🥖ready for 2025
Bread Club & donations
Good morning bread friends :)
Happy New Year!
My favorite thing about the new year is that it feels like a universal time of looking forward.
I know some people use the changing of the calendar as an opportunity to reflect and take stock on the year that is ending. Personally, my default perspective is forward looking. I don’t doubt that there is value in being reflective, but I spend very little time looking backwards.
But before I get hype about 2025, I just have to acknowledge that I’m really proud of myself for re-establishing a steady rhythm of baking. Some of you have been around since Bread & Justice started during the early days of the pandemic. I baked very consistently for the first 2 years of the pandemic and then 2022 and 2023 got rocky. I took a break in the summer of 2022 to mimic my kid’s summer break from school. Then when the school year started back and work was busy… I just couldn’t figure out how to make space for weekly baking again.
I owe a ton to my wife, Melissa, who persistently reminded me that I missed having my. hands in the dough, and sharing bread with my community. She repeatedly reminded me that I really ought to figure out how to fit that back into my life.
Even with her encouragement, it still took well over a year before we made the commitment to invest in building a dedicated micro-bakery in our basement. But it was that decision that forced me to figure out how to get back to this wonderful lifestyle of being a cottage baker. Every single time I put out bread on my front porch and people come pick it up I’m amazed at this thing that we’ve built together.
I say “we” because this is only possible because of this community. Whether you order bread regularly, have only ordered once or twice, or you don’t even live close enough to buy bread and you’re just interested in this newsletter… thank you so much for your support. I feel like this community is making life a little richer. I hope you feel the same way.
As most of you already know, Bread & Justice is a philanthropic enterprise where we donate 100% of our profits to a different nonprofit each month. You may remember that at the end of the year we were donating to Centro. I was proud to partner with you all to support their work as the leading non-profit serving Latinx in Dane County. Throughout Nov and the first two weeks of December. After all of the profits from each loaf of bread that you bought, we were able to donate $531 to support Centro their immigration services.
For the month of January we’re going to be donating 100% of our profits to Everytown for Gun Safety. This is my first newsletter since the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School here in Madison. It was horrifying that school shootings are normalized in American life. This is a problem that is uniquely American, and it is very much a failure of policymakers to have the morals or courage to protect our children. I have plenty more to say on this topic, but I’ll save that for a future letter.
While Bread & Justice donates to Everytown’s proactive work to change federal and state laws… I also want to acknowledge that there are ways that you can support the Abundant Life community directly. The United Way has established the Abundant Life Christian School Emergency Recovery Fund. If you feel called to donate to the ALCS community directly, 100% of the money donated through this link will go directly to ALCS.
Bread Club is back for January!
Bread Club is a subscription for sourdough bread every Saturday for the month. This subscription is perfect for anyone who knows that they'll want to get bread every week and wants to avoid the risk of pre-orders selling out before they get around to placing their order.
Two notes about Bread Club:
1) There are limited numbers of spots for Bread Club. Existing & past members of Bread Club get preferred access Bread club.
2) The e-commerce software that we use for ordering (Square) is giving me trouble with setting Bread Club up as a monthly recurring subscription. I know some of you have asked for that. I agree it’ll be easier that way, but please be patient with me. Hopefully I’ll have that sorted out for February. For now, you’re just ordering for a single month.
Cheers friends!
Mo
your neighborhood baker