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.”