Monthly Archives: June 2011

california summer river trip i love you so hard

my goodness gracious me, this past weekend knocked my little flour covered socks off!

here’s a quick photographic summary of the trip…
{on friday i ate an incredible sandwich from Pal’s Takeaway (made on my walnut levain) that had frikkin pulled pork and egg salad on it (i $hit you not)}
along with my sweet heartbrothers rafi and nat, i drove out to the south fork of the yuba river:

during our drive we decided that we wanted to not deal with bottles or cans so we got a small keg of beer and carried it in a backpack to our camping spot and kept it cool in the raging river:
where we took all our clothes off and drank the beer:
and then harnessed the sun’s power and had ourselves a bright lil blaze on which we cooked chicken on sticks:
the next day we continued our festivities, finishing the brew (don’t worry mom, that’s just a bb gun):
and then began the hard work of breaking big logs into firewood:

being men of tradition, we chose to use the force of gravity along with the strength of the stone to do our dirty work:

we had our fire, slept soundly under the stars, and returned to our fair city and set the first fire in our wood fired oven:

all is well.
❤ josey

hot as a mothafrikkin wood fired oven

YO this weather is making a baker boy sweat like a pig. you holdin up okay? i hope so.

i’m spending as much time as possible drinking iced coffee and wearing as little clothing as possible. you should do the same, it’s awesome.

and i’m super jazzed about this simple fact: we’re building a wood fired oven out of mud in my backyard.

what?!? out of mud?!? in your backyard?!?!? how in the HECK are you doing that???
with some sunshiney days, some elbow grease, and some sweet sweet bob marley jamz, that’s how my dogs.
check it out…
the other weekend i made a little pen to hold urbanite and bricks for the base. then my main man rafi jumped in the mix with his sick masonry and photography skillz (his careful touch is beyond the camera for all these pics). we laid down some mud and bottles for insulation, then laid the hearth and i smiled for the camera:
wearing a tape measure on my belt makes me feel very good cuz then i can do things like this:

and this part is called “shaping the void.” totally frikkin awesome, right? it’s just a big pile of sand on top of which you build the oven walls.

then my boy rafi built a very tasteful arch out of old bricks and foraged cement, and we covered the void in newspaper (so that when you dig it out, you know when you’ve reached the next layer of mud, which is the actual oven wall):
and on to the oven wall, which is just mud and sand, which you mix up on a tarp with your feet while easy skanking to sick reggae jamzzz:


then you smile and can’t help yourself from just rubbing it all over and staring at in disbelief that you just created an oven out of mud with your bare hands:

we’re gonna fire this sucker up real soon, and you can bet your sweet sweet a$$ that i’m gonna tell you alllll about it.
❤ josey
p.s. i’m going back to vermont (the homeland) for the first two weeks of july. hence – NO BREAD FIRST TWO WEEKS OF JULY. will remind you as the days go by.

oh i party hard… do you?

yo yo YO my dogs

you like to party? yea you do, of course you do, cuz you’re a bread lovin party animal, just like me:
(yea, i’m eating sand, so what??? that’s what the serious party beasts do, don’t ya know.)

well, i wanna party together, you and me, mano a mano.

ohhh yeah baker man? and how in the heck would you propose we do that? huh huh HUH?

(not like this, unless you’re SERIOUSLY OUT OF CONTROL)


what in the heck is that supposed to mean?

it means that i come to your house with dough in tow, a bunch of flour, sourdough starter, knowhow, and excitement… and we bake bread together and you leave with loaves ready for the baking and the know-how to make some bombass bread.
well $hit my pants and call me sylvester! that sounds like a ton of fun!
… uhhh, that’s weird that you said that thing about your pants and sylvester, but i’m gonna act like i didn’t hear that one.
❤ josey


you (can) make my dreams come true

last night i had a dream…

i was standing in front of Bi Rite Market, with a whole $hit ton of yummy walnut, whole wheat, and wonder bread that i’d made that afternoon with mine own bare hands:


i was giving samples to passersby, and one of them stops and looks at me all intense like this:



and then he eats a piece of bread and says, “holy motherf***er this is some crazy good bread man!! who in the hell are you?!?”


and i was all casual and cool and just like, “aw no biggie my man, i’m josey baker, i baked that myself cuz i’m obsessed with bread, and yea you can buy some if ya like, but no pressure dude, cuz bread is bread, and ya do what you do.”

then the guy smiled at me like this all cute and weird:


and he bought a loaf of bread and skipped away.

it was super duper rad and some nice pretty folks even snuck me a little beer that we gobbled up right quick and then i woke up and had a big fat smile on my face.
make my dreams come true.
hope to see you hip cats there.
❤ josey
p.s. don’t get worked up if you’re not coming to Bi Rite, but are still wanting bread – my main man alex is holding down the fort at Mission Pie, so you can still roll over there for your bread fix

i no want yr stinkin paper monies (but i also do)

my great old friend mike came to town the other week:
he is awesome and crazy and we had an amazing time and he dug my bread.

anyway… back to the matter at hand!

at one point i toyed with the idea of not accepting cash for my bread. i wasn’t gonna give it away for free (you wacko), but instead was only going to accept goods or services as trade. bread barter baby. i put this idea out there wayyy back when (last fall), and a few folks offered up some homemade goods.

but most people said, “jb you are such a friggin hippie. take this money and give me my bread and keep in touch about your tree huggin fantasies.”

well, i haven’t let go of this sweet idea, and from time to time the good people trade me some good stuff for my good bread.
my boy paxton hooked up some venison sausage, made from deer that he actually shot himself. (also featured in this pic is some home-made kimchi [i cannot for the life of me remember who gave it to us] and of course some jbb toast)
the awesome farmers at dinner bell farms traded me this incredible chicken for several loaves. (it was not cooked mind you, i did that with mine own hands)

and just the other night my super rad belgian buddies brought me incredible hot-outta-the-oven lemon lavender olive oil cookies (tho they refused to accept a loaf in exchange for their baked goods… the sweetest of hearts they have).

so let it be known my dear ones – if you got some goods that you wanna trade this lil baker boy for his bread, i’m all bout it. just holler at a brother. (i may not want to trade bread for your old socks, but it never hurts to ask.)
i’m off to soak in the healing waters of harbin hot springs for the weekend with this sweet sweet lady:

peace out hot dog
❤ josey

a bird pooped on my face and a ranger stole my bike but i’m okay with it all

we’s gonna have ourselves a right wildeeness adventure! yeeehawwwww!

the bike camp adventure this past weekend was adventurous as a muhfuh. cathy, rafi and i sped northward on our trusty steeds and spent night numero uno at samuel p taylor. the day was mostly rad, not to mention an hour or two waiting for the rain to stop eating butterfingers in a convenience store.

we arrived safely at samuel p, ready to get down with mother nature and commence the chill…


but we weren’t the only ones who had this very bright idea:


THESE SNEAKY RACCOONS STOLE OUR WHOLE WHEAT BREAD AND OUR CHOCOLATES WHILE WE WERE COOKIN OUR DINNER DOWN AT THE CAMP FIRE!

and get this – i chased them and yelled at them and even (don’t get worked up) threw some rocks at them, and they just kinda wobbled around on their chocolate covered paws and stared at us with their beady eyes. i like raccoons, but i didn’t like these raccoons.

anyway – we woke up ready to continue our adventure, and biked onwards to bass lake. (with a quick stop in bolinas where i iced (see def. #1) my bro rafi. thank you jed, i’m sorry rafi.)


fast forward to the following morning, where we are chillin at Bass Lake, cooking up eggs and coffee and feelin right and ready. i was sittin next to a tree when a bird up and pooped on my face:


what in the heck, right? i hear this is good luck in some cultures, so i chose to emphasize those cultures in the moment.

right. we rip and roar through the woods back to the dirt road and we’re done the hard bike riding part and are feelin excited (cuz we kinda had a hunch that maybe we shouldn’t be riding our bikes on this here trail) and B * A * M !!


the park ranger found us and said, “duhhhhhh, duhhhhh, duhhhhh.”
translated: “we are confiscating your bicycles as it is illegal to possess bikes on this land and you can only get your bikes back after you pay $275 apiece and NO you cannot get them back now you must find your own way back to san francisco that’s what you get for breaking the law… oh, and by the way, go ef yourself for saying that duhhhhh thing.”

so we took a bus to sausalito, rode a ferry to sf, ate a cheeseburger at the ferry building, and BARTed home.

what the heck, it makes a good story.

love you babies

❤ josey