I run a microbakery on the side (https://www.instagram.com/stoneleigh.microbakery/) and my local government knows nothing about this operation. That said, I only sell to friends and neighbors bc if somehow my bread gets spoiled (highly unlikely, unless its focaccia and they leave it out for 2 days), I can resolve it directly with them and not have to deal w the health department.
There is always a tension between economic growth and consumer protection. Selling bread is hard mostly due to health regulations. We used to have a lot of people die due to contaminated food. Now that's so rare that it makes the news when it happens. Food safety rules were written in blood.
Some states such as California do have special exemptions for "cottage" production of low risk foods such as bread.
I wonder where the bread is being baked. SF has some pretty strict laws around the quality/inspection/safety/licensing of kitchens (even home kitchens) used to create food for sale. My girlfriend wanted to sell lamb cakes during Easter season a few years ago (we saw an indication of demand and absolutely no supply from established bakeries) and while figuring out how to do it at minor scale (planning on 25-50 cakes) we became aware of these inspection limits. It seemed like it was going to be a lot of footwork to handle and was discouraging enough to not follow through on at the time.
Maybe they most likely won't run afoul or attract any legal attention for this test run for a single day. If it proves to be popular then it wouldn't make sense to do it out of someone's home kitchen, of course.
If your privacy is important to you, then you would go to the baker that does not sell your private information and charges money for bread.
If there are enough people who are ready to pay for their bread and prevent selling out their private information -- then it would allow such privacy respecting bakeries to exist.
I spent some time post-college working as a baker; our primary output was bread (with some cookies, cakes, and brownies etc as well), but the vast majority of our bread was sold to local restaurants. If you're running a bakery that's selling direct to consumers, I can imagine that it would be pretty hard to make ends meet on bread alone.
This had the curious result that when I was in Carmel-By-The-Sea a few weeks ago, I went in to what was ostensibly called a "bakery" and tried to buy a baguette, only to be told that they only sold pastries and cookies and didn't make bread at all. I was extraordinarily put out by this.
Remember: I was/am dealing with 2-4 cubic meters of perishable bread once per week.
One place (public food pantry) couldn't distribute it for 3 days (good fresh artisan bread starts molding within 6 days, and pastries & baguettes stale within 3; recipients probably wouldn't eat theirs all within 2 days of receipt).
One place (women's shelter) wouldn't distribute it to the members/occupants (were teaching self-reliance, probably including making own bread). They'd sell it, making distribution 1-2 steps removed from assuring me what was actually happening to it.
Two places weren't always open when I could drop it off. Both planned and unplanned closures are problematic.
2-3 places wouldn't take it because items weren't individually packaged (I get it loose in large boxes/bags). Some kind of food safety rule applied in their case. Also, if they're not sure where it came from, they won't take it (I'm just some anonymous guy, not connected with the bakery nor charity).
Other charities don't know how long items will be in storage, so it must be packaged & shelf-stable for months/years.
By sheer chance (traffic rerouted past an accident scene) I found my current distributor, a food pantry which distributes it 12 hours after I get it. All they know is some guy shows up Monday morning with bushels of breadstuffs.
Mileage & waiting is also a problem. Takes me about an hour to pick it up, and another half hour to drop it off - most of the above taking longer, already straining the limits of my schedule.
And that doesn't get into the issues of actually handing out each individual piece, which is why I take it all somewhere for a single drop off, and don't try to hand it all out myself.
Oh, and some weeks no usable charity is open, and I end up with a ridiculous amount of bread I have no idea what to do with.
My aunt and uncle opened a private bakery where they bake bread mainly for friends. It's really good stuff. I, for one, appreciate freshly baked bread.
yeah, but presumably its just like other yeast - if "non-authorized users" get hold of just a little bit, they can make as much of it as they want. (There's a whole bunch of bakers here in Sydney who sell "Sonoma Sourdough bread", which - story goes - all comes from the same small batch of not-quite-legally-acquired-and-imported yeast.)
I'm wondering who's going to be the first politician or law enforcement chief to suggest we need to lock up sugar and require government issued ID to be presented before purchase...
The baker down the street was the only "brand" of bread available, I suspect. Although personally knowing who is making the product fulfills a similar function to branding.
You're using industrial language to talk about food staples, and then suggest that the government is the problem.
Bread is flour, water, yeast, and heat. It feeds people. It's easy to make anywhere you have those things, which is... almost everywhere.
It doesn't require production lines or manufacturing facilities or packaging or even freight. All those things are artificial contrivances, and if they make it hard to practically address concerns like allergens, then maybe they're not a viable approach to providing foodstuffs after all.
Bake it yourself or there are plenty of bakeries (and supermarkets) that actually bake their bread and pastries on site. Its pretty easy to tell, or you can just ask. Support your local baker.
The factory in question supplies places like Dunkin donuts and highway rest-stops. Much better to go hungry than eat that stuff-- aside from the labor abuses, its just bad stuff.
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