NW volunteers are baking a difference from their home kitchens

If Randy Cummings could pick a dream job, it would be to open a bakery and bake bread, all day, for his local food bank. Currently, he bakes bread for the food bank three days a week at his Federal Way home.

“I’m getting ramped up to bake 16 loaves,” Cummings said as he checked on this bread dough that had been resting for a few hours. “It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s an all day process for four.”

Cummings is part of Community Loaves, a program with more than 700 bakers across four states to help reduce hunger, and hopes to recruit even more volunteers.

Community Loaves is the brainchild of Katherine Kehrli. She was dean of the Culinary Program at Seattle Central College when the pandemic hit. Kerhli says while work kept her busy at home, like many people she also used that time to dive into bread baking. And that sparked an idea.

“What if we could also make a difference from our home kitchens, because everybody has been displaced, people are not going to the office.”

Back then, food banks were dealing with supply chain issues and overwhelmed by the demand from people laid off due to the pandemic. Kehrli persuaded her bread friends to bake and donate the loaves to their neighborhood food bank. And not just any kind of bread. Their sandwich loaves contain whole grain flours that are locally milled. Community Loaves sells the flours to bakers at a discount.

“Food banks often get the discarded food materials,” Kehrli said. “They get, yes, some healthy food, but more times than not, not necessarily the items that we would self-select for health.”

The bakers also make energy cookies for people without kitchens. The cookies are nutritionally dense, made with chickpea flour and almond meal.

What started as a pandemic project soon became a long-term endeavor. Kehrli retired from her culinary dean position to focus on Community Loaves.

Since its inception, Community Loaves has donated 130,000 loaves to food banks through volunteers across four states: Washington, California, Idaho, and Oregon. Kehrli would like to see more, especially in this time when food banks continue to struggle to keep shelves stocked.

“We love the collaboration, and we need all the help we can get,” said Steven Curry, food bank director at Multi-Service Center in Federal Way.

He says the food bank currently serves up to 1,700 households each week.

Every two weeks, the food bank receives 16 loaves of bread from Randy Cummings and six other bakers in the area. Not everyone will be able to enjoy the bread. Even so, Curry appreciates the bakers’ contributions and their efforts.

“It’s a way of giving back, but it’s something that you love,” Curry said. “Maybe that’s why it makes it works so well.”