By JONEL ALECCIA

On a recent Saturday near Seattle, Cheryl Ewaldsen pulled three golden loaves of wheat bread out of her kitchen oven.

The fragrant, oat-topped bread was destined not for her table, but for a local food bank, to be distributed to families increasingly struggling with hunger and the high cost of groceries .

“I just get really excited about it knowing that it’s going to someone and they’re going to make, like, 10 sandwiches,” said Ewaldsen, 75, a retired university human resources director.

Ewaldsen is a volunteer with Community Loaves , a Seattle-area nonprofit that started pairing home bakers with food pantries during the COVID-19 pandemic — and hasn’t stopped.

Since 2020, the organization headed by Katherine Kehrli, the former dean of a culinary school, has donate

See Full Page