Plow Creek Bakery

Plow Creek Bakery is a small, independent bakery set within Plow Creek Fellowship, an intentional Christian community in rural Illinois.  We’ve been making whole wheat breads with organic flour and seeds, along with several white flour products, for over 10 years, using a certified kitchen that is inspected by the local health department.  We’ve been slowly growing and expanding our line of products to include organic white flour bagels, crackers, pita bread, 5 kinds of sweet rolls, yummy cakes, and 12 kinds of cookies.  Our major marketing is during the Farmer’s Market season, from May through September, providing products for 6 different markets a week.  All of our products are made from scratch, with no use of either chemicals or preservatives.  We’re proud of what we make, and enjoy hearing good responses from many of our customers.

Over the past several years, we’ve had good help from some of the various folks who have been here as Plow Creek Farm interns.   This past summer we had a full time (30 hrs. a week mostly) intern for the bakery, ideal from early May through September.   So if you enjoy baking, have an interest in exploring life in a small intentional Christian community, and would like to have some first hand experience in working in, and learning to manage a small bakery, we’d like to hear from you.

By the end of the summer, we’ll provide you with experience in the following areas:

• Mixing, shaping and baking all of our various products
• Planning the baking for various days in a week
• Planning what would be needed for the different markets
• Going weekly to a farmer’s market, setting up, selling, relating to customers
• Doing inventory of supplies and placing orders
• Packaging of products
• Developing an email list of customers for future ongoing contact with them
• Developing a new product if desired

Housing and a stipend will be provided.  For more information, please contact Louise Stahnke at stahnke[at]plowcreek.org.   If you would like to connect with Leah, our intern for 2011, and have her comments on her experience, let me know and I’d be glad to have her connect with you.