Community Loaves volunteers keep food banks throughout the region stocked with bread

Twice a month, Sally Elliott of Olympia spends the better part of a day baking fresh whole-grain bread with oatmeal and honey. And then — though her family and friends enjoy the bread — she gives most of it to the Thurston County Food Bank.

Elliott is one of 71 Thurston County volunteers with Community Loaves, a Seattle-based nonprofit that connects food banks with volunteer bakers. Those bakers buy flour from Skagit Valley mills and follow recipes designed to maximize nutrition, taste and freshness.

Avid baker Katherine Kehrli launched the project in March 2020, spurred by the rise in food insecurity during the pandemic, and it’s been growing ever since. Community Loaves now partners with food banks from Bellingham to Eugene, Oregon, and beyond.

In the Olympia area, volunteers have donated 1,381 loaves of homemade bread to the Thurston County Food Bank since January.

“We’ve gotten feedback from customers that they love the bread and their kids love the bread,” said Judy Jones, the food bank’s development director. “One would not think that a handmade loaf of bread could really improve the quality of someone’s life and create some hopefulness and optimism, but that is the power of one loaf of bread.”

The Community Loaves recipes — which offer bakers a choice among sourdough, commercial yeast bread and a hybrid — make four loaves. Volunteers are encouraged to donate three and keep one each time they bake, though many volunteers go beyond that.

“I bake as much as three or four times a month, and I put bread in the freezer,” said Simone Boe, who coordinates the efforts of volunteers on Olympia’s east side. “My mother and mother-in-law each expect a loaf each week.”

Boe wasn’t an experienced bread baker when she started volunteering and admits she felt intimidated despite encouragement and step-by-step instructions from Kehrli, who is the associate dean of the Seattle Culinary Academy.

“My first bake, I had flour in my hair,” Boe told The Olympian. “I had flour all over. My kitchen was a disaster. It took forever. My husband helped me clean up, and he was like, ‘Are you going to keep doing this?’ But it just got better and better. I have grown to love it.”

She and fellow Thurston County coordinators Cheryl Nugent of Lacey and Claire Parker of Olympia also love the connections they’ve built with other bakers, who drop finished loaves on their porches for delivery to the food bank.

But Boe, Elliott, Nugent and Parker all say their biggest motivation for joining what they call “the baking brigade” was a desire to feed hungry people and to find ways to serve the community during the pandemic.

“Here in Thurston County, there are a lot of families who could use some help right now,” Elliott told The Olympian. “When I make the bread, I think about the families it will bless, and hope the bread will provide the nutrients they need.”

It takes her six hours to bake a batch of bread from start to finish, she said, but though she works full time, is an avid runner and has two teenage sons, she’s found a way to fit in baking.

“I start really early in the morning some days, and that way I’m done before lunchtime,” she said. “It’s a time commitment, but it’s totally worth it. You’re helping the community. You’re feeding people who need food. It’s a wonderful thing.”

Community Loaves

• What: Community Loaves’ volunteer bakers provide fresh homemade bread to food banks in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. The Seattle nonprofit is always looking for bakers as well as volunteers to help in other ways and donations to keep its program growing.
• Baking: Partner food banks, including the Thurston County Food Bank, get bread donations twice a month, but volunteers aren’t expected to donate every time. The nonprofit provides recipes, with modifications for different skill sets, and offers bakers wholesale prices on flour milled in the Skagit Valley.
• More information: https://communityloaves.org