Hot Bread Kitchen: women getting to work

Hot Bread Kitchen is a bakery with a social mission from New York. Here, disadvantaged women from different cultural backgrounds bake more than 70 breads with an international character: from light Indian naan breads and Moroccan flat breads (m’smen) to perfect Mexican tacos and tortillas. And people are happy to queue up for them.

Who is behind the ovens?

Although women around the world are primarily responsible for the delicious food that comes out of the kitchen, the baking profession in Europe and North America is mainly reserved for men. Hot Bread Kitchen is changing that and focuses on the enormous, often untapped potential of women with a migrant background. The breads and pastries they make are inspired by recipes from the women’s home countries and thus reflect the ‘melting pot’ of the United States.

Training to become fully-fledged bakers

Most of the women who work here are uneducated, which puts them at a considerable distance from the labour market. By buying a loaf of bread, you contribute to the intensive training they receive, in which they are prepared to become fully-fledged bakers within six months. They receive English lessons, but more importantly: they learn the language, mathematics and science of the baking profession.

In this video, you can see how Hot Bread Kitchen gets women baking and why it is so successful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP-qxBoUMF0