Digging out day-old bread

There are three rules of thrift, as mother used to say: 1 – Buy used as long as it’s not junk, 2 – Coupons work miracles and 3 – day-old bread keeps more dough in the bank.

Around the valley, there are several bakeries that make bread and other baked goods fresh daily. While each store has a different policy on what to do with the leftovers, many offer discounts and markdowns to keep the goods moving. Here’s the lowdown on a few of the bakeries around the valley.

Great Harvest Bread Company

This bakery, located at 37 W. Center in Logan, sells fresh-baked, whole-grain bread daily. The owner, James Clawson, said that most days they have very few loaves of unsold bread, but they donate most of those to the Cache Community Food Pantry.

“Monday morning is the best time to get a discount,” Clawson said.

There is typically day-old bread for sale on Monday because there are more leftover loaves from the weekend and the food pantry can only take a certain number of loaves. Clawson advised calling ahead to check and see if they had any day-old bread, but said that they do not take orders for day-old bread.

“It’s first come, first served,” Clawson said.

Lee’s Market Place

Lee’s, located at 555 E. 1400 North in Logan, donates its day-old bread to senior centers in Hyrum and Logan, bakery manager Carry Jabbs said. Other baked goods, like doughnuts and bagels, that aren’t sold go to a pig farmer in the area.

Jabbs, who has been in the bakery business for 20 years, said often when stores sell day-old baked goods, people will give them to friends or use them in activities. Because the quality diminishes with time, some of these people will not enjoy the baked goods and might stop patronizing the store they came from.

“We feel it’s important that we offer quality food to our customers,” Jabbs said.

The store does mark down doughnuts, bagels and pastries if there is a large enough inventory and business is slow, Jabbs said. However, there is no specific time when the food gets marked down.

Shaffer House Bakeries

Located at 1045 N. Main in Logan, Shaffer House Bakeries offers a variety of breads, buns, rolls, cupcakes, cookies, doughnuts and pastries. The store has a three-day pull date from the time the food is baked, sales manager Camie Holden said.

Any unsold food baked on Monday is sold Wednesday for half price. As with most bakeries, the supply of day-old baked goods varies from day to day, Holden said.

Leftover white, wheat and sourdough bread often gets used for bread crumbs, while the remaining cinnamon rolls, doughnuts and other baked goods are sold out.

Shaffer’s Bakery

Not to be confused with Shaffer House Bakeries, Shaffer’s Bakery, located at 910 S. Main in Logan, sells their baked goods for about 33 percent off.

“Most of our bread is good for two days,” store sales representative Jenny Youmans said, “then it gets marked down.”

The store has a place set off especially for day-old baked goods.

Some valley bakeries, like Crumb Brothers Artisan Bread, donate all their day-old bread to charity. Contact other bakeries for individual policies on day-old bread and unsold baked goods.

-mattgo@cc.usu.edu