Rikers Island might not have vegan fare but its bakery sure must be something. Last summer the Times went gaga over the prison bakery's carrot cake (they even ran the recipe) and now we've got another look at how the bakery, which feeds the city's entire prison population, does its thing. Prison bakers make 36,000 loaves of bread each week!
Other interesting things we learned about baking in prison include:
- Only prisoners with sentences of one year or less are allowed to work in the bakery as it is meant to be job training.
- For their work prisoners are paid $31 bucks a week.
- Most of the equipment in the bakery dates back to the 1960s.
- Until Bloomberg came around the bakery only made white bread. Two years ago Bloomberg's people made them switch to whole-wheat loaves.
- Prisoners used to get eight slices of bread a day but now are only rationed to six slices. This reportedly saves the city $350,000 a year.
- In the summer the bakery can get as hot as 120° degrees.
- Much of the civilian staff of the bakery is Guyanese.
- No workers are allowed to leave the bakery until after all of the bread slicing blades have been counted.
- Nope, you cannot buy Rikers bread.
All in all it sounds like if you ever end up in Rikers, the bakery is not a bad place to end up. At least one inmate, 24-year-old Nikos Alexis, has learned a few things from the baking experience he wants to take with him when he is finished serving his time: “I want to just get back on my feet and do things the right way,” he says, “and bake bread for my mother.”
