gluten strands, flavonoids, crust, crumb, texture, taste and comfort are all by products of this Magical Three. Each time I remove loaves from the oven, each time I slice into a just-cooled loaf, each time I note the rise and fall of the starter, I’m amazed. The farmers growing beautiful, flavorful grain; the millers turning that grain into flour like no other; the bakers using that flour to create products with flavor beyond yeast or add-ins are another trinity. Bread is a symbol of life, life stemming from an ancient trinity. Three is a magic number.
Seasonal
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.
Most commodity flour is an assortment of commodity wheat, varieties grown for ease of harvest, ease of milling, ease of baking. These varietals are blended together so flour companies can sell the same product year after year. Grain is collected from around the globe and gathered at enormous mills then flattened, sifted and mixed into bags for consumers. The silos are never empty of grain to mill, specific varieties not a concern, just that similarities are such that the blending will go on unimpeded.
Using varietal grains, using grains grown for flavor, grown for their specific baking qualities, are missed when the supply is used up for the season. Last year, Cairnspring had to adjust its Trailblazer flour to Trailblazer Select, bringing in Skagit Red, a variety they found to mix with the dwindling supply of Yecora Rojo grain, that would provide the same great bread flour and the quality flavor. It has preformed beautifully. The increased demand for these beautiful flours has created a bit of a bind: there is only so much to go around.
I imagine it won’t be long until the big mills try to get on board the varietal flour train that’s been gaining momentum across the Country. They’ll give precious names to commodity wheat blends, trying to lure in some of this market segment willing to pay optimal prices for something so humble as flour. The truth will out in the products though. Just like the word “artisan” lost all meaning when companies using sourdough flavoring slapped that label on their bread bags, varietal wheat will go the same way. Bread made with actual wheat varietals, though, wheat grown by farmers whom I can actually name, will always be amazing.
The flavor, the texture, the real-ness of this food can’t be faked. It will be more expensive since farmers are getting a better price then what commodity markets will bear. That should be lauded. Next time you’re at your favorite bakery, ask what flours they use. I make bread and sweets supporting these regional growers. Know that when you buy our products, or those from any of the many bakers now using regional varietal wheat flour, you are helping out a farm family. Here’s to wheat!
The Queen of Bread
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 demanding bread. The King’s wife advising they eat enriched white bread, bread full of eggs and milk and sugar. A people with no bread, no eggs, no milk, told to eat bread made rich with those ingredients. It’s no wonder she lost her head.
Brioche is delicious food. Traditionally made from white flour, kneaded for a long time, even by machine, to develop the gluten to handle the softened butter added slowly at the end of mixing. Softened butter, not melty or greasy, fed into the whirling dough, more added only after each bit incorporated. That dough then let to rise at warm room temperature, refrigerated over night to develop flavor then shaped and eventually baked the next morning.
My brioche uses the high extraction Sequoia and Edison flours, creating even more flavor, flavor inherit in the wheat varietals themselves. While not fully fermented, I do use sourdough starter as part of the enrichment, giving the finished products a tinge of tang and longer shelf life. Moving baked goods away from pure white flour gives them more nutrition, more flavor. Taking that brioche dough and adding a bit more butter, along with some brown sugar and cinnamon, makes a cinnamon roll worthy of royalty but full of real-food flavor for the people. To me, brioche is a special occasion food, not daily bread. However, knowing there is a pan of cinnamon rolls in the freezer, means that a soon-to-be Sunday will indeed become a special occasion.
Bon appetit!
McNamee, Gregory Lewis and Blake, Susannah. “brioche”. Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/brioche. Accessed 20 January 2023.
Winding Down
I had hoped and planned for plenty of down time once Christmas arrived, really, once Solstice hit, but plans easily go awry. I had some extra baking I did for friends, so my last bake day was 12/22/22. What a great looking date! Little did I know that all of the errands I had left for Friday the 23rd would be thwarted by sheets of sheer ice. That ice pushed all the days, adding a Tuesday to the lineup of Holiday gatherings. I had also, for reasons that only baffled as the time grew closer, said yes to a custom PCC Cooks birthday party class at the Burien store. I live in Bothell. The birthday was for two soon-to-be 5-year old friends and 10 of their closest. So, Tuesday was getting ready for the final holiday party, Wednesday was recover from party and prep for class, and Thursday was an early start for a commute to Burien, to lead 12 young energetic humans in making cupcakes and pizza. Friday, yesterday, my first true down day, was spent with a few hours on accounting, then the rest of the day, including a nice lunch out, with Spouse, recapping the year: successes, challenges, things learned, changes to make for this next year, and even looking out three to five years from now. What a luxury to have the time and brain space to hash out all the things! We even created a 5-foot long calendar for the year, highlighting markets, class dates and kids’ camps, vacations and days off, complete with multi-color markers and post-its, and a short list of action items. Phew.
I will now have a few weeks to think about other things outside of business and bread. I’ll get a few days of different scenery, I will celebrate my sister with sweet remembrance, I will tackle the Rofco oven now in place, all electrical competed. After this, I will, again, begin to teach and offer bread. I don’t think, at least for me, there is really much down time. There is usually a task at hand, and completing that task often renews me. I am happy when the house is tidied, the laundry put away, when I’ve been in the garden. For me, these things must be done so when I do have time to sit with coffee or tea, I can relax and enjoy. Down time from my business means time for the myriad of other. So, for 2023, I will remember that, while lovely, Christmas is not relaxing, I don’t need any commitments the week after Christmas, but I do need to schedule enough time in early January to reset, rebuild, and enjoy all that other.
Happy New Year!
Distill
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 figured it out quickly, you had to, and worked well as a team. Matia and Patos don’t have docks that could handle our boat, only one or two mooring buoys, and given the bottom of these coves, exposure to currents, and general lack of experience, we didn’t want to chance anchoring. Both coves had their fill of boats, and as such, we entered, photographed, and exited the coves of these two little islands without disembarking. Though somewhat disappointing, we were closer than we ever had been, and were given insight into how to make moorage possible next time. The small, personal favorite, Fossil Bay on Sucia kept us safe through the night. We were able to explore the island’s trails, coves, bays and view points to our hearts’ content. Our next night was spent in the larger Stuart Island’s Prevost Harbor. Spouse and I once thought we’d move to the mostly-privately-owned Stuart, with its dreamy one-room school, two air strips and romantic light house. Visiting it over the years has fed that dream, while, simultaneously, providing gentle reality checks. Hiking around Stuart easily made up for not staying on Matia or Patos. I could write more about the Friday Harbor marina or the Dept of Natural Resource buoys at Cypress, but instead, this feeling of distillation.
At the start of this trip, I was set with my journal, waiting for epic entries of all that would be revealed as I sat at the back of the boat, on a deck chair while we motored at a modest speed, through gentle swells, the wakes of other boats, the water rippled by currents and wind. I just wrote about what had taken place, log book or diary style. No big whoop. I just wrote. It was the same each time I sat to journal and I was fine with this. It was just another thing in the succession of motor, moor, row to shore, hike around, return, make dinner, eat, laugh, play a game, try to sleep with the bow knocking into the mooring buoy. Repeat. All while surrounded by striking beauty: grey then blue skies, island trails and trees, the water sparkling, giving way to our bow, knowing it was ultimately far more powerful then anything to do with us. Engine moving big boat, arms moving dinghy, legs moving us everywhere else. No profound thought, just distillation.
When boating, I am completely at the mercy of the boat, of the tides, of the weather. Our boat was happiest traveling at 8 knots. We couldn’t hurry, we couldn’t worry. We could only leave earlier, be vigilant, give room to the other boats and ships, moving to another bay or harbor if no room to moor at our first choice. There were no phone calls, no work texts, no meetings, no deadlines. The meals were simple, with few dishes to clean. Nothing overwhelmed. All that other stuff was gone. There became this purity of purpose, life on a smaller boat, with nature stealing all of the attention, all of the time. I’m still enveloped today. I have loved baking for the markets this season, but I was frazzled, tired, scattered. Thinking of bobbing on the, relatively, vast water, the moveable island of life that held us, with nowhere we had to be, has settled me, for what I hope is a while. I was looking for a change of scenery, but I feel a reset. As I ease back into the prep/bake routine, I can honestly say I’m excited to make bread again. Cheers!
The Markets
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 own beginnings were very much tied to the soil. We were lucky to have five acres in what would soon become heavily-housed suburbia. I miss this mecca now four years gone, but my memories are deep.
Learning the hard truths of our food system would often leave me frustrated and distraught. Helpless to fix the big problems, I knew I could head out early Saturday morning and vote with my dollars. I, sometimes with Spouse and Jr, sometimes with my sister and nieces, sometimes all of us would pile into the car and drive the fifteen minutes to Seattle’s University District Farmer’s Market. What a jewel. Meat from cared-for animals who only knew “one bad day” as Michael Pollan put it, tables of asparagus, lettuces, tomatoes, the berries and peppers and potatoes, the stone fruits at perfect ripeness, all just a reasonable truck-ride away from their homes, sold by smiling folks, happy to talk about their processes, their fields or orchards, making a living, a hard living, bringing beautiful, real, food to me. These were truly some of the happiest days.
When I began teaching more weekend classes, my schedule didn’t allow for weekend markets. I was able to frequent some of those on weekdays, but life kept shifting. School and work and my sister’s cancer had me drifting away from any regular routine. The co-op took the Market’s place, though only a poor second. Don’t misunderstand, I love co-ops as much as Farmer’s Markets, I belong to four of them, but the connection isn’t the same.
Now I am a Farmer’s Market vendor. I take this practice to heart. I want to bake the best that I can, using the best ingredients I can swing, harvesting wild yeasts, supporting the farmer’s who grow the fantastic grain, grain turned to flour by a revolutionary mill, all for bread and scones and other sweets. The ingredients, the time, the energy, yes, the muscle I submit to my product might seem frivolous on the world’s stage, but I know I am supplying something unique, something real, something that really shouldn’t be microwaved. I get to aid in the direct support of 2 other humans. I get to interact with so many people, people like M who “paid it forward” last week when a customer’s card wouldn’t complete processing due to faulty T-Mobile connections in the rain-soaked Market parking lot. People who are gems, people I probably would have no other reason to chat with. People like Brooke and Vivian and Liz and Alexis and Aditi and Hannah, Matt and Sundee, and so many more whose names I’ve yet to learn. Even when I’ve pulled my fortieth cast iron Dutchoven, my arms tired, my back whispering threats, even when unloading and packing back up in the rain, I am lucky. Blessed and lucky.
My sister would have loved coming and visiting me while she shopped the other stalls. She would have loved meeting those I’m getting to know. Next time you’re at a market, talk to the vendors about their product, their produce, their practice. Find out their names. Support these unsung heroes bringing you locally grown, locally produced goods, however you can. We thank you!
Turkey Red
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 well in their new home and “established Kansas as a wheat-growing region.” (Kansas Historical Society) This grain was some of the first I heard about in conversations regarding heirloom wheat. I received some berries when I purchased my Mockmill countertop flour mill, but since I had other whole grains to grind, I’ve left this one till now.
To date, Ukraine and Russia are responsible for one-quarter of the world’s grain production. Trade of this wheat has all but stopped with the invasion of Russia into Ukraine. This breadbasket to the world is, for all intents and purposes, empty. The wheat planted last fall is being destroyed by troops. We will see what this crisis does to food availability around the world, but, in the immediate now, civilians in Ukraine are leaving in droves, trying to get their families to safety. Many relief organizations are on the ground providing food and shelter for these war-torn folks. In honor of the Turkey Red from Ukraine, I want to also help.
For the Month of March, at least, I’ll be selling just-milled Turkey Red shortbread hearts with 100% of sales going to World Central Kitchen, an organization of chefs providing meals to those fleeing Ukraine as well as for those who remain in country. In doing so, I am able to introduce you to this unique wheat varietal and provide some meals for a ravaged people. These are available in the Square Store and also for onsite sales at my 21 Acres popup booth. I hope you can join me in sending a bit of relief to Ukraine.
Be a Better Baker
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 how your oven really performs: are the temps true?
- If a recipe gives a time range for baking, always bake to the minimum time, then add more if needed.
- If a recipe doesn’t give a range of time, create one!
- Rotate your sheet pans half-way through a bake.
- Always err on the side of under-baking unless you’re making something getting lift from beaten eggs.
- Always stick to a recipe the first time through then make it your own.
- Keep cold butter cold and room-temperature butter soft but not melty/greasy.
- Give yourself room to grow. You won’t have Tartine bread or Deep Sea Sugar cake the first time out!
Julia Child said to never apologize for something you serve your guests. Own what you make. You’ve given an item your particular spin, and you’re free to change that item any time you choose. Recipients don’t need to know the dish or baked good didn’t come close to your goals! That being said, there have been plenty of personal fails that fed my chickens or the compost over the years.
Aside from this list + practice, never stop learning. There is always more to know, another technique, another flour, another recipe to try. Find sources that connect with you, be they websites, books, conferences, classes or people who will simply answer your questions. Finally, perhaps, pay attention. Are you consistent with technique? Is the butter warmer than last time? Is your starter super happy? Keeping a baking journal can help answer these questions. If you’re like me, you won’t remember!
Deep satisfaction comes with doing something well. Be and bake well, Friends!
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