Carol LaBouvé-Mennen uses her breadmaking skills to benefit the Hortonville Community Food Pantry
By Rachel Kettner | For On Mission
GREENVILLE – Carol LaBouvé-Mennen said she had never been a bread maker, but that didn’t stop her from attending an event about sourdough at the Kimberly Library. After receiving a sample of sourdough starter, she went home and tried her hand at baking sourdough bread.
Only four months later, LaBouvé-Mennen bakes and sells “My Daily Bread,” donating the proceeds to the Hortonville Community Food Pantry, located at N848 Industrial Drive in Dale.
(Rachel Kettner | For On Mission)
“My goal has been to help those in need to have access to nutritious food for their families,” she said. “It’s fulfilling to contribute to a cause that addresses food insecurity and supports local families in need. It’s important to me to make a tangible difference in the lives of those who are struggling.”
LaBouvé-Mennen is a member of SS. Peter and Paul Parish in Hortonville.
The catalyst for My Daily Bread was a conversation with a friend who LaBouvé-Mennen said told her that the Hortonville Community Food Pantry was running out of items to give to the families it serves.
After seeing a post on Facebook about people selling their sourdough bread, she said she decided to give it a try and donate the proceeds to the food pantry.
“I thought maybe by Christmas I could raise $250,” she said. “My first bread was sold on Oct. 11 and by Dec. 1 I had already sent $1,000 (to the food pantry).””
As a retired educator, LaBouvé-Mennen bakes daily and is familiar with the multitasking and time management skills that are crucial to successful bread batching.
“Sometimes I’m batching and putting bread together at 11 o’clock at night,” she said. “Sourdough takes two days. You have to prep them, they have to rise four times with a stretch and fold. Then you form them and put them in baskets, and they have to be in the refrigerator for 12 hours. I’m home bound with it, no doubt about it, but I can do other things. It takes 45 minutes for a bread to be baked. My watch is my timer and when that goes off, I’ve got to get in the house.”
She started with a simple sourdough and has since expanded her menu to include simply sourdough, cheesy sourdough, cheesy jalapeno, cheesy olive herb, cinnamon and raisin, orange, cranberry and cinnamon, pepperoni, garlic, herb and cheese, and double chocolate.
“I mix them all or batch them individually because there are several different types of bread, and then it’s finding places in my refrigerator for all those breads,” she said. “Thank goodness I have two refrigerators!”
LaBouvé-Mennen said she spent her career serving the underemployed and underserved.
“I taught at Fox Valley Technical College for 32 years and worked with people learning English, and a lot of them use food pantries,” she said. “I taught in outreach, helping new businesses work with our Hmong and Spanish population and teaching their supervisors the culture. I did that for many years. It was a fabulous career. I just loved every minute of it. It was really fun. Now I have been teaching water aerobics at the Greenville YMCA for the last 10 years.”
Besides her baking in support of the Hortonville Community Food Pantry, LaBouvé-Mennen is also very involved at her parish.
“It’s probably 20 years I’ve been on the membership committee,” she said. “I joined the choir later on, and then they needed help ushering one Sunday and I stepped in and now suddenly I’m an usher and a greeter. It just kind of multiplies. Many of my committee members also belong to the Council of Catholic Women, so I thought I should join that, too, because otherwise there is such a duplication of services.”
LaBouvé-Mennen said she plans to continue My Daily Bread into the foreseeable future.
“Sometimes it’s a little crazy, but if you’re supposed to be doing it, you’re supposed to be doing it and it just works out,” she said. “When the bread comes out and it’s so beautiful, it’s like God smiling at me, telling me, ‘You’re supposed to be doing this, Carol.’”
For anyone interested in ordering sourdough bread to support the Hortonville Community Food Pantry, bread can be ordered by emailing at carolzbread@gmail.com. Bread is $15 for one loaf or $25 for two loaves. Ten dollars per loaf is donated to the pantry, while the other $5 is used to buy ingredients for upcoming orders.
“I’m touched by my friends’ and community members’ support of my bread baking project,” LaBouvé-Mennen said. “The resilience and gratitude of the people that are served through the Dale Food Pantry inspires me to keep baking bread. As we work together as a community, we become stronger.”