Untamed Bakeshop

Wild and cultivated pIants alike cannot escape me! I spotted a thicket of blackberries reaching out with an offering of ripe, succulent berries yesterday, so this morning I walked over with an empty bucket and my dog for some berry gathering.

There's something symbolic about having the courage to reach out and wrestle through a mass of green thorns to gently pull back ready to burst fruit within.

Also, eating blackberries off the vine makes me feel like a scavenging bear. 🐻

You won't find me at the farmers market today. No booth, no sourdough tortillas, no blueberry lavender scones, no date pecan coconut cookies, and no jasmine zucchini bread.

Instead, I'm letting things flow naturally and transitioning from farmers markets to hands-on culinary workshops, where you get to learn how to make wise, nourishing food.

Even though I put a lot of effort and care into the products I offer at market, there's always something missing: love. It doesn't matter how much you care, when made in such vast quantities, it's impossible to lovingly make food for others. When real food is prepared by you or for you, it is juicy and ripe with love. It's this unspoken ingredient of love that nourishes us on a deeper level and satisfies our thirst for connection. By having an intimate connection to our food, we forge a lasting connection to others and self.

Untamed Bakeshop is teaching hands-on culinary workshops to help you reclaim a connection to food and, therefore, ourselves.

For details, sign up for my email newsletter - it dives so much deeper than social media. DM me with your email address and I'll sign you up 💜

New workshops are posted for August, ya'll! https://www.untamedbakeshop.com/workshop-calendar/

Finding joy in life's little moments 💜

Just ONE SPOT LEFT for brine pickling workshop tonight! Make probiotic zucchini basil pickles and take home one of these beautifully handmade ceramic fermentation weights from ✨ 🥒🏋🏻‍♀️

Come with empty hands, leave with everything you need to start brine pickling at home!

The last ticket is available on my website (link in bio)

Jasmine scented zucchini bread ready for your Fourth of July festivities 🇺🇸 I've got whole loaves and slices today at the Wednesday farmers market in Chico

Still life is often misconstrued to be a perfect, clean, quiet, delicious, easy life. This mess, however, is my current reality.

My home oven - new in February - no longer holds any sort of weight in it's chamber. The racks buckle if asked to hold anything heavier than a loaf pan of zucchini bread and come crashing down in the white hot oven. Even my patchwork compromise of doubling up both racks and securing them with aluminum foil isn't enough anymore.

A few months ago, I pulled the trigger and ordered a brand new Rofco b40. This electric deck oven will change my life, as it will enable me to bake 10-12 loaves of bread AT ONCE instead of 2 in my current oven. What would previously take me literally 10 hours to bake will come out in 2.

Back in May, this oven was backordered and its ETA was the middle of June. I received new word on my oven this morning and learned that it's delivery date to a warehouse in the Midwest has been pushed back to the end of August. This means I'm not anticipating even seeing it until September.

This is a huge disappointment, as this oven dictates when I can return to the Red Bluff farmer's market, when I can again get bread to local folks with bread shares, and when I can begin hosting hands-on sourdough workshops.

I'm definitely frustrated about the current situation, but there just isn't much I can do. The world still ticks on and I'm learning to swim in rough waters as they come.

Salt, water, vegetables, and time. After 5 days of hanging out on my kitchen counter, these raw wee patty pan squash have been transformed into pickles packed with probiotics! We'll be packing our own jars of these squash and basil pickles in my Seasonal Probiotic Pickle Workshop this Friday. A few tickets are still available - check the link in my bio to join us ✨

You're a busy person. Your days are spent worrying about all the other things except food and why does it matter anyways - food is available everywhere. The problem is this lack of stillness. This life of constant busyness and go-go-go mentality. This disconnect with food and therefore a disconnect with self.

Did you know that studies are showing a direct link between gut health and overall happiness? Taking the time to slow down and be part of something is more important than accomplishing an impressive list of tasks. I've found that taking the time to know my food and what is fueling each and every cell in my body makes me happiest and gives me the most energy. Getting my hands in my food and being able to share a product that took days, weeks, or even months to make gives me a full-circle sense of place - an empowered sense of ability to care for and heal myself with food.

Want to learn the art of complete self-care with food? Join me Friday, July 6 from 7-8 in Paradise, CA for a Seasonal Probiotic Pickle Workshop, where we'll make wee basil summer squash probiotic pickles ✨

For more info or to sign up, see link in bio or wonder over to my website

Summer squash reminds me a lot of humans: big, small, round, thin, sassy, straight-edge, fun, serious, different colors, different textures, different flavors. All so different, all with their own differences, and all that shine when utilized in a way that showcases their uniqueness. HUGE, overgrown, "bland," too big to eat squash is wonderful shredded and baked into bread, muffins, and doughnuts or hidden in some turkey meatballs. WEE bitty, skinny, baby, too small squash is lovely fermented whole and used in place of traditional cucumber pickles.

I'll be making and loving both with this post-market squash bounty from and ✨

Fermentation is about diving hands-first into your food. It's about getting to know your food. Its about getting to know yourself. It's more than just feeding yourself: it's self-empowerment in knowing how to transform raw market vegetables into probiotic superfoods!

Join me in July for a hands-on workshop and take home:

+ A quart of wee zucchini basil pickles (made by you!)

+ Handmade fermentation weights from

+ Knowledge and information to start fermenting the summer bounty at home

Feed yourself and your microbiome. Know your food - get your hands in there. 💪🏻

People don't often expect to walk up to a bakery booth at the farmers market and see bags of freshly rolled flour tortillas made from local grains and a variety of local fats. It throws folks off so much that they often ask me how to use them.

I try not to overwhelm in my response, because tortillas can be used for just about anything. The only limit is your imagination and maybe your own preconceived notions about the way food "should be." I usually find myself in savory taco-mode with scrambled eggs, roasted veggies, and avocado but this morning felt like a sweet summer breakfast kind of day with one of my Lovely Lard Tortillas, cardamom chia nut butter adapted from , fresh bluberries, strawberries and apricots from the , and a drizzle of local buckwheat honey.

This versatility is what I love: the perfect blank slate for all sorts of summer flavors to stack inside. Sweet, savory, breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, snack. How do you use tortillas? What is your most creative concoction?

Jasmine scented zucchini bread at market today ✨

Spelt flour from , zucchini from , honey from , eggs from , and jasmine blossoms from Katie Mae Herbals 🙏🏻

So very thankful for all the gorgeous produce at my finger tips. These hand-picked blueberries will find their way into some market goodies this week. Blueberry lavender or blueberry cinnamon scones...what do you think?

For the first time in a long time, I sent out an email newsletter this morning. I'm ready to reconnect with you in a more personal way - beyond the convenience of infinitely scrolling Instagram feeds and stories that play on automatic. I'm ready to share my real stories with YOU, so that you can better know the gal behind these words and photos.

I have a lot of new things blossoming in the next few months that I'm really excited to share with you. To join me for monthly emails, click the link in my bio {I've got some freebies and giveaways planned that you locals might want to know about} ✨

Here {smiling} at the 💙

Oyster mushroom beauties from my friends at 🍄❤️

Soon to be cooked and crisped in house-made ghee and folded into savory scone dough with herbs and caramelized garlic. Catch them early at the tomorrow! It's gonna be a hot one

Something in the cosmos {outside and inside of me} has left me with thefeeling of tumbling in a tunnel of chaos - the same week replaying itself again and again. On Saturday, something clicked and the day morphed into a flow-state of cleaning / prepping / organizing my physical space for the week to come.

The immediate result was palpable: I have space to breathe. I don't feel like all my things {mental and physical} are oozing through my pores and cupboard cracks. With a cottage bakery, it's easy to let the lines between business and personal life blurr together. Now, I have bakery things in the bakery space and my things in my personal space and I'm ready to start the week, rather than it pressing on without me. I'm inspired to create.

I've got fermentation friends all around me, space to move and grow, plans in the works, and excitement for where it's all going 💙

This is what my morning planning & productivity looks like: sunshine and iced chocolate with house-made cashew milk

Ready for this beautiful day! ✨

MARKET SPECIAL: Black cumin seed sonora tortillas 🙌

Come by for a sample at the Wednesday from 7:30-1 in the parking lot

Levain build last night is ready for action this morning.

Look: Air pockets, volume doubled since last night's mix

Aroma: Sweet, fermented apple

Taste: Acidic, subtle sweetness

Touch: Sticky, what I would imagine to be quicksand

This is just the start of the process involved in making sourdough bread. Just as all good things have a starting point, my journey does as well...

While my Bakeshop will continue to hand-mix small batches of sourdough bread and tortillas, I've got another thing coming that I'm particularly STOKED about...

Starting in July, Untamed Bakeshop will begin offering hands-on workshops on topics spanning all manner of fermentation: kraut, pickles, kimchi, kombucha & jun, miso, olive curing, and sourdough.

Sign up for my email list to be the first to know (even before Instagram!) about upcoming workshops ✨

Over the last 2 nights, these beans soaked in the full moon light and got to moon bathe before being weighted for fermentation ✨

Now the magic begins. One sweet baby lima bean miso will be ready in 6-8 weeks, one black calypso bean mugi miso around Christmas time, and one big ass batch {see super tall jar 👆} ready at the close of 2019 🙌

And now the nerve-racking part: praying for no mold and sweet sweet salty future miso!

I've had the intention to make miso in the Bakeshop for the last month. Miso ages in summers and can easily reach 1-10 years of age depending on the salt and koji content added to the mix of beans and water. {Koji is the name of the culture for this type of fermentation, which traditionallg comes as barley innoculated with the fungus aspergillus oryzae.} Such a long lifespan makes it tricky to plan: mixing miso for me must be in the right energy.

While I wanted to make miso during the last full moon, the timing just wasn't right. Life felt like it was bursting with hectic chaos - definitely not the kind of energy I want to host for the next year. Tonight's full moon feels healing, grounding, and open - perfect for a nice long fermentation project like miso.

Just as I mentioned with a baker friend, we must give life to create life. Fermentation is definitely an art rooted in a rich diversity of life and thrives in a positive environment - just like us.

Fermentation reminds me that what I give, I get tenfold back in return 🙏

We keep going along with our heads down, doing the day's work but soon days turn into weeks and weeks into months. While looking down at each day, we lose sight of the goal - the long-term projection - the desired end point. Sometimes all it takes is a moment of looking up from where we are to see the direction we are headed.

I find that as a business owner and people pleaser, the direction of Untamed Bakeshop has drifted through the last few months as I navigate demands of customers and attempt to strike a balance between what others want and what MY vision is for MY business.

Sometimes I struggle to remember but right now the vision is crystal clear. I need to take this picture in my head, frame it on the walls, and fix it to the background of my desktop. I never want to lose sight of where I want to be.

Art credit:

Loaves are now coming out of the oven, into bags, and to the 🙌

C🍪🍪kies have been a fun way of connecting with all kinds of customers. I've got lots of ideas in my head and I'm learning more and more about what you like and what you don't really care for in a cookie. It's hard to beat a cookie made with whole grain flour and unrefined sweeteners though...my favorite comment that I get consistently is "these are cookies like I make" and "I like these because they aren't too sweet." I like sweetness but I also like balance and I'm glad that's also what you're looking for.

The end of May marks the end of the Garden Mint Chocolate Chip...stay tuned for what cookie is coming in June!

Life is a game. How I live it / treat it / what I do is completely up to me. The food I eat, air I breathe, water I drink, sunshine I see, the attitude I have, the perspective I take on, the things I make time for. It's all my choice to make.

Even a simple breakfast can be fun and full of meaning: savoring of the short apricot season, sipping of locally blended chai, first blueberries of the year, a nut butter blend that I made myself, and toast that took me 18 hours to create. An agenda of being on my feet for the next 8-12 hours...

Though life can certainly be hard, from here it's pretty hard to complain. Life should be less like studying for an exam and more like fun. Why take everything so seriously anyways? 💃🏻