Helping Those in Knead, One Community Loaf at a Time
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Jane Hutcheson combines her skills as an organizer and a baker to help provide bread and energy cookies to Jefferson County Food Banks. Photo by Nhatt Nichols [/caption]
News by Nhatt Nichols
On a crisp Monday morning, dough is quietly proofing on one of Jane Hutcheson’s spotless counters ahead of her afternoon bread baking. Though this might seem like a typical scene played out in any baker’s kitchen, but in Hutchinson’s case, it’s also an act of service and a way that she helps keep Jefferson County fed.
Hutcheson is part of Community Loaves, a program that trains home bakers to bake bread and energy cookies for local food banks. Started by Katherine Kehrli, a Seattle-based professional baker who found the pandemic isolating and wanted to use her expertise to bring people together and help feed food-insecure people.
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Energy cookies, which take less time and experience to bake than bread, are an easy way for novice bakers to get involved. Photo by Nhatt Nichols [/caption]
Through her research, Kehrli discovered that food banks often struggle to procure enough bread to feed everyone, and health and safety laws allow volunteers to bake bread as long as the packaging and recipes are consistent. And thus Community Loaves was born, and it immediately resonated with volunteer-minded bakers. There are currently over a thousand bakers spread across three states, making bread and cookies in their home kitchens for local food banks.
“I saw it in the Seattle Times, and I said, Oh, this is for me. I'm a baker,” Hutcheson said. Four months after reading about Kehrli’s program, Hutcheson moved to Discovery Bay and found that no one was coordinating a baking effort here. So she reached out to the Jefferson County Food Bank and offered to be the “hub,” the person who coordinates between the bakers and the food banks.
After getting the go-ahead from Jefferson County Food Banks, Hutcheson reached out to Kehrli in Seattle to see if she would be interested in helping. It turns out she was, and she made the trip out to Port Townsend to teach the initial crew of volunteer bakers how Community Loaves works. In turn, Hutcheson and the other volunteers have helped recruit even more bakers eager to help feed our community.
“We're up to about 12 bakers, and we donate about 35 loaves of bread every two weeks,” Hutcheson said, “and about 100 of these energy cookies.”
And, it turns out that still isn’t enough bread, especially as it’s a staple that doesn’t require any additional cooking equipment to prepare and eat, unlike many of the foods on offer at the food bank.
“It's the stuff of life. People can make toast, they can make a sandwich, they can have peanut butter and jelly,” Hutcheson explained. “It's the thing you first grab when you want some carbs to sort of satisfy that hunger pang. And if you can make the food that they're used to grabbing very nutritious and still taste really good, you've got a win-win.”
Community Loaves is looking for more volunteer bakers who can help bake a few loaves of bread in their own kitchens. Volunteers are trained by their local hub, then connected to videos that explain every step, from where to procure the flour to the recipes. Flour is purchased in bulk from the Community Loaves website, and the money for each bag helps support the project and the local flour mills that they source from.
This holiday season, Hutcheson has a special festive sweet gift for guests at the food bank. Five volunteer bakers are making 20 holiday boxes filled with chocolate and crushed candy cane shortbread squares. Each custom box holds 16 cookies and is presented with tissue paper liners and a gold ribbon.
The whole program is very dependent on volunteers, and it’s perfect for anyone who wants to roll up their sleeves and get more deeply involved with food security than simply sending a check to the local food bank. If you are a baker with a passion for helping others, you can find more information here.
