Patricia Glade turns leftover bread into donations for Illinois Valley Community College’s food pantry through her program “Crumbs for a Cause,” according to an IVCC news release.

Glade, an administrative assistant in IVCC’s Workforce Development Division, started donating unsold sourdough bread from her market sales to homeless shelters and the campus food pantry, Eagles Peak.

“You might not sell out at the market, and I did not want the bread to go to waste,” she said in a news release. Her family “gets breaded out unless I am trying a new recipe.”

This fall, Glade used fresh loaves as incentives to encourage donations to the campus food pantry.

“It was good to know it had an impact!” Glade said.

Glade learned to bake growing up on a farm, starting with her mother when she was 8 or 9 years old.

“I started baking with my mom when I was 8 or 9 years old, and by 10 or 11, I was doing it myself,” she said. “Eventually, it became my job to bake on the weekends.”

She said the bread-making process is meditative.

“Everything in your head just goes away, and there is no one in the kitchen, just me,” she said. “I mix and match flavors constantly. There is a nutritional aspect as well as the artistic aspect in how you score and shape the bread.”

Glade creates unique flavors using seasonings, fruits, vegetables and cheeses, the news release said. Her Italian herb-and-cheese and chocolate-covered strawberry sourdoughs are popular, while skeptics are often surprised by her taco-flavored variety.

“Bread is about life and love and caring,” she said. “Every generation and nationality has had some sort of bread attached to it.”

Sourdough is a three-day process, and a lot of things can go wrong in that time, but a lot can go right and you end up with a fantastic product, Glade said.

“When you smell bread, the brain recognizes it is something good,” she said.

During the holidays, Glade expands beyond bread to make decorated sugar cookies and traditional German lebkuchen using a generations-old family recipe.

“I am known for my lebkuchen!” she said.

Each generation adds to the baking tradition. One year, a granddaughter used Halloween ghost cookie cutters to make Christmas “Spirits” and invented stories to accompany them.