St. Joseph's Abbey bakes 4,000 loaves of bread twice a week to distribute, free of charge, to the homeless shelters and food distribution sites in the New Orleans area. Some 2000 loaves were being baked on this day and we arrived just as a batch was coming out of the oven.
Their program is called "Pennies for Bread" and subsists on donations.
One of the monks starts at 2:30 a.m. mixing the flour, water, yeast etc. to make the dough and others join him at 4:30 a.m. The day's baking finishes up around 11:00 a.m. after the loaves have been sliced and bagged and packed for distribution.
Their raisin bread is excellent and we were each given a loaf by the Abbot.