rock n roll pizza

get ready to party honey babies.

SAISON COUNTRY
we gettin crazy in the bakery – check out this fruitful experiment… we took our country bread and used belgian saison beer yeast in our pre-ferment. VOILA! saison country. still just playing at this point.

this friday night we’s gonna be slangin slices of *P*I*Z*Z*A* and listening to The Beatles allllll night long at The Mill. and by allllll night long, i mean from 6-9pm. we’re bakers, remember?

yup, it’s the first installment of rock n roll pizza, and it’s pretty frikkin simple: we make pizzas the best way we know how to, you come and hang out and eat a few slices (they’ll prob be $3.50/slice), and we get all good and vibey to some good ol fashioned rock n roll. we’re starting out with a band that only total a-holes don’t like: The Beatles. i am very pumped to have my right hand man Rafi helping out with pizza on this fine night, so when you get here please shoot him a wink, maybe even pinch his bum.

and in case you’re curious, we got some good news & some bad news on the milling front. what do you want first, the good or the bad?

good, gimme the good news first, cuz news is like food, and i always eat dessert first. 

well i certainly don’t agree with that type of approach, i am going to give you the bad news first, because i like to save the most delicious stuff for last. ok – bad news is that we got all our hopes all pumped up about some very nice grain that we were going to be sourcing from a farm not too far from here, and then it all fell through. i was very bummed out about it.

well that sucks baker, i’m sorry to hear that. but i see your point about that whole saving dessert for last… what’s the good news??!?

the good news is that you can’t stop us, we’re masters of turning lemons into lemon bars, and we spoke with our grain guru Nicky Giusto up at Central Milling in Petaluma, and WTF, we bounced right back and are now milling ALL of the wheat for our whole wheat breads!! $HIT YES!!! this wheat is coming from a farm in Washington, grown at the hands of a man named Spud Brown. sorry for continually blabbing about how pumped i am on this, but i just can’t overstate how excited it makes me to be at this point in the game. a very special thanks goes to viking baker extraordinaires Wendy and Ryan, who fearlessly took the plunge while i was gallivanting around Chico with this guy:

DAVE & MACHU
Dave tends a small herd of goats on his property, but he also has Machu & Picchu, two gorgeous llamas, to help him keep the goats safe.

i spent a couple days last week out in Chico with Dave and it was so so so nice. it was my first trip out to visit him since we opened The Mill, and it was just as refreshing and relaxing as ever. it was also the first time that i’d actually gone to the Chico Farmer’s Market with him, to see the breads get handed off to his customers in person. it was pretty crazy – in about 4 hours he sold just under 400 loaves of bread to a steady stream of regulars. and this isn’t special, this is just what happens every week. watching the mutual appreciation expressed between him and all his customers was very special for me.

last week me and the whole JBB crew went out to Bolinas for our first overnight retreat. we spent the afternoon on the beach surfing and swimming and drinking micheladas, and then headed back to my good and generous buddy Kacey’s home:

the evening was spent bbqing and playing ridiculously entertaining games such as ‘spikenpuppen’ and ‘pomme bomb.’ wish i could share images of these in action, but i’ll just let your imagination work with this – one of the games involved picking up a crab apple with your butt cheeks. how bout them apples?

on a more professional note, as i am a man interested in mills and milling and all things related, last week i made a trip up to the Bale Grist Mill in St. Helena. what a spectacular glimpse into the past this thing is! i couldn’t actually go inside, but i snapped some nice pics, take a looksee:

tomorrow ushers in October, and i am ready for it, i love autumn. hope you’re ready for it too my dogs.

hearts & rainbows 4eva,

j

 

 

our noses are all up on that grindstone

awwww yeahhhhhhhhh now it’s really on.

LETTING GO COMPLETELY
last night i taught a sourdough class, and it began with everyone practicing the art of “letting go completely.” they did a very good job and i was very impressed.

this week we’re gonna start milling about half of the whole wheat we use in the bakery (we’re going through a whopping 6,000 lbs of whole wheat per month!!!), and by next week we are going to be milling ALL of our whole wheat flour. by the end of the month we should be offering up said flours for sale at The Mill to all you lovely bakers and soon-to-be-bakers. so get pumped please.

DUDES IT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN THE MILL IS GOING TO BE THE MILL FOR REAL I CANNOT EVEN STAND IT.

ahem, i can, and will stand it. and you should too. cuz its gonna be very rad.

WORKINGMAN’S BREAD
this is one of our newest breads, and it’s definitely one of my favorites. it’s a sexy little whole grain beast – half whole rye, half whole wheat, jam packed with a bunch of sprouted rye berries. right now we are milling the rye at The Mill, and a week from now we’ll be milling the wheat too. so. damn. stoked.

we’ve been talking with a lovely little farm very close to us here in SF, and we should be getting our first delivery of wheat within the next couple of weeks. will tell you all about them once we are stone milling up a storm. and i don’t wanna speak too soon, but once we start stone milling all that flour, i think you’re going to notice the difference in the bread. but you don’t have to take my word for it – come get a loaf and let me know what you think.

BIRD BREAD
speaking of new breads, this is another new guy: bird bread. when the bird bread comes out really nice, here in the bakery we say, “man, that bird bread is mad sqawky today.” its our whole wheat loaf filled & covered with sunflower and millet. come get a loaf and if you don’t like it you know who will.

while i am getting all excited and writing in ALL CAPS, i should let you know about a very sweet exchange that we’re gonna do at The Mill in a couple of months… we’re going to host a baker from Germany, Bavaria to be exact. i’ve been speaking with the folks at the German Consulate about this for weeks, but i just spoke with Mr. Josef Wagner himself the other day. we got along swimmingly, and i invited him to come along and spend November with us at The Mill. it’s going to be awesome – we’ll teach him how we do things at JBB, and he will teach us how he does things at his bakery back in Bavaria. during that time we will be trying out some new breads and goodies, but don’t you worry, i will keep you abreast of all this excitement.

WONDER BREAD
every once in a while a loaf goes missing… til we walk out into the backyard and find it sunning itself in the bushes. silly wonder bread, you’re so sneaky.

folks have been asking me a lot lately when my book is coming out – soon! i still can’t really believe it – i wrote a book! and it’s going to be real! like, a real, live, physical book about bread that i wrote!!! i think it’s gonna be out in January, but i’ll be yelling all about it from every roof top in town, so don’t you worry, you’ll know.

lastly, i wanted to let you all know that we will not  be baking or delivering any bread on Wednesday, September 25. we will still have toast, and pastries, and coffee, and tea, and sweet sweet vibes at The Mill, just no bread for sale. why, you ask, why why WHY? because i’m taking the whole JBB team on a little retreat, a night up in Bolinas where we shall surf, barbecue, relax in a hot tub, and most definitely NOT bake any bread. since we opened The Mill back on February 13, i’ve been blown away by how much bread and pastries y’all have been eating up, and we’ve been working just as hard as we can to make enough. and so now i just can’t help but give us all a little time away from the bakery, where we can just have ourselves a nice time. thanks for understanding sweeties.

love you sweethearts, and thanks for all the love letters, they make me feel so nice.

❤ josey

p.s. California river trips make me absolutely bonkers with glee. if you haven’t been out there lately, please go soon.

SUNRISE ON THE STANISLAUS
this is my main man Burl. we accidentally ended up on the Stanislaus and we had ourselves a reaaal good time.