OUR COMMUNITY
Denise Kalt, Barbara Wallace and Mindy Salzberg-Siegel, founders of Kneaded with Love.
‘Kneaded’
LAURIE TENNENT
Volunteers
Local nonprofit looks for volunteer bread bakers.
I
say this with the utmost respect, admiration and, perhaps most importantly, the permission of bakers Mindy Salzberg-Siegel, Denise Kalt and Barbara Wallace, when I suggest that they are three “kneady” women. They’ve earned that distinction having just spent the last 10 months in their own kitchens kneading dough, baking, packaging and donating healthy breads to Alan Detroit-area food pantries Muskovitz through their nonprofit Contributing Writer Kneaded with Love. The women though, along with more than 70 area volunteer bakers of homemade breads, are
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fulfilling a much-needed need of needing more kneaders. OK, enough of this half-baked word play. I’ll tell you how you can be of help (see sidebar), but first, some back story. Mindy, Denise and Barbara — of Birmingham, Franklin and Huntington Woods respectively — have always enjoyed baking and cooking. Like for so many, the pandemic and resulting shutdowns in early 2020 found them preparing more meals at home. The three further honed their culinary skills by participating in Zingerman’s Bakehouse online baking and cooking classes. Also, Salzberg-Siegel, Kalt and Wallace are members of Congregation Shaarey
Zedek (CSZ) and took advantage of Zoom challah baking classes offered by Rebecca Starr, CSZ’s rebbetzin and director of regional programs of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a leading center of Jewish thought and education serving Israel and North America. Starr has donated her baking skills, as well, to the Kneaded with Love cause. After months of feeding family and friends, with plenty extra loaves to spare, the three women were struck by the desperation they were witnessing on pandemic news reports and began thinking about how their skill sets could contribute to the greater good of the community. “Every day on the news, we’re seeing people out of work and car lines backed up at food pantries,” Mindy said. Then, in January 2021, she caught a segment on NBC’s Today Show about food insecurity in our country that changed everything. The network morning show featured a Seattle-based nonprofit called Community Loaves, “a grassroots bread brigade, baking and delivering homemade honey oat sandwich loaves in support of our overstretched food pantries.” The inspiration for Kneaded with Love was born. GETTING IT OFF THE GROUND In a matter of days, a letter of introduction about their charitable efforts and an appeal for volunteer bakers was sent to their personal contacts. Thanks to a robust response, Kneaded with Love was able to begin delivering fresh baked breads by the end of March and, twice a month there after, to two area food pantries — Open
