Hot Bread Kitchen
by Gabbi Chee
Southwest Airlines Spirit Magazine
July 2012

1 At all hours of the day, white-aproned bakers bustle about the cement floor of Hot Bread Kitchen, tossing flour across butcher-block tables, loading metal trays with bulging, hand-shaped loaves, and shifting steaming, fresh bread to cooling racks. The only bodies at rest in this New York City bakery are pans of rising loaves, waiting to be hoisted into the oven. The skilled bakers turn out an eclectic array—around 25 varieties ranging from classic French baguettes to crisp Armenian lavash crackers—which they sell at farmers’ markets and gourmet stores across the five boroughs. But Hot Bread Kitchen is more than an artisanal bakery: It’s a nonprofit designed to give foreign-born women and minority entrepreneurs the skills and support they need to establish careers in the culinary arts. Overseeing daily operation of the place—and often rolling up her own shirtsleeves to pitch in—is 35-year-old founder and CEO Jessamyn Rodriguez.

2 By blending her lifelong passion for social justice and great food, Rodriguez says she has created her dream job. The idea for Hot Bread Kitchen came to her in a slip of the tongue. “I interviewed at a microfinance organization called Women’s World Banking,” she says. “I was telling a friend about the job, and he heard Women’s World Baking.” The image of women from around the globe baking bread together remained firmly engrained in her mind for the next decade. And while Rodriguez pursued her career in public service (which included stints with the Canadian government and the United Nations), that mental picture slowly fermented into reality. She moonlighted at a bakery and earned a master baker certificate. Then, in 2008, she took the leap. “I quit my job and put it all into Hot Bread Kitchen,” she says.

3 Rodriguez launched the bakery in the small Brooklyn apartment she shared with roommates, hiring two immigrant women as her first bakers. “I was definitely forging new ground, and we faced a lot of skeptics,” she says of those early days. “But for every person who questioned it, there were five people who were interested in supporting us.” Today, Hot Bread Kitchen employs a staff of 35 and occupies a nearly 5,000-square-foot space (part of which it rents out to entrepreneurs looking to grow their small food businesses) in La Marqueta, a public market in East Harlem.

4 The women who bake and package Hot Bread Kitchen’s offerings range in age from 21 to 60. Hailing from lands such as Chad, Haiti, Nepal, and the Dominican Republic, some have lived in the U. S. for as little as a year. Others, including production manager Antonia Garcia, who is originally from Puebla, Mexico, have called America home for more than a decade. These women’s diverse homelands are reflected in many of the bakery’s products, like heritage tortillas and the wildly popular m’smen, a buttery Moroccan flatbread.

5 Since its humble beginnings, Hot Bread Kitchen has trained 27 women from 12 countries. They receive paid, on-the-job experience, as well as courses in kitchen math, bakery sciences, and English as part of a yearlong training program funded by product sales and charitable donations. Several graduates have been promoted to managerial positions at the bakery, where they now supervise incoming trainees. Two have baked at chef Daniel Boulud’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Daniel.

6 The program has far surpassed Rodriguez’s original hopes. “We’ve grown faster than I ever expected,” she says. Hot Bread Kitchen is set to open its very own storefront at La Marqueta this month. But the bakery isn’t finished rising: Rodriguez has plans to expand her organization to five other U. S. cities. “It’s been a lot of hard work,” she says. “Hard work balanced with the most satisfying, amazing moments.”
What is the main idea of the article?
A) Jessamyn Rodriguez’s bakery, Hot Bread Kitchen, is a successful nonprofit business that
provides professional opportunities for immigrant women.
B) The hardworking women at Hot Bread Kitchen have helped it grow from a small nonprofit
organization into a large, successful business that will expand into several cities.
C) Jessamyn Rodriguez created her dream job when she established Hot Bread Kitchen after
a long career in public service.
D) The products of Hot Bread Kitchen, which include many different types of bread, reflect
the diverse backgrounds of its employees.