first of all, i need to share the deepest heartfelt gratitude that i am capable of: THANK YOU.

who am i thanking, you wonder?

i’m thanking everyone who has come out to support me over the last few days, since i fell off my bike and smashed up my face real good in Golden Gate Park. i’ve been totally floored by how many people have reached out to show me they care about me, and offer to support in whatever ways they can. i can’t tell you how much it’s meant to me dudes, so really, thank you thank you thank you.

for those of you who don’t know what i am talking about -

i was rip roaring on my bike through Golden Gate Park on Monday, enjoying the last few hours of what had already been a tremendous couple of days, having spent the night at Fort Baker with my sweet lady, maxing and relaxing and riding around on golf carts. anyway, on Monday about 6pm i managed to snap the fork of my bike right in half as i was popping a totally sweet wheelie off the curb near the De Young Museum. now i’ve got a lot of stitches and some cracked teeth and it’s difficult to eat and drink stuff, but i’m lookin on the bright side – it could have been a lot worse. in fact, the ER doctor told me that if i hadn’t been wearing my bike helmet that i probably would have died. it’s been quite the reminder dudes – appreciate everything you have while you have it, and treat that sweet body of yours with love and kindness. and for god’s sake: wear your bike helmet.

which brings me to my next point – JBB IS LOOKING TO HIRE A BAKER for our work at The Mill! awwwwwww $hit. and you might be (or know) that special someone if:

• you love baking cookies, coffee cake, lemon bars, granola, farmer’s market fruit preserves, that type of hippie $hit
• you ALSO love baking loaves of sourdough bread
• you can hang in an open kitchen, with curious customers always asking you things like, “what are you doing?” and then not listening to your answers
• you can take on a position that is 16-24 hrs / week to start
• you have your opinions about how to do things, but you’re open to learning how to do stuff better, quicker, and in a variety of ways
• you like working in a tight little bakery where you’re never more than 3 feet away from another person

please send your resume & cover letter to: jobs@joseybakerbread.com

don’t worry if you don’t have a ton of experience – i’m mostly looking for someone that we all enjoy spending time with who has a sufficient knowledge base and who can learn our ways quickly. so if you think that’s you, then reach out any say so!

have a rad day my dogs, remember that helmet next time you’re wheelie-poppin

<3 josey

i’m definitely not bored these days.

these awesome little dudes came by the bakery the other week. i tried to give them a tour and teach them a little about bread, but they knew more about bread than i did, cuz they’ve been baking bread at school, and even milling their own frikkin flour. so badass.

everything has been going great at the bakery, but every once in a while we get some suuuper weird people who come in and do stuff like this:

watch out for this guy, he’s a wild one.

the past 2 months have been one hell of a ride. aside from opening The Mill, i also managed to sneak in a rad photo shoot with one Ms. Erin Kunkel, the talented young lady whose photographs will be featured in my cookbook. i wish i could show some of them to you, but i think that’s against the law, and you know i don’t like breaking the law… but here’s a totally legal shot that she snapped with her cell phone during the shoot. (don’t be fooled, i just posed for this photo, she’s the brains behind this one)

everyday the bread gets a little better, and its got me freaking out in front of the oven every morning, saying stuff like, “I literally cannot believe that I just made this!!” so pumped, check it out:

we made sesame bread this week as our super special weekly bread. we’re doing more experimenting and special breads lately, and it’s very exciting, and there’s only going to be more of it. so if you feel like being surprised come in and see what’s new on the bread rack, then take a loaf home and eat it and tell us what you think.

wanna know a secret??? check this out:

this is a loaf of country bread before it’s baked. look at all those awesome patterns on it!! crazy right?!? wanna know how we do that??? okay, so first you get out your compass and your calipers and your calculater… ummm, actually it’s suuuuper complicated, i don’t really have the time to explain, sorry, maybe next time.

but ya know what, i think it might be nice for me to let you in to the bakery a little bit more, to give you a more intimate sense of what the day to day is like *INSIDE* the JBB machine. ya see, we don’t know what we’re doing, so we have to make it up, and that includes making up our own terms for the stuff we do every day. in light of that, here is a little vocab lesson, so you can maybe understand the gibberish you hear coming out of the bakery the next time you’re in.

playing with the pillows: get your mind outta the gutter you little perv, this is our fun way of saying “shaping bread loaves.” ya see, when the bread is mixed just right, like it is most days, cuz my bakers are little badasses, it is blissful to shape, because it’s so nice and soft and stretchy, and full of delicious gas. so instead of being boring and saying, “well, i guess it’s time to shape the bread loaves now,” we say, “quit your lollygaggin moss-pony, it’s time to play with the pillows!” all while the grateful dead are playing in the background. too good.

chop it up: this isn’t really that creative, and i think i’m the only one that says it. instead of saying, “well looky here, it appears to be time for me to scale the bread dough into loaves and pre-shape them,” i say, “get outta my face man, i don’t have time for that, i gotta chop it up.” then chop it up i do, like a god damn teenage mutant ninja turtle, michelangelo*  to be exact.

• *yes yes, i am well aware the michelangelo is not able to do any chopping, as his weapon of choice is the nunchucks, or Nunchaku, which do not chop so much as beat. but michelangelo is a party dude, and orange is my favorite color, and this is MY breadblog, so, as my father always said, if you don’t like it, lump it. 

purple beauties: this was invented by Wendy, our resident viking baker, as a title for our whole wheat cranberry walnut bread. we were playing with the pillows (see above) one afternoon, and i was like, “yo we should name this bread something other than whole wheat cranberry walnut bread, that’s so boring,” to which she immediately replied, “well, we should probably call it cranberry walnut purple beauty.” so we called them that from there on out, til the other week, when we stopped making that bread. RIP purple beauties.

all of your g*d d@mn seeds are on my f***in rack: this is what you hear if you knock over a tray of Cobi’s breakfast bars which are on the cooling rack instead of the normal place they are, because you’ve filled up that normal place with trays of your toasted seeds, not totally where they’re supposed to be.

we’re just killing time on a rock that’s floating around a ball of fire: take it easy man, it’s just bread.

have a good day sweeties, i miss you, all of you.

<3 josey

meet us out front of City Hall at 8:45 Wednesday morning, and we’ll make this thing happen.

City Hall, Room 400, Wednesday March 13, 9am

kisses

j

if you haven’t come in to say hey just yet, don’t worry, just come on by when you have some time to drink a coffee & eat a slice of toast & soak up some good vibes. (yes, good vibes, you bet your ass i said that, and i mean it too.)

i am having so much friggin fun, i really cannot even believe that this is my life. i feel like i won the god damn lottery. i get to do the work that i love so much, with people that i love so much, in a space that i love so much. couldn’t really get much better if ya ask me.

i don’t mean to boast, rather, just to share my excitement, and to say thanks to everyone who helped make this thing happen. next time i see you i am going to hug you and lift you right up off the ground and laugh, and maybe i will even kiss you right on your face.

y’all have been going bonkers for the dark mountain rye, which makes me so so so excited, because it’s my favorite bread too. i had no idea that folks would dig on it so hard, but i’m way down. its very different from all the other bread we make… its 100% rye, and its jam packed with sesame, sunflower, flax seeds & corn meal. it’s dense as hell and it will nourish you on your mightiest of adventures. check it out here, about to go into the oven:

so many of you have been coming in, it’s crazy, i had no idea that it was going to be this busy. we are making almost 1,000 slices of toast on the weekends, we’ve already broken two commercial toasters, and this past Sunday i sold almost 200 loaves. 200 LOAVES IN ONE DAY??!?!? it wasn’t even a holiday!! man oh man oh man oh man.

phew. anyway, thanks again, and i cannot wait to keep partying with you all.

oh crap – we need your help! we are having a public hearing down at City Hall for the parklet that we wanna build out front of The Mill. we need as many people as possible to come to the hearing and speak up in support of the project. here are the details:

WHEN: Wednesday, March 13 at 9am

WHERE: Room 400 at City Hall

WHY: cuz we wanna build a parklet in front of The Mill, and we can’t do it without folks coming and showing the powers-that-be that we have support from the people.

if you can make it that would be A M A Z I N G. thanks in advance my dogs.

<3 josey

we need your help, especially those of you who live near Alamo Square Park. we want to build a parklet out front of The Mill, and we need to collect as many signatures on our petition as possible. could you, would you take a moment and help us make it happen? we will build you the best parklet ever, i promise.

take 1 minute to sign, please pretty please.

you’re the best

<3 j

in case the link doesn’t work for ya, go here:

https://www.change.org/petitions/san-francisco-planning-department-allow-us-to-build-a-parklet-at-736-divisadero-st

we’re going as fast as we can, but we’re not quite there yet. hold tight, we’ll be ready for you to come and visit soon, so soon. we’re shooting for Feb 12.

til then, here’s a sneak peak into some of our experiments as of late…

cornbread w crumble top

we made baguettes and they were awesome and then decided that we’re not going to make baguettes. don’t worry, we’ll make something very similar to baguettes, they just won’t be such a pain in the a$s (for us).

i’ve spent some time sticking my head into dark corners like this one. i’m happy i’m not doing that anymore.

apple pecan coffee cake that made me sick because i couldn’t stop eating it.

stay tuned kiddos, i will let y’all know when the party has begun.

<3 josey

today was a special day – it was our last day serving coffee & toast out of our little tent inside of the construction site that is soon to be The Mill. we heard from many of our regular customers that they didn’t want the tent to go, that they’d come to love the tent vibe, where they’d eat their toast & coffee while leaning next to a sack of concrete, all to the soundtrack of chainsaws in the backyard. but friends, all things must pass, and so today we said goodbye to the tent. hopefully this wonderful little lady will keep coming to visit us, even though we’ll be tent-less.

but why why why, why is the tent going away?

because we’ve got a frikkin cafe bakery to open dudes, and we can’t do it with a tent plopped right down in the middle of the space.

so here we go, for real this time – we’re closed to finish the build out, and we’re gonna open up that whole sucker at the end of the month. 

but since i have you here, i’d love to share a bit with you about what i’ve been doing for the last month or so. mostly i’ve been at The Mill, test baking up a storm, but also setting a loooooooot of tile on the walls and counters. mind you, i had no idea how to set tile a few weeks ago, but truth is, you can do anything if you put your mind to it. check it out! ain’t it purty?

but make no mistake, i haven’t completely given up adventuring outside of the bakery, oh no. just last weekend i had the pleasure of going on a moonlit trip to a secret lake, where me and my man love Rafi had ourselves an extremely brief night swim. i even did a front flip off a rock into the water, which made me very proud of myself. check out our cute little butts:

i hope Rafi doesn’t mind that i’m showing you his bum.

i’ve had to stop delivering bread for the time being, as i am just too darn busy with the build out. regardless, i got a glimpse of what it’s like to be one of those lucky bread loaves, as i did find time to give my good friend Ben Hardy a ride around the Mission in my bread trailer.

i’ve also really been exploring my hippie roots, making breads like this one, which was a 100% whole grain sourdough loaf, made with a blend of red wheat, white wheat, and spelt, then covered in wheat bran and oatmeal. i mean, come on, it doesn’t get much more crunchy than that, but what can i say, i LOVE it.

expect a lot more of that stuff once we get rolling. and baguettes! i’ve fallen in love with making baguettes. and people tell me that they taste pretty fine. expect to see a lot of these once we’ve opened up, too.

and, well, a picture is worth a thousand words, so i will let you figure out what the heck is going on here:

soooo, i’ll see you on January 30? i hope so. just a quick sneak peak about what we’ve got in store beyond the bread: toast out the wazoo, a few cookies for you to munch on with your afternoon cup of joe, perhaps a brownie or two spiked with some FourBarrel espresso, oven-baked oatmeal w/ maple syrup, house-made granola w/ yogurt, cornbread w/ crumble top, and maybe just maybe we’ll have some afternoon *P*I*E* for ya. only time will tell now won’t it.

really cannot wait y’all, so pumped to share this with all of you.

loves yas

<3 j

are you that special someone???

only one way to find out… you just might be a good fit if:

• making freshly milled cornbread & oven-baked oatmeal makes you smile like a fool, and bonus if you’re obsessed with cookies
• you’re a “morning person” and can handle getting to work before most people have woken up – shift will start at 5am, 3 days/week
• you’ve got experience working in a bakery/went to school to learn the ropes of working in a bakery
• if this has got all you pumped up, prancing around your house saying, “holy crap, holy crap, that’s me! i wanna be on team JBB!!!”

so quit prancing around and reach out – send an e-mail with resume to:

jobs@joseybakerbread.com

thanks dudes, talk soon

j

• i handed in the manuscript for my friggin cookbook!!
• thanksgiving bread was nuts – 500 loaves in 3 days (the most everrr)
• i turned god damn 30

let’s unpack each of these just a little bit… but first check out my homeboy Max, getting wayyy down on some toast w/ almond butter:

so rad.

cookbook. i’ve been working on this with every little bit of free time i’ve had over the past year. i am most definitely NOT one of those people that can procrastinate and then spend the week before something is due just staying up all night to get it done. no way. instead i have been steadily chipping away on this puppy since i first got the book deal last fall. and by golly, when November 8 rolled around i had 50 recipes, 50,000 words, and a big weight off my chest. we will be photographing the book in the Spring, and it should be out by next Fall. i still can’t really believe it, but it is TRUE.

thanksgiving. 500 loaves in 3 days.

first of all – T H A N K   Y O U to all of you wonderful folks that chose to spend your Thanksgiving with me, i was beside myself with joy that so many people wanted my bread. makes me even more pumped for what’s to come. but 500 loaves!!! now i know that this is child’s play for most “bakeries,” but dudes, i ain’t most bakeries. silly (or stupid) enough, i had actually planned on doing it all by myself. i woulda been fully effed if i’d stayed the course, so thank the almighty bread gods that my main man Ryan (one of the handsome and talented bakers who will be on the starting JBB crew at The Mill) and main lady Wendy (our ridiculously hard-working and talented head baker) came to the rescue. you’re probably all like, “what’s the big deal, 500 loaves, stop whining baker boy.” i’m not whining, i’m just sharing… we hand mixed it all. so ha! yeah, we hand mixed it all in little tubs and then shaped it into breads and then i baked those suckers. i heard people liked em, and that warms my heart.

i turned 30. these say it all…

oh yeah, The Mill will be open December 30. get ready to party.

<3 josey