Water Tank Bakery
Specialty Food Artisan
About
Water Tank Bakery creates wholesome bread, cookies, and more. Bread is the cornerstone of the bakery’s offerings, making bread the slow way with long fermentation, sourdough levain, and locally sourced ingredients. This slow process ensures the development of maximum flavor complexity, consistency, and exeptional eating experience.
All products are baked exclusively with NW grown grains, milled at Cairnspring Mills (right next door on Water Tank Road). These flours are stone ground and used fresh (to retain much of the wheat's natural oils, fats, and vitamins). By taking advantage of produce and other ingredients available from local hard-working farmers and millers, Water Tank Bakery creates food that tastes of the unique abundance of the Skagit Valley.
Programs and Partners
Location
Burlington, WA
Manager
Rachael Grace Sobczak is founder, owner and head baker of Water Tank Bakery. This business is a natural extension and expansion of her vision and talents. In 2007, after graduating from The Evergreen State College, she moved to the Skagit Valley and joined Scott Mangold and Renee Bourgault at The Breadfarm (in Edison Washington) for a ten-year immersion in professional, artisanal baking.
Rachael grew up in central Wisconsin on a river of the same name, in an old farmhouse surrounded by forests. Learning to cook and bake was an outgrowth of her wide-ranging taste for adventure, food and gardening even as a child. These interests flourished when she found home in the Skagit Valley, where she could meet growers, purchase from farm stands and the local flour mill. Rachael's partner Frank shares her love for growing food, cooking it well and making the most of family life.
In 2017 she began graduate work for a degree as a Dietician, an area where she sees potential for transformation. While pursuing her studies she volunteered, coordinating a school garden program at her son’s elementary school. She wholeheartedly led an after-school Garden Club and taught cooking classes for kiddos. Like many other people, her path was abruptly changed by the Covid19 pandemic. Going back to her roots, she started a small baking business, Rachael & Bread, all the while making sure homework was done and kid fun continued. Her 10-year-old son is in charge of crouton production.
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