Gerald Hanks
When four bakers at the El Bolillo Bakery in Houston found themselves trapped due to the flood waters of Hurricane Harvey, they didn’t panic.
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Instead, they chose to rise for the occasion and did what they do best: they baked. And baked. And baked.
In the two days they were stranded, they used over two tons of flour to bake varieties of bread, donating their products to evacuees in shelters.
The store closed at 7:00 p.m. Saturday night, just as the worst of the rain started to fall; the bakers were preparing the kitchen for the next day’s business, when they found themselves with few options.
Waters came up to the door, but, fortunately, the flood waters did not get into the store; thanks to the electricity, water and flour holding out, the duo made the most of their time.
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During the 48 hours they were trapped, they baked bolillo, a type of white sandwich bread, and pan dulce – sweet bread – from 4,400 pounds of flour.
When they were exhausted, they would sleep on massive bags of flour.
At one point, they kept themselves so busy, they lost count of how many loaves they were baking.
Brian Alvarado, the store’s manager, said the store’s owner went to check on his workers on Sunday, but police turned him away due to the high waters.
When the owner reached the store on Monday, he found nearly every free space covered in freshly-baked bread:
“That’s when we took the image and they had made so much bread,” Alvarado said in an interview. “We were not expecting to come in here and see every single display case full of bread.”
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The results of the two-day baking binge were delivered to the makeshift shelter at the George R. Brown Convention Center, as well as a local police station.
All three of the El Bolillo stores since reopened after the floods receded.
The bakers are still setting aside a portion of the day’s bread to distribute to shelters around the city.
These Houston bakers trapped by flooding made tons of free bread for Harvey victims https://t.co/OOkUSFIneg pic.twitter.com/axUWMaTibI
— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) September 1, 2017
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