Missouri nuns break bread 9M times over

CLYDE, Mo. -- When Pope Francis comes to Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families next year, Sister Lynn D'Souza hopes to have the work of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration there, too.

"In 1993, when Pope John Paul was in Denver for World Youth Day, we had the privilege of being able to provide the altar breads for that," Sister Lynn said. "We would love to be a part of this historic moment as well."

The altar bread department at the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, has been providing altar bread for churches in the Midwest and around the world for more than 100 years. Today, it produces more than 9 million breads per month, including white and wheat breads and a low-gluten alternative.

Sister Lynn became the manager of the altar bread department in September where she oversees the production line, several dozen employees and the "day-to-day running of the business for the most part," she said. The department is the community's main source of income.

Sister Lynn was born in St. Louis and attended high school and college in Texas. She has been a member of the community for 15 years.

"I feel very blessed and I have a wonderful family and was raised Catholic," Sister Lynn said. "After college, there was always a desire to do something more, do something different. ... The path of discernment, it kind of just led me here."

The altar bread department began by making bread for local churches in 1910. It later expanded to different Benedictine monasteries before consolidating back to Clyde in the 1980s due to commercial competition. They are now the largest religious producers of altar breads in the United States, Sister Lynn says.

The bread begins with about 95 pounds of flour and 16 gallons of water. They do between 10 and 14 mixes a day. The mix gets poured into 10-inch-by-14-inch sheets that go through a gas baker.

"They are very brittle," Sister Lynn said. "The closest thing I can like it to is like an ice cream cone."

The sheets of bread are put on carts and placed in an atomizer room overnight to make them pliable enough to cut. The pieces are then cut in stacks of 100, hand sorted for quality control, and packaged. The sisters sell bags of 500 to churches and ship bulk orders to wholesale distributors across the nation.

The baking process can be affected by the weather and individual batches of ingredients, Sister Lynn said. The winter is the most difficult season for baking.

"It's surprising. You'd think it's just a simple recipe -- wheat flour and water -- but the wheat flour, the water content in the flour varies with the seasons of the year. ... Getting all the proportions exactly right with the temperature in the room, the temperature of the baking plates, sometimes we have good baking days, sometimes it's a little more difficult," she said.

Most of the breads are about an inch to 1 1/2 inches in diameter and sell for about $6 to $9 per 500 on the community's website. They also produce larger Presider's hosts for use during Mass.

"For Catholics, we believe at the last supper, Jesus shared his body and blood and he said, 'This is my body and this is my blood.' We believe that Mass is a continuation of that, and that at every Mass, Christ is made present again in the bread and in the wine on his body and his blood," Sister Lynn said.

When possible, the ingredients are found locally, Sister Lynn said. The wheat flour is grown and milled for the department by a Kansas farmer whose sister used to be a member of the community.

"He has been growing and milling wheat for us for as long as I've been here in the community," Sister Lynn said. "We are really thankful for that."

Several decades ago, the department began searching for a low-gluten alternative for those with Celiac disease or gluten intolerance. Sister Lynn joined Sister Jane Heschmeyer to develop a new recipe that would meet both the dietary restrictions and restrictions implemented by the Catholic Church.

"We worked together for a couple of years, and it was in 2003 that we finally came up with something that was workable and got the approval of the Church, got the approval of people with Celiac's [and] the Celiac Disease Foundation," Sister Lynn said.

The Catholic Church requires altar bread to be wheat bread, which it defines as containing gluten.

"They say that simply because it's what we believed Jesus used," said Sister Lynn, who has a degree in biomedical science. "Jesus confined himself to a certain time and place in history, and we respect that."

The low-gluten alternative has a small enough amount of gluten to be safe for those with a gluten intolerance or allergy, but enough to qualify as a wheat bread. The gluten-free products are made in a separate facility in the community to prevent cross contamination.

They have more low-gluten customers, although the orders are typically smaller and for individuals instead of entire churches. The bread is sold in bags of 30 and has a shorter shelf life than the full-gluten versions. They ship the low-gluten bread internationally including to New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Canada, Mexico and across Europe.

Early in the development process, Sister Lynn said she viewed it more like a science experiment. When she heard that a meeting was going to be held in Rome to determine if men with Celiac's disease could be ordained as priests, despite not being able to receive communion, the process took on new meaning, she said.

"That was a little better reason to experiment other than just for the fun of science," she said. "It really motivated me to see if we could do something, and we really, really hoped that we could. We were so happy when we found something that worked for them."

Much of the department has remained the same since the 1980s when the operations consolidated. The building was once a printery house and wasn't intended to be a bakery. When she began this fall, Sister Lynn started a process to help determine how to best run the altar bread department.

"We are trying to do a study to make some recommendations for our future planning," Sister Lynn said. "What can we do? Do we need to do things differently?"

The study will take two years to complete. It is part of planning for what she hopes is a bright future, Sister Lynn said. Although their numbers have declined in recent years due to parishes consolidating and closing, she is optimistic for the future of the church and the altar bread department.

"I have high hopes for the future," she said. "As long as the Catholic Church is around, there will continue to be a need for breads for the Eucharist. ... I hope we can continue to provide for that need."

Information from: St. Joseph News-Press/St. Joe, Missouri, http://www.newspressnow.com