Volunteers in Kitsap leaning into hobby to provide fresh bread for food banks

INDIANOLA — Peggy Koivu, a 68-year-old retired teacher in Indianola, loves to bake.

And she loves to share. She has used her hobby to help reduce food insecurity in Kitsap for more than three years now, baking 573 honey oat sandwich loaves since December 2020 to be donated to two food banks in the county.

Koivu didn't accomplish this goal alone. She committed her time and space to baking loaves in her kitchen every week. A team of volunteers in the region helped with the logistics from purchasing and delivering the flour to sending home-baked loaves to the food banks.

In Kitsap County there are about 24 more bakers like Koivu, who receive training from a Kirkland-based nonprofit, Community Loaves. The organization teaches volunteers to make nutritious bread and energy cookies and coordinates with volunteers to deliver the food to its partnered food banks.

Nearly 4,000 loaves were baked for three local food banks in Kitsap County under a standard process and recipe built by Community Loaves since late 2020: North Kitsap Fishline in Poulsbo and Helpline House on Bainbridge Island, from the volunteers based on Bainbridge Island and North Kitsap, and North Mason Food Bank from bakers in Port Orchard.

"I think it's more for me a feeling that I am giving back," Koivu said. During the pandemic, Koivu saw from the news and in her neighborhood that food insecurity was an issue that affected people's lives. Turning her hobby into something that she could give back to the community was where the joy of her baking comes from, Koivu said.

A community project started during the pandemic

Community Loaves was founded by Katherine Kehrli in April 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic cost many people their jobs and led to worries about supporting themselves and their families. Seeing the impact, Kehrli, an associate dean at Seattle Culinary Academy, created the non-profit to connect, train, and empower home-based bakers to reduce hunger — all from her home in Kirkland.

"Our goal is to deepen our ability to provide nutritious, freshly baked bread and energy cookies wherever we have a food bank partnership," Kehrli said.

Four years later, the organization has expanded to operate in Washington, Oregon, California and Idaho, and supported 45 food banks by donating over 140,000 loaves and over 88,400 energy cookies to them.

On Bainbridge Island, volunteer baker Jan Jackson first reached out to Kehrli in late 2020 with the desire to create a local outpost to support Fishline and Helpline House, Kehrli said. The Bainbridge Island hub was created by Jackson, and with five other bakers, including current hub leader Kathy Anderson, the local bakers made their first official donation on Dec. 20, 2020, Anderson said.

"So from there, we grew kind of organically, but it was word of mouth," Anderson said. "I posted a couple of times on Facebook on our local community page...hey, if you'd like to bake bread and want to support your local food bank, or would like to learn to bake bread, please reach out and contact us. And over time, we just grew."

Now, the Bainbridge Island hub has 23 active bakers, Anderson said. Volunteers bake based on their own schedule. They drop off the loaves at the hub leader's house on the 2nd and 4th Sunday of the month and the hub leader delivers the loaves to the food banks on the next day.

The hub donated approximately 90 loaves to the food banks per month, Anderson said. Following Kehrli's recipe, each batch comes with four loaves. Bakers are instructed to keep one for their family and donate three, though some donated all four.

"My husband loves the bread, so I can't give away all," Anderson said with a laugh, adding that her husband likes to eat the bread with peanut butter or jelly. "He said it's the best bread ever. He loves it."

Jen Justesen, an information security compliance specialist, started the Port Orchard hub in January 2023. She worked remotely and enjoyed baking at her home in Port Orchard.

"I decided I wanted to do something in Port Orchard, because we need help locally, too," Justesen said.

So far, the Port Orchard hub has two bakers and they have donated 190 loaves to North Mason Food Bank in Belfair.

"Every loaf that we can give them (North Mason Food Bank), every energy cookie that we can give them, they are so grateful. Everybody loves them. Everyone is looking for more, so it's definitely a good feeling," Justesen said.

North Mason Food Bank serves at least 150 families a week and appreciates what the hub did for the food bank, Tara Schmidt, executive director of North Mason Food Bank said.

"We often, from grocery stores, get a lot of desserts. But sometimes we don't get as much bread, which is obviously a healthier thing to have. So when we first got them people were like, oh, that's not sliced...I don't know. But then they try it, and once people tried that bread, now they come back and ask for it," Schmidt said.

"People love the cookies too, but especially the bread. People just love it."

Right now, Helpline House has a high demand for food and the food bank's service, so Community Loaves' donation really helps the food bank to provide nutritious products to their clients, said Lianne Ristow, the foodbank manager at Helpline House. The food bank has about 1,500 clients to serve.

"They provide us very high-quality products regularly. It's very dependable," Ristow said. "It's very, very high quality, very fresh, locally-made, very nutritious."

Justesen also volunteers to deliver flour to the two hubs in Kitsap County. Community Loaves uses freshly milled flour that's sourced from mills in Burlington, Washington, in Skagit Valley. Bakers ordered the flour through Community Loaves and Justesen picks up the bags of flour once on month from a flour truck that delivered the flour to Tacoma and handed it to Justesen.

More bakers are welcome

Community Loaves always welcome new bakers to join the team. No special skills are required, Kehrli said. Anyone interested in participating simply signs up for an information session on Community Loaves' website to learn the specifics.

For those who are not familiar with baking, volunteers also have the option to bake energy cookies.

"The addition of the Energy Cookies helped us to have a more portable nutrition item for our food banks, for unhoused populations and student backpacks as well as to have an item that was perhaps less intimidating to bake for our non-bread bakers," Kehrli said.

John Haskin, a retired educator on Bainbridge Island who recently joined Community Loaves and started baking loaves last month, said that the recipe Kehrli developed was easy to follow.

"Every time I've made (the loaves), it has not failed," Haskin said. "I mean, you need to focus on it, concentrate...but, it turned out beautiful."

"We welcome anyone who has the desire to learn how to bake bread and wishes to support the local food banks," Anderson said.

Those interested in learning more or joining the nonprofit can email info@communityloaves.org and visit its website www.communityloaves.org for more information.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Community Loaves nonprofit expands to Kitsap County volunteer bakers