Afterthought #40 – Five Years of Good Tastes

This month’s Afterthought* finds me once again singing the praises of Barn Owl Bakery—a wood fired bakery on Lopez Island, WA.

I first tasted Barn Owl’s delicious artisan loaves in 2011 when Sage and Nathan, the bakery’s owners, moved to Lopez Island from Berkeley, CA. I wrote about how their immediate success at the weekly Farmers’ Market led to a Kickstarter campaign and the building of a certified, wood fired oven and bakery. Earlier this year, Barn Owl Bakery bumped up production to sell bread at Blossom Grocery on Lopez and the Food Co-Op on neighboring Orcas Island.

The opening of this year’s Farmers’ Market is a milestone for Barn Owl Bakery—it’s now been five years since Sage first brought a few dozen loaves of bread on a Saturday morning and sold out within a couple of hours. It’s hard to believe perfect bread could be even better, but Sage and Nathan keep raising the bar with new ingredients and styles of their wild leavened breads and treats.

My current favorites are the big, crusty loaves of Country Miche and the Lopez Sandwich loaf, made with Lopez-grown and -milled Fortuna wheat. But then, it’s hard to resist the rosemary batard, the rustic rolls, the multigrain wholegrain, the cinnamon rolls, the rhubarb scones, the lemon chevre (from Sunnyfield Farm) rugelach, the flatbread (Olive oil, Sunnyfield chevre, pesto, kale)…

Congratulations, and thanks, to Sage and Nathan! I can’t wait to see (and taste) what the next five years bring for Barn Owl Bakery.

* “Afterthoughts” are my blog version of a practice followed in some Quaker meetings. After meeting for worship ends, people continue in silence for a few more minutes during which they’re invited to share thoughts or reflect on the morning’s worship. I’ve adopted the form here for last-day-of-the-month brief reflections on headlines, quotes, books, maybe even bumper stickers.