FAQs → What We Bake
Answers to the most commonly asked questions can be found below. Still Stumped? Contact Us!
What We Bake (3)
Our volunteers have the opportunity to bake and donate two different items for our neighborhood food banks. You can choose bread, energy cookies, or both! Or mix it up: donate bread one week and energy cookies the next. Both are whole grain, delicious, and equally appreciated by food bank clients. Each donation is your choice!
Once you have attended an information session and registered as a volunteer, you can download the recipes for either of our program bakes.
Our Signature Bread!
Our Honey Oat Sandwich Loaf recipe is available in multiple formats, spreadsheet or pdf, and multiple leavening options – meaning you can use commercial yeast or a natural starter. Folks rave about our bread. Home-baked bread is a time commitment, about 6-7 hours per batch. Batch size depends on your equipment, but generally bakers choose to make 3-4 loaves. Experienced dough-handling skills are not required; we support your journey every step of the way. These loaves are a terrific way to nourish our community.
Our Grab ‘N Go Energy Cookies!
Find bread a little intimidating? Need something that takes less time, something you can mix in one bowl with a wooden spoon?! Our Grab ‘N Go Energy Cookies are a perfect match. Made with six nutritious whole-grain flours (pre-mixed by us, and available for purchase at our online shop), you can whip up a batch of 32 cookies in just a few minutes and complete the whole project in just a few hours of baking.
in baking Energy cookies, are CL bakers restricted to a specific recipe? The reason I ask is that I make a great oatmeal-raisin-walnut-orange zest-cranberry-clove cookie and would like to share them with CL distribution.
In my food pantry box this week there were these amazing candy cane and chocolate bars 8 was wondering if the recipe was available. If it’s a large recipe I can reduce it to a smaller one no problem. The bars were so good my family wants me to make more. Happy Holidays and thank you
Penny, this is a delayed response to your question. Our apologies. We’re getting a new system in place. All the instructions for any of our donation items can be found under the formulas tab on your volunteer dashboard. I’ve added an image to the FAQ to help future bakers find the spot.
Carol – this is a greatly delayed response, but yes. Costco yeast is perfectly acceptable. We love it when our volunteers can support our monthly flour fundraiser through the flour store, but in a pinch purchasing these items elsewhere certainly works! Thank you. ~ Katherine
I noticed you sell yeast on your website. I buy yeast from Costco – is it OK to use this yeast instead?
I lost my step-by-step instructions.
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We are big fans of local ingredients, and organic is preferred when it fits our volunteers’ budgets. We receive a lot of questions about if our items are whole grain, so here’s the scoop.
Our Honey Oat Sandwich Loaves are considered a whole grain loaf, but are really about 75% whole grain due to the blend of flours. They are made from 50% Whole Grain Bread Flour and 50% High Extraction flour. However, a few exceptions exist on the exact blend depending on local market conditions. For example, in Hailey, Idaho, we use locally milled, even higher extraction, Hillside Grain flour.
What about the Energy Cookie? The energy cookie is a blend of six different whole grain flours: whole grain pastry flour, whole grain oat flour, whole grain rye flour, oatmeal, whole grain chickpea flour, and almond meal (made using the whole almond!).
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Every holiday season, Community Loaves donates a holiday treat box as part of the final doughnation effort of the year – it is our Baking Spirits Bright campaign. We know the holidays can be an especially challenging time, and an unexpected baked-from-the-heart gift can provide a little lift to one’s spirits.
We hold a little competition every fall. The winning recipe gets baked, packaged, labeled, and donated to our partnered food banks. In 2023, we had 19 contestants submit tasty recipes, and 16 volunteer judges tackle the challenging task of selecting the top cookie. Kirkland Juanita hub volunteer baker Anna Fine, is the creator of the 2023 winner. Her Holiday Shortbread Squares are easy, festive, and oh-so-delicious! As a gift to one and all, we are sharing the recipe with anyone who would like to whip up a batch. On Monday, December 18th, 2023 we donated 1947 treat boxes containing 16 cookies each.
The 2023 judges in action:
Hi Ed, thank you for your question! Our bakers use a special mix they purchase through our shop to bake the cookies, following our signature formula. A lot of time and development goes into each recipe we donate to our partner food banks, as our items are designed to meet certain nutritional specs. It’s not so much a cookie as it is an energy bar in cookie form. You can find more details on the nutritional value of our Energy Cookie here: https://communityloaves.org/nutrition-facts/.
Your oatmeal-raisin-walnut-orange zest-cranberry-clove cookies sound DELICIOUS. We do plan to add to our mix of recipes, and if you would like to share, we will add it to our R&D.