Hi there!

It brings me great pleasure to say that I am writing to you in the view of Whites Pond in Palmyra, Maine, a few hours before the beginning of the Maine Grain Alliance’s annual Kneading Conference. It’s my first time back in Maine since middle school and my first time teaching at a big bread conference. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be leading a group of 25 folks through a class on making baked goods and pastries with whole grains — our vegan ginger rye cookie, our whole spelt pie crust, and my favorite: our stone-ground bran muffin.

I have always loved to teach — in New York, I hosted many a thrown-together bread class around my kitchen table in our studio apartment in Brooklyn. Those were the days. No idea what I was talking about it; only one sink in which to wash a thousand dishes. I was out of my depth but stand by even now the advice I would give to baking students then: it’s okay, in fact, good, for things not to be perfect. I’m looking forward to sharing some of what I’ve learned since those days, eight or nine years ago now, and also insisting on the same advice. Part of the process of learning to bake is being able to step back and actually enjoy the learning part.

I may not be in Philly this week but the bakery will thrum along handily without me, of course. We have a special Thursday loaf of hazelnuts and tea-soaked dried cherries on Thursday. We have cinnamon rolls and shokupan and our special Pastry Passport entry from Mexico this Saturday. On Friday, we’ll have roasted strawberry ice cream. Then on Saturday and Sunday, we’ll move to roasted peach ice cream. 🍑

We also have the arrival of four different kinds of jam to our retail shelves: sour cherry, strawberry, blueberry, and blackcurrant blueberry, all made with local fruit, sugar, lemon juice, and nothing else, by hand, by me. Come grab a coffee, a loaf of bread, and a jar of jam. We can’t wait to see you.

xo,

Dayna

Dayna’s What’s Up Corner

Thrilled — THRILLED — by the new Helado Negro x Reyna Tropical album. I finished book one of my two-part Calder biography, and my love for him only grows. FUN FACT: Did you know that the word “mobile” — as in the hanging mobile above the baby’s bassinet — was first used by Marcel Duchamp to describe Calder’s hanging art? It’s a French word that Duchamp chose to describe Calder’s work because of the inherent motion in his kinetic structures, and then it just … stuck around. There was no such thing as a mobile, in the way we know it, before Calder. Lastly, I got my first roll of film developed from the point-and-shoot camera Sam got me for my birthday and that brought me a lot of joy. What’s up with you?