Their daily bread is local

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If you haven’t already spied Cake Loaf Bakery at 321 Dundurn St. S., you may want to drive by on garbage day to get a sense of the new bakery. Their commitment to being eco-friendly is evident at the curb.

Most weeks there’s less than half a bag of trash to be collected, but eight overflowing recycling bins and four green carts.

“We could use six,” says Josie Rudderham, who opened the bakery with partner Nickey Sherman. Together, they vowed to produce only baking from scratch that is “seasonal, responsible and delicious.”

Part of being responsible, they say, is being committed to waste diversion. Sherman, 28, used to be horrified when the last bakery she worked for tossed out two industrial size bins of garbage a week and showed little interest in recycling.

“We don’t want to be a drain,” says Rudderham, 29, noting it’s been easy to meet their goal by investing in products that are easy to compost or recycle. “We don’t even have a garbage (bin) for our customers.”

The pair, who both grew up in Hamilton and met in culinary school years ago, buy all their supplies locally, whether it’s cheese or flour. The only exceptions are chocolate, sugar and coffee, though it is locally roasted. They also try to buy organic whenever possible.

While many bakeries have a couple of suppliers, Cake Loaf buys from more than a dozen sources, Rudderham said. She was raised in a family that went to the neighbourhood bakery for bread and the farmers’ market for groceries. She wanted their new business to emulate the bakeries of her childhood in the east end.

The pair scouted out neighbourhoods before settling on Dundurn Street because of the surrounding residential area. Sherman was impressed on a morning visit to see the amount of foot traffic heading to the local school. The pair purchased the building in 2008, but held off on their plans until the recession was over. They invested $150,000 to completely renovate the building.

Since opening at the end of August, business has been strong and growing each week, says Sherman. In addition to six employees, the women are each putting in 14 hour days. Rudderham, who has a two-year-old at home, does the early shift, arriving at 3 a.m. to make artisan bread. Sherman, who is the pastry and cake maker, closes the shop.

While some customers have expressed dismay at the bakery’s higher prices, most have been supportive when they learn it’s because local ingredients cost more, Sherman said. She and Rudderham have been happy to prove their naysayers — who argued no one would pay $5 for a loaf of bread — wrong.

“It’s been everything we kind of dreamt that it would be,” said Rudderham.

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