smell the frikkin roses

i love landmarks. i mean, what the hell, we're only wandering around this lovely little planet for the blink of an eye, so why not stop and take note of things as much as possible, right? RIGHT. speaking of landmarks, me and my stupendous partner in crime cathy celebrate our 10 month boyfriend girlfriend anniversary today! YESYESYESYES. look at her here, the perfect balance of urban chic and rugged country, chopping wood for a pizza party:

why all this talk about landmarks? cuz this is my last week of baking til i'm back from the radical life adventure that is my southeast asia explorations, preceded by the fire induced hysteria that is burning man!!! and furthermore, this is the last wednesday bake at Mission Pie (not forever, just til i'm back). ahhhh, Mission Pie, i really do love you. you are just always filled with such kind, genuine, generous people. i am so grateful that i've been able to become a part of the family there.

come friday, i'll be doing my last bake at pizzaiolo for a good while. i'll probably say a bit more about that come friday morning, while the loaves are in the oven doing the magicthing.

anywayyy, come say hi today or tomorrow at Mission Pie, 5-9pm, before i take off for a coupla months. otherwise, i'll see ya when i see ya dudes.

oh, and btw, i am going to be posting to this blog during my travels, so if ya wanna come along with me on my travels, just check in every once in a while. i promise to make you giggle.

<3 josey

ain't nothin wrong with a little bit of q & a

<<< keep your eyes peeled dudes, there's another free loaf quiz in this one >>>

people been a-ing some q's, so i'm just gonna answer em all right here and now.

Q: you were a bit vague about when you were actually leaving... when's the last day you're baking? and when are you coming back??

A: a ha! you've passed my are-you-paying-attention test! i'm baking up til August 26 - less than two weeks from today. i'll be back in time for Thanksgiving. get your bread while you can homies.

Q: baker boy, you say you're going to southeast asia, but where in the heck are you actually going?

A: well, i'm flattered you're that interested. our plan is to fly into bangkok, and travel around thailand, vietnam, cambodia, and laos. no super solid plans, we're just looking for a nice mix of adventure - wild nature, urban culture, peaceful temple, sweaty farming... if you've got any tips, i'd love to hear em.

Q: what in the frik am i going to do while you're gone?

A: you really are the sweetest. if you really like, you can buy a couple extra loaves and just freeze them in ziplock bags. freezing bread stops it right in its tracks, and then you can take it out whenever you like, let it thaw for a few hrs, toss it in a 350F oven for 10 min, and have a jbb party. take a pic of it and send it to me and make me happy.

Q: what's your sign?

A: i'm not into that kinda stuff, but i value different perspectives, and i love how curious you are.

Q: you're going to burning man, aren't you? i don't like burning man, even though i've never been... are you a burner?

A: yes, i'm going. no, i'm not a "burner." and i'm also not a hater. you shouldn't be either. as one of the greatest singer songwriters of my generation once said, "before you knock it, try it first." free loaf (!!!) to whoever names this trailblazer and acknowledges that i'm jking your a$s.

Q: what is this "big news" you keep hinting at? what the heck is your problem just tell me what you're talking about!

A: i'm glad i've piqued your interest and i'm going to drop the bomb soon, i promise you. you cannot rush a good loaf of bread.

Q: when is this funny q & a going to stop?

A: now.

<3 josey

good news and bad news

look what i found the other day - a little recipe card i made last thanksgiving to figure out how to make the most bread i'd ever made:

(a free loaf for the first person who knows what "FGR" means! e-mail me the answer, you greedy little breadmonster!)

i'm showing you that for a reason, but before i tell you why, i've got some news to tell you. some good news, and some bad news. but first i want you to sit down, and i'll sit down too. good, now we're comfy and sitting, and we can have a heart to heart...

so, i'm just going to come out and say it...

wait! do you want the good news or the bad news first? hmm...?

okay, bad news, of course you want the bad news, i want the bad news first too. so here goes...

i'm leaving.

but now quickly for the good news before you get too sad or pissed - i'm going on an awesome adventure, and then i'm coming back!

yup, the rumors are true - me and my most radical lady friend cathy are going to travel around Southeast Asia for two whole months, for September and October. i thought about maybe trying to twist things a little bit and say that this trip was somehow about bread or baking or something related to what i've been doing for the past year here, but honestly that would be dishonest, and i wanna just be honest with you. so this trip is not about bread.

it's about meeting rad people, and eating amazing food, and jumping off big rocks into clear water, and riding buses all night long, and working on tiny farms in the mountains, and climbing on ancient temples, and learning new languages, and waking up in the jungle, and scuba diving in underwater caves, and doing all sorts of other wonderful things that i can't even imagine, all with my most spectacular girl cathy. i might just be the luckiest guy in the whole wide world.

but i have a favor to ask - don't you go forgetting about me while i'm gone. i touch down back in the great U S of A on November 12, just in time to have Thanksgiving bread for you all. holy crap! that'll be one year since i first sold bread to a bunch of strangers for the first time! (remember that pic at the beginning of this post?) DailyCandy published a little article about me, and a bunch of strangers emailed me asking for bread, so i set up shop at my door, and folks came by all morning, buying up 60 loaves of bread that i baked in my dinky little home oven. wow. this is what i looked like, all happy and shit:

so anyway, once i'm back from adventuring, oh baby baby BABY i am BACK and will be continuing to do my bread thing, just for you.

i've also got a few big pieces of news that i want to share oh so bad, but it's just a bit too early. but don't you worry, as soon as i get the green light, i'm going to be freakin out over here, and you will hear alllll about it.

but in the mean time, look at this effing loaf of bread:

it is 100% whole wheat. one hundred per freaking cent dude! i can't even believe it. if you don't think this is a big deal, then poop on you, cuz it makes me extraordinarily pumped.

check ya real soon doggies

<3 josey

back in the saddle

someone had a pizza party this weekend... but that's not what i'm writing about.

a glimpse into my mind last Tuesday: i need to mix in how many pounds of flour to make 70 loaves? wait... 70 loaves, or 75 loaves? what kind of bread? how in the ef do i figure this out again???

i really knew that i'd been on vacation when thoughts like these and the very simple math (we ain't talkin calculus here peoples) were totally perplexing to me. Wednesday was a challenging day (ended up baking 140 loaves + 80 pocketbreads, which i didnt even realize til they were all in the oven), but Thursday was much smoother, and by Friday morning i was feeling incredibly grateful and pumped up to be back in the saddle, pulling a bunch of perfectly baked loaves out of that wood fired oven at pizzaiolo.

(btw check out this bread honeycomb i made at pizzaiolo! these are the loaves resting before i shape them into their final shape)

so i'm feeling pumped because i've been having a lot of hand and arm pain recently, but i picked up some rad tips from baker buddies in vermont, and i'm real optimistic that i'm going to be able to bake even better bread now, without . a lil background...

up until january, my job was primarily done on the computer. while i valued the work (writing teacher's guides and children's books) and loved my colleagues (some of the raddest, smartest, creative people i know), i fell out of love with what i was doing. (and holy crap, i'd grown real tired of spending all day staring at a screen, moving my fingers.) i caught the bread bug, and couldn't stop baking, blah blah blah, fast forward to now, where i'm baking about 300 loaves a week.

needless to say, going from a desk job to a bread baker is a big change in how i spend my days, and what i do with my body. i've always been active in my free time, but kneading 200 lbs of dough is a new activity, requiring the use of new muscles. so, when my hand and arm started to ache like a muh fuh a few months ago, i started to wonder, "am i cut out to be a baker?" this was a bit a of a shocker - never had i considered that my body wouldn't be able to handle baking bread. so i started taking care of this new problem, going to acupuncture, going to a chiropractor, stretching my new muscles. and i started looking at how i was using my body, the muscles i was using and over-working, and what i could change to make things easier on me.

and things became a lot clearer while i was home, visiting other small scale baking operations. all of the sudden it dawned on me - i was still doing some things the way i'd done them when i was a home baker. and shit, i'm not a home baker anymore. specifically, i was mixing and kneading my dough all by hand in 40 lb batches, in a way that was way more difficult than it needed to be. i had this humongous mixer at my disposal at Mission Pie, but i was refusing to use it because i didn't like the idea of machine mixing, and i thought that i could bake better bread if i did every single step by hand. however, i liked the idea of baking bread without super sore hands and arms a lot more, and i found out that i can get the same quality bread by using the mixer for just the first part of the mixing, then doing the rest of it by hand in even smaller batches than before. (think doing 100 curls with 20 lb dumb bells vs. doing 20 curls with 100 lb dumb bells... which one would you choose?)

sooo, i've tweaked my methods just a little bit, and my arms are feeling awesome, and i think the bread this week is going to be the best bread i've ever made.

the moral of the story - from time to time step back and look at what you're doing, get rid of the stuff that no longer makes sense, and adopt new practices that fit the present. it's easy to keep doing what you've always done, but you ain't never gonna grow with an attitude like that, sucker.

anyway, enough of this emo mumbo jumbo. i've discovered some radical secrets of whole wheat bread, and i'm going to pump them out for you come Thursday at Mission Pie. if you know what's good for you, you'll come get crunchy with me.

<3 josey

oh my goodness me... I'M BACK

my rad buddies at Elmore Mtn Bread said it best:

BUT ANYWAY UGH OH OH OH IF I COULD JUMP RIGHT THROUGH THIS SCREEN AND HUG YOU I WOULD IT'S BEEN TOO LONG I'VE MISSED YOU LIKE YOU WOULDN'T BELIEEEEEEVE!!!

did you miss me? (just say you did even if you didn't, otherwise things'll get real awkward real fast)

Vermont was amazing. super relaxing, tons of wonderful time with my family and old friends, and i got to hang with some very rad bakers along the way. bakers... they are consistently so frikkin cool. what's the deal with that???

check it dogs...

the 3 seed bread at Bread & Butter Farm is out of control:

as is their dark rye:

and the fellas at Red Hen bake THOUSANDS of loaves every single day of the year, and they are all TOTALLY AMAZING:

and i just think this is pretty:

and i love climbing things:

hope to see you so soon honey pies.

<3 josey

aw mannn i've fully breaded myself out (IMPOSSIBLE)

look what i pulled out of the oven this morning i nearly crapped my pants!!!

twas a big ol loaf of cinnamon raisin, made at the request of my dearest brother jed. yup, that one and a (shhh) rye sandwich loaf, made at the request of my superhumanly wise stepfather mike. no pictures of that one, sorry dudes. people been askin me bout making rye bread for a while now, so i maybe, just maybe, will start whipping it up for all ya'll once i'm back in the wild west. stay tuned.

but any frikkin way, i ate too much of that bread, and now i just ate too much of this AWESOME bread:

i truly cannot help myself. (and i don't want to so don't try to talk me out of it cuz people only change when they want) i bought three loaves of Elmore Mountain Bread, cuz these cats are the baddest cats on the block. but what the heck, lord knows i didn't need to buy 3 loaves of bread...

BUT I DID AND DO NEED TO BUY THREE LOAVES OF BREAD CUZ I WANTED TO TRY THEM ALL AND THEY'RE ALL DIFFERENT AND ALL SO GOD DAMN DELICIOUS.

and it's research, right? i'm a bread detective, you must remember.

so WHAT were the loaves inspector gadget?!?

well, i was just sitting here waiting for you to ask... BUT I'M NOT TELLING! HA! TAKE THAT!

don't be a $hithead baker boy.

fine. maple cinnamon & raisin (YES!!! only in vermont), country french (exquisitely done), and brewer's bread (what the ef is that?!?): a sourdough bread made with locally brewed beer and spent barley. i know, fully rad. this is what it looked like:

and this is what it did to me:

and, well, that about does it dogs. i got beer to drink. i'm on vacation after all.

<3 josey

i didn't know how bad i missed you til i was back in your arms...

VERMONT!!! holy friggin crap Vermont you are so so SO sexy in all your sweaty sunny summer time glory. it feels real real good to be in your big green arms once again.

i'm totally loving my time here, hangin with fam, sweating at night (remember that?), and loving up the loaves real good for my loved ones. it's so super nice to be baking one loaf at a time... it's been a while since i did that, and it feels awesome.

but don't you go worryin yr pretty lil heart san francisco, i miss you too, and i will be floating right back on to ya next friday.

check this totally rad dude who i met at my family reunion yesterday:

ohhh yeahhh.

<3 josey

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.

<3 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.

<3 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)

you just sign up for a emmer effing josey baker bread party, that's how.

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.

let's party.

<3 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.

<3 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

<3 josey

holy crap i'm on TV

i cannot believe it.
<3 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

<3 josey

holy $hit that was the most ever

mother effer i gotta just say - SO TOTALLY TOTALLY AWESOME I WANNA KISS YOU ALL ON YOUR BREADCRUMB COVERED FACES. this week saw 320 loaves come and go. holy $hit. that's the most ever. i can't really believe it.

anyway, enough about all this bread... bread's boring. which is why i'm here to announce that i'm quitting.

i'm quitting to join the circus so i can practice backflips like this one (which i'll be the first to admit could use some work):

DON'T BE SILLY I'M NOT QUITTING! i'm just getting started. i wouldn't do that to you, no no NO.

but for real, i'm getting close to my limit for the amount of bread i can bake in a week. what will i do once i get there? that's a very good question!

my plan is to just keep doing my thing, making all the bread by my lonesome, and when i can't bake anymore, i can't bake anymore.

but "by my lonesome" is perhaps a bit misleading these days... i have the occasional helpful hand of my buddy Sophie at Mission Pie who knows way more about bread than i do:

and also my main man Alex who has been helping out with sales at MP:

these cats are killer, so if you see them around give them a loud slap high five (and then maybe a little pat on their heinie).

for the time being, i feel like the luckiest baker boy there ever was.

til soon cutie pies

<3 josey

bread & circuses

my lord, i'm so totally honored to be a part of the bay area's awesome community of bakers, as well as a part of isis' wonderfully thoughtful article about said community, featured on SFBlotter. thank you isis. check out some excerpts below, as well as a link to the whole thing...

~~~

There is a bustling, flour-dusted community of the wee morning hours, tucked away into glowing kitchens. From re-purposed turn of the century storefronts on the East Bay to barns in Sonoma to back yard cottages on the tip of Marin, all across the region, the Bay Area’s hearth-fires burn.

... there is another sort of baker, the child of the hybrid digital-DIY age. One such man is Josey Baker, the audacious fellow behind Josey Baker Bread. As his blog informs us, Josey is a self-taught, ad hoc baker who, through trial, error, and long hours with Chad’s bread bible Tartine Bread, has come to produce one of San Francisco’s most prized homegrown loaves...

{read on, curious reader...}

double drop kick right where it counts

man o man, i'm all wide eyed and smiley over here, cuz this is a big week for me. i'm going for a double drop kick right in life's balls this time, if ya know what i mean.

... ummm, no, actually i don't know what you mean... "double drop kick in life's balls?" who are you?

just a silly baker boy who can't stop baking bread, that's who.

before i explain what in the heck i'm talking about, i want to give a shout out to a rad man from the Bi Rite crew. for real - he's been the sweetest, coolest, most supportive guy on the block. he's what i like to call a heartbrother. throughout every conversation we've had, he's been super encouraging and always willing and able to think up creative solutions and it's shown me yet another reason why Bi Rite is such a rad place. his name's Raph, and this is what he looks like:

so, i have a favor to ask of you - if you see him around Bi Rite, blow him a kiss, and tell him josey baker sent you.

now back to that double drop kick talk... this wednesday and thursday @ 5pm there'll be a new bread on the shelves of Bi Rite. (it's mine!!!) there's a wee buzz in the air about this launch, so please o please, if you wanna be sure to get the bread, get there as close to 5pm as ya can. it pains my heart when folks are denied their daily bread, so save me some heartache and zip on over there to pick up your loaf.

HEY josey baker, you mentioned some sort of "secret special treat" for people who bought these first Bi Rite breads... what in the heck are you talking about???

well, that sure would be boring if i told you all the details, now wouldn't it? if'n you wanna find out, you know what to do. you'll be able to redeem a little coupon from the Bi Rite bread with me at Mission Pie, any W or Th from 5-9pm.

happy sunday honey pies.

<3 josey

Josey Baker Bread in BI RITE ! ! !

THE CAT IS OUTTA THE BAG THE TRAIN HAS LEFT THE STATION THE WOLVES HAVE BROKEN INTO THE HENHOUSE WAAAAHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

um, excuse me josey baker, what are you freakin out about???

OH NOTHING JUST THAT I'M GOING TO START SELLING MY BREAD AT A LITTLE PLACE CALLED BI RITE MARKET MOTHEREFFER YEESSSSSSSSSS! ! !

oh wow! now i see why you've been freakin out. good for you dude!

I KNOW RIGHT TOTALLY TOTALLY RIP ROARING AWESOME I AM FEELING LIKE I JUST MASTERED A TRIPLE BACK FLIP TWIST OFF A ROCKCLIFF THROUGH A HUGE WATERFALL OH MAN OH MAN OH MAN

well that's pretty amazing (and a little weird) and i'm wondering if you could calm down and actually tell me some of the details? maybe stop writing in all caps even?

STOP WRITING IN ALL CAPS WHY IN THE HECK WOULD I WANNA DO THAT I'M GONNA BE IN BI RITE WWWAAAAAHHHOOOOOOO

josey...

FINE.

starting in a week and a half, on Wednesday, May 25, my bread will be in Bi-Rite every Wednesday & Thursday evening @ 5pm. i'm working with SF bike messenger company TCB Courier, who are super duper cool, to bike the bread from Mission Pie hot outta the oven. in case ya don't know, Bi-Rite is on 18th St b/w Guerrero & Dolores.

the Bi-Rite bread schedule for now:

Wednesday, 5-9pm

• black pepper parmesan
• seed feast

Thursday, 5-9pm

• walnut levain
• whole wheat levain

and check this out - there are special treats in store for those who buy these first Bi-Rite breads... you'll be able to take the bread bag from Bi-Rite and bring it to Mission Pie, where i will trade you for secret treats. will tell you more about this soon.

but remember - this won't start for another week and a half. but get ready. and tell your friends. and your enemies. this is going to be awesome.

in case you couldn't tell, this is really big news for me, so again, as always, THANK YOU for your support. it makes me feel very special.

hearts & rainbows,

josey

bread needs vacation too

holy gosh darn moly, i am L*O*V*I*N*G these super sunny days these days. are you? (if not, you need to get your noggin right outta your bum, cuz this is rad)

this past weekend i rode my new bicycle:

down to half moon bay and slept on the beach with my main man rafi. when we got to pacifica we rode on the old highway 1, otherwise known as "planet of the apes." amazing!

this section of overgrown and broken down concrete winds its way up a ridge, curling away from the ocean, and then spitting you out on top where you can stare off into the distance and be blown away by how mothereffing gorgeous california is while also catching your breath before your head explodes.

you can also stop to play toss with a loaf of country levain...

can you spot the loaf of bread? look closely! its in there... scroll down the bottom of post to see.

we rode down a very rutted out dirt path, only to find that a big fence was trying to stop us from getting back on to the new highway 1. oh no you don't fence! we'll climb you right quick and then laugh in your stupid fence face!

raf and i jumped the fence with cat-like agility:

but the fence got pissed and laid the smack down on my new bike:

anyway - we rode on and on, ate delicious hamburgers, i slept til 11 the next morning (what?!?), laughed uncontrollably for hours, and made it back in time to go to Mission Chinese for dinner Saturday night.

i love california.

check ya soon doggies

<3 josey

here's a close up of the bread in mid flight:

yes, we are playing toss and catch with a loaf of country levain. so what? bread needs to have fun too.

i be eatin with abs

abigail wick reached out to me a few weeks ago, asking if i'd be interested in being a guest columnist on her blog, Eating With Abs.

a guest columnist?!? ME??? heck yes i'm interested. (i'd never done such a thing, nor had i ever envisioned doing such a thing, but ya just never know where you're gonna end up now, do ya?)

so... i whipped up a few words about my breadjourney thus far, and i'll be damned, she just posted that whole darn thing, right up there.

if'n you're looking for something to do (other than tell your mother how much you love and miss her) then give it a look see.

i'm off to tell my mother and stepmother how much i love and miss them.

<3 josey