July « 2013 « joseybakerbread

well dudes, i dare say that things couldn’t get any sweeter.

why baker boy, why do you have that $hit-eating grin on your face, and you’re just oh so happy about stuff???

cuz it’s summer time, and summer time is time for doing stuff like this:

sheesh, do you always have to be showing off your butt??? and come on, i mean, that left foot is like, perfectly placed, otherwise this would be totally inappropriate…

don’t be a prude, we’re all human here.

anyhoo, i’m hanging out on my mom’s porch in Vermont, on the tail end of a truly incredible week spent soaking up New England summer, and i am just so gosh darn stoked about it all. cuz check it out – my vacation here is over, and i am PUMPED to be coming back to SF. pumped to come back to work that i love, with people that i love, eating bread that i love. (i also am very lucky to be coming back to the woman that i love, whom i’ve got locked in… Cathy and i got engaged!).

summer time is the raddest, and we are so spoiled in California (and Vermont too) to have so much incredible wilderness to enjoy. but even for those of you who may not be inclined to “rough it” out to isolated wilderness spots, i have a suggestion for you – just put on that flannel (you know you have at least one that you can get dirty), pack that bag, and go sleep in Golden Gate Park:

for real – my dear buddy Shawn and I did just that. i’d been searching for someone to accompany me on this adventure for weeks, and of course Shawn was crazy/smart/stupid enough to join me. we left from my house and entered GGP, immediately making friends with a fella who had likely spent a few years getting to know the intricacies of the Park. we parted ways, and Shawn and I hiked all the way to the ocean, opting to slumber at Land’s End, with Poseidon’s whisperings lulling us to sleep.

the next week none other than my bread hero Dave Miller came to visit, and he even spent the morning at the bakery, imparting some of his wisdom directly into a few loaves:

it was a real joy to share The Mill with Dave, as he was a huge inspiration for the whole thing. and now that we’ve just started milling our own flour, it couldn’t have been better timed. thanks again Dave, you are the man.

that was followed by one last day of photography for my book, which, aside from making a loaf of Adventure Bread (our new super seedy and also gluten-free bread) was really just mostly being silly with Mr. Charlie Hallowell, who is one of the most generous and fun-loving guys on Earth. i think this is gonna be the cover shot:

good god, after that i took off on another wilderness trip with my boyfriends Rafi & Marcus, and got lost in the Sierra foothills, diving and soaking in bright emerald pool after bright emerald pool, oohing and ahhing at scampering baby brown bears, realizing our life goal that wherever you are is the perfect place to be:

it was one of the best wilderness trips ever. we actually were pretty darn sure that we were lost for a good part of it. which is a hell of a feeling – like, you’re L*O*S*T in the woods, you don’t know where to go, you don’t know where in the frik you are. turns out we weren’t lost, we were exactly where we were supposed to be. (see, that hippie shit comes in handy now don’t it?)

a day in SF, then i hopped a plane to VT to chill hard in the homeland. i was ridiculously excited about this, as it was my first time home in a year, since i spent the last 12 months obsessing about the bakery, not really able to think about anything else for more than 4 hours. but i hopped on that plane carefree, because the team at The Mill is just so gosh darn full of skill and dedication and spirit, i knew i could take off for a spell and they’d make that magic happen real nice without me.

over the past year my pops has totally fallen in love with mountain biking, and i was totally floored at how hard he can shred:

after ripping for 2 days with him, i took a day to just drive around these windy backroads without any plans, following my whimsy, sniffing out adventure. i had brunch in Hardwick, visited Mr. Robert Hunt out at Bohemian Bakery in East Calais, then ended up in a big grassy field where i found this man mellowly slicing up his wood-fired rye bread:

who is this righteous looking dude, you wonder? none other than Peter Schumann, the radical badass founder and director of Bread & Puppet Theater. i spent the afternoon in that field watching the theater and then ate that fresh baked rye bread dripping with aioli and drove home with the windows down and a big ol’ $hit-eating grin on my face.