BREADS & OTHER BEAUTY AS I HEAD HOME FROM VANCOUVER ISLAND

I’m headed back to Toronto… My early departure from Victoria, headed to Swartz Bay for the ferry across to Tsawassen, was a real gift, for the landscapes I drove past were more like dreamscapes. Green pastures were enrimed, it’s the only word really, coated with hoarfrost. That cold ground, as the sun came up and warmed the air a little, created an ethereal mist that floated tantalisingly, a gauzy drift of scarf that hid and revealed at the same time. What a beautiful farewell to Vancouver Island.

Now I’m parked out by some green grass near the water and near the airport, enjoying fresh air and the light-shade-light of the cloud-patched sky, before I submit to the closed-off atmosphere of the airport and the airplane for the rest of the day. I’m listening to the CBC, an interview on Q with Bryce Destner, a member of the group The National who has been composing for the Kronos Quartet; his work is on a new recording by the quartet called Aheim. I’ve been a fan of Kronos for a long time, but this interview makes me realise that I haven’t kept up with them at all. Time to break out of old patterns and explore new recordings, new music.

Yesterday gave me good time with my cousins, and then a wonderful dinner of reconnection with old friends I haven’t seen for nearly ten years. 

But before that I had a very interesting visit to Cliff Leir’s bakery Fol Epi (meaning a stalk of wild grain). I’d met him over a year ago at the Kneading Conference West. But I hadn’t realised all that he does at the bakery. He’s milling all his own flour, (bakes with it after a one-week rest), uses Red Fife as his wheat, and also bakes with rye. He made his own mill, using stone millstones from the eastern US, and he also built his bread oven. The oven is deep, brick lined, and wood-fired. But instead of making the fire ahead on the baking surface and then brushing it away so he can bake, Cliff has the firebox under the oven. The hot air then circulates through the oven (and there are several options for directing its flow). The result of the design is that he can do a large number of bakes, and can adjust and add to the fire or raise the heat without interfering with the baking.

I’m not sure if any of what I have just written  makes sense to you. I hope it does. I found the whole design very practical and impressive…it’s also beautiful, especially when side-lit by slanting winter morning sun.

If you are ever in Victoria, do go and have a look at the bakery, just across the bridges from downtown Victoria in Esquimault. Cliff is also playing around with other kinds of fermentation, making kimchi and sauerkraut, both of which he uses as flavourings in the sandwiches on offer at the bakery.

It’s the first time I’ve seen the details of a bakery where the baker has taken control of everything except growing the the grain. Milling is so important, and is such a wild-card variable for many artisanal bakers. It’s great when grain is milled at the farm, but I think this baker-miller way of working must be even more satisfactory for the baker, giving more control, and more chance to experiment.

Now it’s time to go and hand in this rented car. I’ll post this online in the next hour or so, once I’ve checked in and found a place to connect to the internet. 

I am sorry to leave the beauties of the west coast, but I am really looking forward to getting back to working on recipes for Persian World. And this bakery visit has made me impatient to start playing around with sangak and other Persian breads in my home oven.

SELF-SUFFICIENCY NEAR TWO COASTS

The birds are tweeting and twittering in the forest that surrounds the clearing here where I sit. I'm in Maine, staying at a beautiful charming house outside Skowhegan. Barbara, the artist who is putting me up, along with some other visitors, makes engaging art, three dimensional painted hang-on-the-wall sculptures as well as paintings. Everywhere I look in the house there is beauty and engagement. And here outside, the woodpile is aromatic and the birds subdued but continously making themselves heard.

I'm here because of the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan. It's the fifth annual, a two day event at the Skowhegan Fairgrounds (site of the oldest coninuously operating ag fair in the USA, quite incredible). On Saturday there's a Bread Fair, when ovens are fired and bread and cheese etc etc is sold.

Yesterday, the first day, I went to a clay oven workshop. We worked all morning mixing clay and sand, making forms (working in loose teams of four or so; altogether the course made six ovens) of wet sand, packed domes. Then we built up clay-sand-mix walls around the sand form, finally enclosing it under a dome. I know I'm not being very clear, but if you find the book by the guy who taught the course, Stu Silverstein, you can learn all about it. The last steps were to cut a front hole, pull out all the sand of the form, then light a fire on the fire brick base. In a couple of hours the colour of the oven changes from damp grey to pale, dried out grey clay and hey presto! there's a working oven.

It always feels magical and empowering to build a tool, and what more amazing tool than an oven built of earth? Lovely to work with unprocessed material (as opposed to manufactured bricks etc), which I've done only once before, when I made a large tandoor oven over nine days in Udaipur about eight years ago, and learned so much. There, in Udaipur, Sangana Bai's material was clay mixed with plenty of dried horse manure and then wetted with water. It was a coarser lumpy blend. For this oven we had sand and clay, so it was smooth rather than lumpy. But I imagine that the horse manure and straw with clay would also work for these domes. hmm A woman from Arizona who was a wonderfully engaged member of the team said that adobe there is made with straw or hay and clay, and I guess some sand too.

By the way the proportions are 1 part clay to 3 parts fine sand, or two parts sand if it's coarser. The trick is to add a minimal amount of water so that the mixture is stiff rather than soft. If it feels good in your hand it's too wet, is a good way of thinking about it.

This Skowhegan junket (eleven hours in the car from Toronto, sharing the driving and conversation with the wonderful Danwthebaker) is my second trip in a week. Here I'm almost at the east coast; the Atlantic is just an hour's drive or so away. And last week I was almost at the Pacific, well, close enough...

I flew to Kelowna (or as non-townies call it Kelownifornia) and drove north past cherry orchards dripping with fruit. At Vernon I turned east and came eventually to my cousins's gorgeous piece of land high on a green hillside. His house, newly built and still needing finishing touches, is beautiful, light and airy, and off-grid. And that's where my aunt, my long-dead mother's identical twin, is now living. Her ninetieth birthday is coming up, and what better place to see out her days than a green fastness, with horses (Icelandic ponies in fact) and dogs and hummingbirds etc all around?

I was so pleased to see her happy, mobile (after a broken hip and cracked pelvis in the last year) and now able to be on horseback, her preferred mode of travel.

There's a connection between the people in these two far-apart places. They tend to be self-sufficient, physically capable, and creative problem-solvers. They live far from the large population centres and from monied communities, and prefer it that way. But here in Skowhegan they are VERY far from prosperity. And that's why this Kneading Conference got started, as a way to try to revitalise farming here. It hasn't died out, but people are struggling. Now there's a grist mill about to reopen in town and a sense of bustle and purpose. There's also some very good baking happening. So as Skowhegan and northern Maine generally bootstraps its way into new patterns and increased viability and confidence, it makes those of us at the conference aware that food issues at the producing level: the farm and the small producer and processor, whether it's a baker, a cheese-maker, or whatever, are a good solid way to generate new life.

I'm hoping to come back here next year... and if you have a chance, do try to come. I've learned a lot, about bread and farming, and I've met some remarkable people. It's a rich opportunity to connect with a culture of self-sufficiency.