Friday Bread Basket 5/15/26

It takes only two to three seconds to become helpless in flowing grain

15 May 2026 — 5 min read

Hello from the Wordloaf Friday Bread Basket, a weekly roundup of links and items relating to bread, baking, and grain.

Fund Crust Fund Pizza (The Motion Picture)

Chicago tavern-style pizza maestro and friend to Wordloaf John Carruthers is (finally) getting a film made about his Crust Fund Pizza project, which has raised buttloads of money for all sorts of great organizations since launching in 2020. The filmmakers need crust funds of their own to get the film completed, and have launched a drive with all sorts of incentives for those who contribute, including a lesson in pizza making from the man himself:

Crust Fund Pizza slings alley pizzas for the benefit of the people who make the Chicago film scene and community a better place to live.

John Carruthers started this social impact project in August 2020. Once a month, he makes Chicago tavern-style pizza in his home kitchen and auctions them off for charity. High bidders are given the address of the alley behind his house to collect their pizza. Benefiting Chicagoland nonprofits such as The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Pilsen Food Pantry, and Greater Chicago Legal Clinic, The Crust Fund Pizza project has raised more than $115,000 fueled by word of mouth, social media FOMO, and Chicago’s community-wide obsession with all things pizza. John and the CFP project have been profiled by CBS News, Block Club Chicago, The Kelly Clarkson Show, and many other outlets.

This cinema vérité documentary short follows John’s process for the January 2026 drop, from mixing the dough to shuttling pies out to the garage where hungry diners sample their slices, complete with gratis cans of Old Style. It's a deep dive into street food culture and the power of local activism.

Will a dangerous cold snap, with wind chills plunging to 15 below zero, deter folks from venturing out for a charity pizza auction? Back this indie film crowdfunding campaign to find out!

Consider making a donation here:

Indie Gogo: Crust Fund Pizza, The Motion Picture

Kaputo

Barely a month after Helen Rosner told the world about the wonders of the Court Street Grocers Vegitalian sandwich, Caputo’s Bake Shop, the 122-year-old bakery that made its bread, closed without warning, sending fans and neighbors reeling:

If you want to hurt a neighborhood, close one of its favorite restaurants. If you want to hobble a neighborhood, eliminate one of the pillar businesses that supply those restaurants. Caputo’s Bake Shop, which has provided thousands of Brooklynites and dozens of Brooklyn restaurants and shops with their daily bread, abruptly closed this week after 122 years and five generations of family ownership.

“It’s pretty awful,” says Eric Finkelstein of Court Street Grocers. “Most of our most popular sandwiches were on that bread.” That included the Vegitalian, which the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner recently declared “maybe my favorite sandwich, period.” (“There’s nothing like a worn-in Italian bakery, and Caputo was, for me, the epitome,” Rosner tells me.)

Across its three locations, Court Street Grocers ordered roughly 6,000 Caputo’s loaves of various kinds each week, but that wasn’t always the case: When the shop opened, it bought no bread from Caputo’s. After Hurricane Sandy, when none of the bakeries they were using could deliver, they turned to Caputo’s. It started with one sandwich, and the number only grew over the years.

Why can't we have nice things anymore?

Hang time for Downtime

For Eater and Pre-Shift, Bettina Makalintal recently interviewed friend to Wordloaf and Downtime Bakery's owner Dayna Evans about her ongoing "Baker's Hangs" series, which brings local bakers (pros and home alike) together to talk shop, compare recipes, and commiserate:

Even before the shop opened in Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Downtime started hosting a series of Bakers’ Hangs, events where anyone with an interest in baking (including professionals) could come swap treats or take a trip to a local mill. I talked to Evans about why doing meetups like this felt important for her bakery.

Pre Shift: Why did you start the Bakers’ Hang series?

Dayna Evans: I started as a cottage baker and baking at home can be an isolating craft in a lot of ways. Obviously, it’s really early mornings. Especially when you’re a one-man show baking at home, you don’t really have access to community in the sense of other bakers as much as you do your customers — the people who are part of the greater picture. When I started in my home, which was around January 2022, I would have questions, or I would be testing something and I wanted to know if an expert thought it was good. I was really looking for an opportunity to meet other people in my city, either professionally or otherwise doing the same thing as me, and get a chance to chat with them.

What are the events like?

The only requirement is that you are, in some form, a baker: Home bakers, professional bakers, anybody who wants to show up, and even people who are baking-curious can come. It’s not ticketed; the only real thing is an RSVP. They’ve all been very different in energy and in terms of who shows up. It’s not just industry folks. It’s not just homemakers. Everyone shows up, which I really appreciate.

I don’t really think you even have to bake something. I encourage this, and often I take my own advice. It’s nice, obviously, if you’re testing something. Especially now that Downtime is open [as a brick-and-mortar], we tend to bring stuff that we have [left over] at the end of the day. It’s really more about conversation and hanging out. I don’t always make something because I’m too tired, so I just want to hang out with people.

So fun, and something I wish we had here in Boston (note to self). Also: I might just be at the next Downtime Baker's Hang on 6/28 myself...