Spring hard wheat comes in big!



Most folks around the valley know that Summer Jo's bakes some of the best artisan bread this side of the Rogue River, but what you may not know is that we also grow some of our own wheat, certified-organic of course. And while it's not enough to keep up with demand for our breakfast bagels, dinner rolls, pizza crusts, sandwich slices, and artisan loaves, you can almost always be guaranteed that there's a little local wheat in every bite of our bread. This year our beautiful stand of Spring hard wheat, a variety called Ingot, came in at almost 1500 pounds, four times more than before.

Summer Jo's welcomes our new artisan baker Alex Ruhland!

From ready-made pizza crust to rosemary rolls to kalamata olive loafs to multigrain goodness sliced for sandwiches, Summer Jo's full line of gourmet artisan breads are available at these and other regional retailers throughout Southern Oregon.

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So I finally nailed down ingredients and measurements for a small batch of wild yeast-naturally leavened honey whole wheat bagels and decided it was time to scale up. That is, to increase the volume by ten times so that we could at least have a few bags of bagels for each of our 11 established bread venues.

We followed the procedures I'd developed to the letter. Each ingredient was measured out 10 times its initial volume, all were loaded into our gigantic planetary mixer, mixed, fermented, divided, and scaled, and placed into the bagel forming machine.

But the bagel machine was not behaving as it had in the past, spitting out perfectly formed bagels. Oh, no it began spewing out bagel goo all over the bakery and into my hair. I quickly shut down the machine, looked around me in dismay, and started in on about three hours of cleaning up, not to mention throwing away 40 pounds of bagel dough.

And so I learned something. The recipe/procedure did not scale up. I've determined since then that I need to decrease the water-to-flour ratio, but still each bake is an adventure, because the moisture content of the dough is dependent upon flour hydration rate, water, flour, and air temperature, plus wild yeast activity. So more fun awaits, I am sure. But I'm not giving up.

-Nancy Groth

Wedding Cakes, Birthday Cakes, Anniversary Cakes, Cakes for any Special Occasion.

You can count on us using the freshest, finest ingredients.  With cakes, it’s free-range eggs, rbgh-free butter and milk products, pure  vanilla, organic fruit, real liquers, and imported chocolate.

Create your own cake!

From a 5-inch cake that serves 4-6 for $20 to an 18-inch one that feeds 90-100 for just $180, our ovens are always warm and waiting for your custom cake order. Wedding cakes are just $10 a tier after the first.

Choose from Vanilla Genoise, Chocolate Devil’s Food, Poppyseed, Meyer Lemon, Carrot, Pumpkin, Spice and Champagne; filled with your choice of whipped cream, lemon curd, orange curd, or butter cream; and frosted with your choice of Vanilla, Chocolate, Almond, Raspberry, Apricot, Blackberry, Creme de Menthe, or Grand Marnier. 

Summer Jo's baking squad has just added a new player. This month, Amber Birmingham brings her baking experience, enthusiasm, and charm to our bakery.

Summer Jo's Professor of Dough Chester "Ski" Smiegelski has been guiding Amber in the fine points of our unique and exacting two-day baking process, and she's turning out some beautiful loaves of our Golden Raisin Fennel Seed and our Kalamata Olive Bread.

Ski says she's a rising star in the whole-grain field.

-Nancy

A long-time customer told me a story about a friend of hers who had retired and moved to a small town. The friend had chosen her retirement home for its small-town charm: she said she just loved the little shops.

Flash forward a couple of years. Now the charming little mom-and pop shops are gone, victims of the economic downturn. And my customer's friend is wondering why she is even there.

Or rather, she knows why she's there: her home value has dropped so low she can't afford to leave.

As I listened, my heart skipped a beat. I thought, "there but for the grace of God go I." We moved to this small town ten years ago, not to retire but to start a business.
To me, the owner of one of those small local family businesses, the moral of the story seems perfectly (and painfully) clear: we should all be supporting local businesses if we want this kind of community to survive.

But in these tough economic times families have to tighten their belts. I certainly understand that.

I guess I just want to say, if you do have dollars to spend and you care about the character of our community, do think about supporting local businesses.
It makes a difference.

-Nancy

As we do every January, Mike and Nancy made a pilgrimage to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit friends and family and to do what we like to call fine dining research.

This year we researched lunch at Greens and Slanted Door. Slanted Door specializes in small plates, something we plan to do more of in 2009. And the legendary Greens restaurant is an inspiration for all we do at Summer Jo's.

Touring the 5-story recreation of a tropical rain forest at the California Academy of Sciences was inspiring in a different way, reinforcing our recognition of how dependent we all are on the elaborate and subtle balance of nature.

Slanted Door is in San Francisco's Ferry Building, and while there we checked out all the markets that do business there. Acme Bread Company, Cowgirl Creamery, Prather Ranch, Gary West Meats, and Anderson Ranch had a presence, and there was produce from local Bay Area farms.

We also attended (more research) the Fancy Food Show in the city, where we tasted (researched, that is) many cheeses in anticipation of adding a cheese menu to the restaurant's offerings in 2009. And as we roamed the aisles of fancy foods, we were pleased to run into a number of friends from here at home, including the folks from Cary's, Gary West, Lillie Belle Chocolates, and The Rogue Creamery.

We don't know how many times we've been asked for this. Well, we listened. We have now coordinated our baking schedules so that we are able to bring you those much-asked-for Rosemary Rolls at Ashland Food Coop, Gooseberries, Ray's, and everywhere we sell our bread. Summer Jo Rosemary Rolls are now available along with the Kalamata Olive bread and other breads at all the usual venues.

Note: Rosemary Rolls on Fridays only. 

As in years past, the restaurant will be closed for six weeks from January 1 through February 13. The bakery, on the other hand,  will stay open during the break. So you’ll still be able to find our breads and pizza shells and Groovy Granola and specialty food products at the usual stores.

We told you when we launched our bakery operation that bread was just the beginning. Next up: granola. Soon you'll be able to get your crunch on at grocer near you with a Summer Jo's new granola, a mix so groovy that we had to name it Groovy Granola. We'll let you know when and where to look for it, but if you can't wait to see if it's up to crunch, you can pick up a pack in the restaurant after your next meal with us.

-Nancy

This reluctant baker-blogger would rather have his hands in bread dough than a keyboard, but here goes:

With the warm weather of late, we have been using ice in the mixing stage. This is to keep the temperature of the dough on the cool side (low 70s) so it doesn't become overactive in the benching and shaping process.

New products on the Summer Jo testing track include flavored pizza crusts. We're thinking along the lines of natural flavors such as roasted garlic, chipotle pepper, fresh farm herbs, whole wheat, sesame seed, poppy seed, and parmesan cheese (and any other ones that call out to you).

Signing off now ... but just for thought: The next time you eat bread and notice an air pocket, remember that's where the baker sleeps. So watch your bites.

-Chester Smigielski