We're Back! 🎉

pre-order your bread & learn about our partner for October

Good morning bread friends!

It feels really great to be back in the kitchen baking bread for my community. Thanks to all of you for your encouragement and support during the month of September while I took a break from baking. That time off was very restful and restorative. If you’d like to pick back up where you left off, you can finally pre-order your bread again for Thursday pickup right now on our website. 🥖

Did you know it has been a full year since I began this journey of selling my sourdough into my community? Before I knew that I’d start my own cottage bakery, I was just a person baking sourdough bread at home and giving extra away to friends. The catalyst for me to consider selling my bread was when I learned about #BakersAgainstRacism in September of 2020. So it was really heartwarming to see Bakers Against Racism being recognized last week at the James Beard award celebration.

What’s Next?

When I started my September Sabbatical I shared with you all that I expected I’d be doing some R&D on various products, and also some planning for the future of my Bread & Justice business. As for R&D on new products, I’ve already shared that this past month turned out to be more about rest than creativity. Which was a bit of a surprise for me, but it worked out totally fine. In the immediate future, I’m going to stick to this artisan sourdough loaf that I’ve been offering. I continuously tweak the process, technique, and even formula for that loaf… but it is fundamentally the same bread. During my sabbatical, the one product that I was motivated to keep improving on my quality and consistency of was my Sourdough English Muffins. However, as much as I’d like to offer these for sale… I simply don’t have a plan yet for how to scale up the production of these out of my home oven. As I’ve shared in a previous letter, having a dedicated bread oven will be a game-changer for my baking someday. I’m confident that these Sourdough English Muffins will be the first new product that I’ll offer when/if I eventually get such an oven. As for the future of the business…I’m still working on sketching out the plans for what Bread & Justice will look like in 2022. I’ll save that update for a future letter, but I’m glad to know that so many of you are interested.

Our partner for October

American history is the story of various ethnic people groups building a nation over hundreds of years. Some of the steps along the way were noble, some were unscrupulous, and many days were ordinary days of humans being humans. As we pick up our monthly fundraising for Bread & Justice, we’re in the middle of National Hispanic Heritage Month - which spans from September 15 to October 15 here in the US. Much like Black History Month… as much as I may wish that American History was taught in its fullness withouth necessitating specific days/week/months to remember to take a break from ignoring the contributions that non-white people have made to building America… the fact remains that this time of reflection and honoring is important. As such, this month we’re partnering with Centro Hispano - the leading social service provider for Latinx people in the Madison region. They offer after school programing for hundreds of students, family supporting services, health care access assistance, immigration services, and even employment training - including a nursing program in partnership with Madison College. I had the opportunity to become familiar with the work that Centro Hispano does while I was serving on the Madison City Council. I’m glad to know that they are doing such great work in our community, and proud to support them this month by donating to them 100% of the profits from all of our bread sold throughout October.

P.S. Since we’re about justice here at Bread & Justice… I thought I’d share with you this cool website that I found on the Library of Congress. It is a compilation of research from 20th and 21st century American court cases, legislation, and events that had important impacts on civil rights in Chicana/o/x, Hispanic, Latina/o/x, Mexican-American and Puerto Rican communities. I hope that you enjoy some great bread this week while you spend a little time reading about justice.

Cheers,
Mo