THE ROADHOUSE AT CRIPPEN CREEK FARM
/Your favorite family farm getaway just got more family friendly.
Read MoreYour favorite family farm getaway just got more family friendly.
Read MoreIt was 12 years ago when Kitty and I happened on to a fabulous restaurant in Palermo, Sicily and discovered the dish known as Pasta Ricci. Our waiter did not speak English and my Italian was quite limited. The best that I could determine is that it was pasta with seafood. However when my pasta arrived there was nothing discernible on it as seafood. It was actually quite nondescript. But oh, the taste! The next day we learned from our local driver that we had been eating pasta with sea urchins. I'm not sure that if I had known that at the time if I would have ordered it. Perhaps ignorance is bliss. I have been chasing that flavor ever since and have never met anyone that's ever heard of it that is until we met Jaime and Keith Bussell. The Bussells are guests that have been coming to our inn for several years. They are well traveled and very food savvy. Last year when I mentioned the pasta ricci, not only had they heard of it, they had recently prepared it. So imagine our surprise and delight when FedEx arrived with fresh uni and the Bussells showed up to prepare it for us. It was as wonderful as we remembered it in Sicily and perhaps even more so because of the thoughtfulness of our guest chefs.
Should you happen to travel to Sicily, I recommend that you search out this dish. If you happen to have access to fresh uni, I recommend you cook it for yourself. It's quite easy.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it until it tastes like the sea. Meanwhile lightly saute 3 - 4 cloves of chopped garlic with a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes in a half cup of extra virgin olive oil. The garlic should be soft but not brown. Turn off the heat until the pasta is done. When the pasta is done, add it to the olive oil along with a 1/4 cup of the pasta water. Add the uni and toss well until the uni breaks up into a creamy and unctuous sauce. Serve immediately and do not add any cheese. Buon appetito!
BREAD! Can you think of a more universally loved component of a meal than bread? Italians love their focaccia and ciabatta, The French their baguettes and pain au levain, Indians their naan, Mexicans their tortillas and the list goes on and on. Bread finds its place at breakfast lunch and dinner.
It is believed that bread first appeared about 4000 years ago in Egypt and probably as a by-product of beer making. There is no shortage of metaphors and spiritual references to bread. In Hebrew texts God feeds his people with manna from heaven. Christians have Jesus as “the bread of life.” The word Bethlehem means “house of bread.” Our word companion is derived from a Latin phrase, “com pan” which translates to “bread with.” How comforting is it to break bread with a companion? Suffice it to say that bread plays a significant role in almost every culture and religion.
Many of you in Wahkiakum County remember the bread we sold for several years at the Puget Island Farmers Market. It got to the point where the production schedule conflicted with our Bed and Breakfast business which was our real “bread and butter” so to speak. The farm market hours conflicted with the most popular day and time that most of our guests check in. Although we have been absent from the market, we haven’t exactly been loafing. We have continued baking for our guests, for special orders and have even taught many of you how to bake bread at one of our cooking classes. During this time Don has continued to learn more about the art, craft and science of bread baking as a member of the Bread Bakers Guild of America. Visits to such luminary bakeries as ACME in Berkeley, TARTINE in San Francisco and KEN’S ARTISAN BAKERY in Portland have inspired us to try new recipes and techniques that challenge us to build a better loaf of bread.
All of this is just a long way of saying, “We’re back in the bread business.” But we are back with a new model because the scheduling conflict that caused us to leave the market still exists. So here is what we are proposing. As our schedule permits, we will make bread available for pick up after 3 PM on Tuesdays at The Inn At Crippen Creek Farm or at Skamokawa Resort if that is more convenient. We will notify you via email (you can subscribe to our newsletter on this page.) of our bread offerings and occasional specialty items (such as eggs, sausage and produce) for the following week. You can then email your order to theinn@crippencreek.com or phone us at 360-795-0585 no later than 3 p.m. Saturday to place your order. Rome was not built in a day and neither are our breads. Some of them take 3 days to build. That slow fermentation is where all the flavor comes from. We use flour from Shepherd's Grain, an alliance of local Pacific Northwest farms that are economically sustainable, Food Alliance certified and practice direct seed farming.
We are going to kick off our re-start with our newest creation, a French Country Levain. In France this would be known as a pain au levain. This hand crafted bread is naturally leavened with wild yeast and slowly fermented. So basically this is sourdough but that term is misleading because this dough is tangy, not sour so it pairs well with almost any meal. This slow natural method makes the bread more digestible, gives it a longer shelf life and a truly superior taste. This will be our only offering for the first month and we will expand our choices as your demands and the whims of the baker dictate. As we are a small batch bakery our quantities are limited so call early to place your order. What would you like to see us offer? Focaccia, ciabatta, baguettes, bagels, rye bread, cinnamon rolls?
It has been a really long time since we have blogged. Our last post ended on a dark note with the loss of our sheep but that’s not the reason for our long absence. The real reason is simply that I succumbed to the convenience of quick and easy Facebook postings. But recently some people reminded me that not everyone is on Facebook and that they actually miss reading the chronicles.
So with the start of a New Year, I resolve to post more frequently with interesting and useful content.So what has us so fired up? Quite simply…this: our wood-fired oven.
If you know anything about our passion for and history with bread and pizza baking, then you probably figured that at some point we would graduate to a wood-fired oven. It was in 1974, while living in Omaha that we baked our first pizza. A few beers had been consumed that evening but not so many as to prevent me from recalling the details of that venture. Our friend David Williamson was helping out and decided that we needed to throw the dough at the wall to see if it was ready (apparently he thought it was akin to that old adage about throwing pasta against the wall to see if it's ready).
Deeming that it was, we stretched the dough into a pan, topped it, put it in the oven and waited with bated breath, all the while consuming more beer. Twenty minutes later, the moment we had anxiously waited for arrived and we marveled with delight as I removed it from the oven.
Then, we watched in horror as it slipped off the pan and ended top side down on the floor!
By that time enough beer had been consumed to influence our judgment. We just scooped it up, put it back on the pan and figured that a few minutes in a hot oven would make everything ok. That night was the first step in my quest for a better pizza.
It has been a delicious journey as we have experimented with different formulas, different flours, pans, baking stones and a variety of oven tricks and gimmicks to simulate a professional pizza oven. For many years now we have served and enjoyed our Sicilian sheet pan pizza.
It’s not a NY thin crust nor a Chicago deep dish but more of a focaccia with traditional pizza sauce and toppings. Don’t get me wrong. We are not abandoning “old faithful.” She has fed us and our guests well over the years and brings comfort like a pair of old slippers. What makes this pizza great is its taste, texture and accessibility. This is the pizza that we teach in our Artisan Bread Baking Class so that anyone can have great pizza at home. But as the saying goes, "variety is the spice of life”.
And when the craving for a Neapolitan or NY slice comes on, with its crusty bottom and smoky charred blisters, nothing else will do. Unless you live in a town with purveyors of such pizza then you do it yourself or do without.
Visions of a backyard wood-fired brick oven have filled my head for years. It’s the Holy Grail for bread bakers. But the costs, the time to build it, not to mention a lack of building skills have made that vision just a pipe dream.
In a recent Google search for wood–fired ovens I stumbled across this beautiful wood-fired oven. A number of things intrigued me about it. I loved the design and stainless steel seems like a good thing in our rainy climate. It’s portable. I could move it to different areas on our property depending on the event. Seems like it would be a natural next to the bocce court.
We could possibly transport it to your yard for a catered pizza event. It’s made locally. We met with Todd Millar, the creator of the oven at his home and shop in Yacolt, WA. Todd is an amazingly talented and creative young man with a passion for excellence.
Not only does he produce wood ovens but espresso machines and wood roasted coffee beans. His coffee roasting earned him a write up in Saveur Magazine last year. Oh and did I mention his awesome barley wine?
And if that’s not enough, I would be remiss in not mentioning Todd’s after-sales support. That’s almost as important to me as a consumer as the product itself. It’s practically plug and play. The only assembly required was the stand and for that we are grateful to Ed and Theresa Videan (You can bet they have some serious pizza points in their account.)
And now the real work begins. We have to learn how to use the darn thing. It’s not just flipping a switch and turning the temperature up and down as we please. We have fired it up three times and realize there is a learning curve here. It’s very interactive. You can’t just throw a pizza in there and walk away from it. It requires frequent rotation and repositioning, a good exercise in mindfulness.
Now here’s the fun part and you are going to love this. We need to practice. Kitty and I cannot eat pizza every night and even if we could, it’s not practical to fire up the oven for just a couple of pizzas. So, we are recruiting volunteers. Volunteers that like to eat pizza and offer critical feed back.
Of course our disclaimer is that perfection is not guaranteed. We have had two events so far. We have received high marks for taste and quality but I have given myself low marks for pizza tossing, work flow and wood and heat management.
If you would like to be a Volunteer Pizza Critic, here’s what you need to do.
We will run our tests in groups of 6-10 people for several weeks so get in on this before we get it mastered.
Meanwhile enjoy some pictures from our wood-fired adventures.
Another new skill to learn
The apprentice
Artichokes and mushrooms
Mushroom and Italian Sausage
Spinach and Pancetta
Pepperoni and onion
Pears and Gorgonzola
Ciabatta
And it's not just for pizza and bread!
Official homepage for the Wahkiakum County B&B and farm The Inn At Crippen Creek Farm
Twitter Updates
CRIPPEN CREEK FARM
15 Oatfield Road, Skamokawa WA 98647
(503)804-0285
crippencreekfarm@gmail.com