On a recent Saturday near Seattle, Cheryl Ewaldsen pulled three golden loaves of wheat bread out of her kitchen oven.

The aromatic, oat-coated loaf wasn’t meant for her dining table; it was headed to a local food bank to help families who are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the rising costs of groceries and hunger.

“I just get really thrilled knowing that it’s going to end up with someone who will make, like, 10 sandwiches with it,” remarked Ewaldsen, 75, who is a retired university human resources director.

Ewaldsen volunteers for Community Loaves, a nonprofit in the Seattle region that began linking home bakers with food banks during the COVID-19 pandemic—and continues to do so.

Since 2020, this initiative, led by Katherine Kehrli, a former culinary school dean, has provided over 200,000 fresh bread loaves and around 220,000 energy cookies to food banks. This effort involves a network of almost 900 bakers spread across Washington, Oregon, California, and Idaho, marking it as one of the largest in the nation.

Given the recent reduction in federal food aid funding and escalating grocery prices, the organization’s nutritious baked goods are more in demand than ever, according to Kehrli.

“Most of our food banks don’t receive any whole-grain sandwich bread donations,” she noted. “When asked what we could improve, their response is, ‘Bring us more.'”

Anti-hunger experts expect to see more need

Ewaldsen’s bread goes to the nearby Edmonds Food Bank, where the client list has swelled from 350 households to nearly 1,000 in the past three years, according to program manager Lester Almanza.

Nationwide, more than 50 million people a year receive charitable food assistance, according to Feeding America, a hunger relief organization.

Anti-hunger experts say they expect the need to rise as recent federal legislation sharply cutting food aid to the poor takes effect. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the tax and spending cuts bill Republicans muscled through Congress in July means 3 million people would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits.

Gauging the impact, however, could soon be more difficult after the U.S. Agriculture Department recently said it would halt an annual report on hunger in America, saying it was redundant, costly and politicized “subjective liberal fodder.” After 30 years, the 2024 report, to be released on Oct. 22, will be the last, the agency said.

“Ending data collection will not end hunger, it will only make it a hidden crisis that is easier to ignore and more difficult to address,” Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, an advocacy group, said in a statement.

Almanza said federal funding for his food bank has dropped at least 10% this year, meaning that every donation helps.

“It’s something that a lot of people rely on,” he said.

Food bank breads are often highly processed

That includes people like Chris Redfearn, 42, and his wife, Melanie Rodriguez-Redfearn, 43, who turned to a food bank in Everett, Washington, last spring after moving to the area to find work. They had to stretch their savings until she began a new position this month teaching history at a local college. Chris Redfearn, who has worked for decades in business, is still looking.

“The food pantry assists with anywhere from $40 to $80 worth of savings weekly,” he said. “We’ve been able to keep ourselves afloat.”

Finding homemade bread from Community Loaves at a food pantry was a surprise, the couple said. Often, surplus bread sent by grocery stores includes highly processed white breads or sweets donated near their expiration or sell-by dates.

The breads come in three varieties — honey oat, whole wheat and sunflower rye — all made with whole grains and minimally processed ingredients.

“They make it really wholesome and fibrous,” Chris Redfearn said. “It mimics most of the health-conscious breads that are out there.”

Many food banks don’t accept donated baked goods

The notion of donating home-baked bread came to Kehrli, 61, during the pandemic, when she was displaced from her job at the busy Seattle Culinary Academy.

“I love to bake and just an idea sparked: Would it be possible for us to help from our home and get important valuable nutrition to our food banks?” she recalled.

Many food pantries don’t accept or distribute donations of homemade baked goods. Feeding America warns individual bakers against the practice, saying “since food banks can’t confirm how your baked goods were made or their ingredients, they can’t be donated.”

But health department rules vary by state, Kehrli learned. In Washington and the other three states where Community Loaves now operates, bread is one of the few foods allowed to be donated from a home kitchen through a program like theirs.

“We wouldn’t be able to donate custard pies. We wouldn’t be able to donate lasagna,” Kehrli said. “But bread is deemed safe. Anything that is fully baked and does not require refrigeration.”

Still, Community Loaves bakers must follow approved recipes for the bread and two types of energy cookies. They obtain flour from common sources, and bake and deliver on a shared schedule twice a month.

The bakers buy their own supplies, donating the cost of the ingredients as well as their time. Most make a few loaves per baking session before delivering them to local “hubs,” where other volunteers collect the bread and transport it to the food banks.

Bakers range from former professionals to beginners. A robust website with recipes and how-to videos backstops every step, Kehrli said.

Baking the bread is satisfying on several levels, said Ewaldsen, who has donated nearly 800 loaves in less than two years. Part of it is addressing the physical need for food, but part is also addressing the spiritual hunger for connection with neighbors.

“It’s the opportunity for me to bake something and to share something with others in the community, where they don’t necessarily need to know who I am, but they know that there’s a community that loves and cares for them,” she said.

While such sentiments are sincere and admirable, anti-hunger experts stress that individual donations can’t take the place of adequately funded government services for struggling Americans.

“It’s beautiful that our communities act this way,” said Gina Plata-Nino of the Food Research & Action Center. “But it is a loaf of bread. That is going to feed one person — and there are millions in line.”

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