By ANNA PLUMMER
For The Beachcomber
I spent the better part of 10 years working at Sound Food’s bakery bench watching the light of day appear and a little too often seeing the darkness return. Dick Paulsen put that bench in, and my hands can still feel the landscape of it.
My alarm rang at 3:30 a.m. and by 5 a.m. everything was rising: the sun, the ham and cheese croissants, the cinnamon rolls, the cardamom nut rolls, the butterflies, the almond bear claws. Some of the breads were baked and some were coming along. Do you remember Fagassa, three cheese sourdough Swedish, Anadama, Challah? While the yeasted items were rising, it was time to get the cherry turnovers, coffee cakes, muffins and scones in and out of the oven. Walnut streusel, Vermont apple cake, triple-ginger ginger bread, carrot ginger cupcakes, scones of sweet potato pecan, orange currant, lemon lavender.
When I began working at Sound Food, the one oven was a dinosaur requiring constant rearranging of the trays to ensure even baking and a steak knife to keep the door closed. When I’d called a repair man to come “fix” it, he’d walk into the bakery, take one look it, shake his head and my hand, turn to Dave Johnson, one of the owners, and say, “Buy this woman an oven that works.” I did make it work for many years before the thrilling technology of convection ovens finally arrived.
Many of the recipes I followed had been created 20 years prior. Sour cream lime or lemon pie, fruit cobblers, the breads and the cookies: peanut butter, gallettes, snickerdoodle, ginger molasses and the one that brought out the worst in people if we were out, the cowboy cookie (walnuts, oatmeal and chocolate chips). It was occasionally referred to as the cowgirl cookie if someone neglected to add the walnuts.
By opening time, the case would be filled with morning pastries and breads, and there was space in the oven to fill. Time for cookies, fudge nut squares, linzer bars, energy bars, everything brownies, desserts and special orders. There were cakes (German chocolate, coconut cream, chocolate/ raspberry/almond, lemon poppyseed, rhubarb with caramel icing, endless fruit pies (coconut cream, banana cream, black-bottom peanut butter) and tarts, custards, roulades and trifles.
In other words, I did a whole lot of baking at Sound Food. I carried a lot of bags of flour and sugar. I can’t begin to count how many people I trained, how many cowboy cookies I baked, how many owners, managers, cooks and bakers came and went. I can still hear the sound of the walk-in door closing and the jingle of the bells on the Minglement door.
Bakeries make people happy, and when people asked me what I did for a living, I felt fortunate to answer, “I wake, bake and make people happy.”
Thank you to Vashon and all the Island visitors who entered through the heavy wood Sound Food door. We are sad to see the end and lucky to have had the experience.
— Anna Plummer worked at Sound Food from 1995 to 2005.
She now works at The Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie and Minglement and bakes upon request
