By Pauline Benetti
Breaking News! The Pagosa Farmers Market (PFM) is now online year-round!
Okay, okay… we’ll be short of locally-grown produce for the winter… unless we get a greenhouse grower or two (and we are working on that)… but the Market offers two other kinds of vendors — our Producers and our Makers — who are not affected by the season.
Before going any further, all potential vendors — Growers, Producers and Makers — need to know that the PFM venue is free… almost. The only cost is the fee charged by the credit card companies. No profit motive here. PFM is a non-profit supported by grants including from the Town of Pagosa Springs and the Archuleta Food Coalition.
So why are we doing this? Money spent here stays local, benefits our community and adds to economic vitality; that means we all thrive, and to the degree that we can depend on our local production engines, we are increasingly resilient and sustainable, and our tread on the planet is just that much lighter.
The plan for Producer products includes everything from chicken to pickles to honey to jams to baked goods to cheeses… etc. And here is a special call to folks who already bake and preserve food for the family. Why not expand your effort, continue to work at home and add to the family’s bottom line? We recommend as a first move checking on the Cottage Food Classes offered by CSU. A certificate from here allows you to sell in person or online what you have prepared in your own home kitchen. Online right now we have excellent bakers… for example, Simply Sweets… and The Dyna Breadhouse (featured below)… and candy makers; for example, Pine Mountain Toffee Company to be featured later.
Who are our Makers? Artists, artisans and crafters. The plan here is to offer a sales venue to allow the many talented folks in our community a chance to engage customers in their work, those folks would include painters, photographers, ceramicists , wood workers, jewelers, knitters, weavers and the list goes on. Right now online, we have jewelry by the well known and very talented artisan, Nancy Green.
Now about our feature baker, Ali Braun, owner of The Dyna Breadhouse. Let it be said that her bread is the closest to San Francisco sourdough I have ever tasted. It is incredibly tasty — perhaps, because she studied Artisan bread and pastry making at the San Francisco Baking institute. Have to say that I have tried a good many of her sourdough breads from baguettes through the whole wheat pan loaf, and several of her boule loaves, for example the black pepper and asiago, the jalapeño apricot, the olive parmesan and the walnut raisin with apple, each one superb. I have yet to try the dark chocolate rye flour brownie with sea salt, but that’s next on my list.
Alie’s focus is on ingredients and technique. She uses freshly milled flour from Lehi Mill, a roller mill in Utah which processes the grain lightly leaving a more intact wheat germ. In addition, she double ferments her dough at a lower temperature for a longer time, all of which account for great flavor and texture. Ali also likes to remind her customer that sourdough has a very specific health benefit. The fermentation helps to populate the gut biome with healthy microbes.
The Dyna Breadhouse took off in January 2020 as an adjunct to Ali’s 27-year critical care nursing career, her first passion, and as a future retirement business… and it took off in a trailer. Yes, the bakery’s commercial kitchen is a trailer which allows for maximum flexibility, an important attribute in retirement. The move from nursing to bread making, her second passion, was a natural as Ali explains, “I think the fact that you have to follow a formula and there are some kind of hard rules when it comes to baking, especially bread, really appealed to my nurse brain.”
Now about the name of her business, well, it seems she named the Dyna Breadhouse after her motorcycle: a Harley Dyna Wide Glide. Why not?
Shopping here benefits your community and beyond. So many clever, talented, resourceful, and productive folks live in our environs who need a venue to demonstrate what they do best. The Pagosa Farmers Market Online offers that venue.
Visit us at pagosafarmersmarket.net and enjoy.
Pauline Benetti is Market Coordinator for Pagosa Farmers Market.