Building New Skills and Serving the Community at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility

The sprawling kitchen could be used to meet the demands of a school or a hospital, but this one has a few differences. A chef’s knife is securely attached to a counter with a metal tether; the supply closet uses silhouettes on the wall so that an inventory of sharp objects can be done at a glance; and the bakers are wearing chef’s smocks with SHERIFF’S INMATE printed in large letters on the back.

Welcome to Monday night at the Barnstable County Correctional Facility. The mazelike complex in Bourne has 261 individuals incarcerated at the moment. Of the 116 women, five 18 spring 2026 edible cape cod of them are in the kitchen for a two-hour Community Cooking program. They’re prepping dough for a Tuesday baking session that will yield bread and rolls that will be distributed to local food pantries the next day. On Wednesday and Thursday nights, they’ll repeat the process.

Cassie, who’s been part of the program for about two months, has worked in several Cape Cod restaurants. “I wanted to give back to the community because I wasn’t necessarily good to the community in the first place,” she said. “It’s therapeutic for me. It just gets me out of myself. I have a lot of things that I have to work on, so it helps me do that.”

Patricia Perry, the main pantry manager for the Lower Cape Outreach Council, said the Orleans pantry rarely received donations of fresh bread before the program started in November. “We explain to the clients where the bread comes from, and they’re just really inspired by the story. I wish you could see the looks on their faces. They enjoy getting the fresh bread and they do really appreciate where the bread comes from and the effort that goes into it.”

The Community Cooking program’s roots go back to the spring of 2025 when Erik Gura, general manager of the Pie in the Sky bakery in Woods Hole, volunteered to teach a baking class at the jail. Over the course of four weeks, a small group learned to make bread, cookies and other pastries.

Sheriff Donna Buckley wanted to create a sustainable program that would benefit those in custody and the community. She called Rev. Nell Fields, the minister at Waquoit Congregational Church, who assured her that there was a need for bread and other baked goods, and put her in touch with Andrea Scarpellini, food access coordinator for the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension program of Barnstable County. Scarpellini made the connection with the Lower Cape Outreach Council.

“Bread is symbolic for a whole bunch of reasons, but we also had the capacity to do that,” said Buckley. “It was a round peg and a round hole. As soon as we talked about it, the county was on board. I know that the need is there and that we’re filling the need.”

A Monday night session starts with the creation of a fresh batch of dough. It’s the simplest of recipes: flour, salt, water and yeast. After everything is carefully measured and mixed, it goes into a Hobart mixer until the dough pulls like taffy instead of breaking off in a clump. The dough goes into a 32-gallon bucket where it will rise for 90 minutes before cold-proofing overnight in the walk-in cooler.

“They’re very organized. Everyone knows just what to do,” said Kevin Doherty, a correctional facility officer who also serves as food service culinary arts specialist.

With phase one of the dough making complete, the women make a batch of snickerdoodles, chocolate chip cookies and s’mores cookies. Doherty uses a tethered knife to slice butter for the cookie mixes. Kim forgot her reading glasses, so another baker reads a cookie recipe’s fine print. The team’s rapport is obvious, and they like to joke around. Sarah asks the others to guess how many chocolate chips fit in one cup.

On Tuesday night, it’s time to bake 70 loaves and 140 rolls. Sixty pounds of flour and 35 pounds of water went into the dough mix, so it’s hard work, even for two, to empty the 32-gallon storage bucket onto the work surface.

Sarah scoops the dough and Cassie grabs a blob in each hand, pushing down and rolling them into spheres for rolls. It’s a bit of a workout. They sculpt dough into standard loaves but also have some fun with shapes: braids, burritos and turtles.

“I love doing this,” said Kim. “I’ve gotten a lot better. Now we can do bread bowls. Someday I hope to have my own bakery.”

After the rolls are baked in a conventional oven, the tops are quickly coated with butter that melts into the rolls. The bread goes into a combination oven – 35 minutes on a steam and bake cycle that ensures the bread will be light and fluffy on the inside, then another 35 minutes on a regular bake, which yields a crispy surface.

When the program geared up in the fall, Dante Delgrosso, who owns Moto Pizza in East Falmouth with his wife, Jessica, came in to help the women refine their breadmaking techniques. “They were making some bread, but they were struggling, so we worked on some shaping techniques,” he said.

Delgrosso said working with dough has been his passion for 20-something years. “I did it at home terribly for many years. I love the science of bread. It took me forever to figure it out. One of the things that fascinates me about bread is that there’s this connection to civilization. I tried to impart that to them as well. It’s just cool, I think, to be handling dough, get your hands in the dough and feel it come alive. I hope that even if they don’t use the information professionally, they’ll have a healthy hobby.”

Scarpellini was hired by the county during the Covid pandemic to address food insecurity across the Cape. “My position was created to look at the region as a whole to identify where the gaps were in service and try to work with community partners to address those gaps,” she said. “When we heard about the sheriff’s department creating this community cooking program we said, ‘Okay, you have this bread. We have a network already who would love to be able to use the bread.’ They’re able to give out freshly baked bread to pantry users. Everybody loves it. It’s such a win-win situation for everyone.

“It’s so inspiring to see one organization say, ‘Hey, this is something I think we can do and do it well.’ Hopefully it inspires other groups to look at their resources and say, ‘What do we want to do?’ And it doesn’t have to be anything huge. It’s just something consistent that people can rely upon and it really makes a world of difference.”

Perry, the manager of the food pantry in Orleans that received the bread and rolls cooked early in the week, said that if she could talk to the bakers she would thank them for sharing their skills. “I would tell them that they should feel quite rewarded for enhancing the diet of many of our clients who wouldn’t ordinarily have fresh bread. And I would wish them so much luck in securing a job in their future and being independent and happy.”

Rev. Fields distributes the bread and rolls made later in the week. Her church has a weekly soup luncheon and the rolls are a big hit. The baked goods are shared with A Place at the Table, a twice-weekly program at St. Barnabas Church in Falmouth that feeds people who are unhoused, and a micro pantry at Falmouth High School.

“When you’re breaking bread with people, the playing field is even because we’re all hungry,” she said. “We’re all beggars looking for that piece of bread.”

Doherty oversees the bakers and trains newcomers when a team member leaves the facility. The first part of his career was in restaurants. He started working at Soprano’s restaurant in Mashpee when he was 20, climbing from dishwasher to head chef. “In the summer, we’d have 300 to 400 people a night, cooking from an all-scratch menu. A lot of my experience and expertise comes from if something goes wrong, instead of panicking, I say, ‘Hey, just take a deep breath and we’ll fix it.’ There’s no reason to let it get to you. There’s always a fix somewhere. You just have to think it through.”

Eventually he decided to follow several family members who had worked in law enforcement. Four years ago, he joined the staff at the correctional facility. When Sheriff Buckley wanted to gear up the Community Cooking program, he was the right person in the right place at the right time.

“I wanted to bring some aspect of teaching to this. I want them to know why we’re doing things certain ways. We’ve learned the science behind it, why you need to knead the bread, why we let it rise, the cooking process. Just recently we got to test how bread flour works versus regular all-purpose flour. When we use bread flour, it is exactly one 50-pound bag, but the proteins in the bread flour absorb liquid better than the AP flour, so we need a little bit more AP flour to compensate for that.”

“When I took over, my main thing was I wanted to make sure they all learned something that they could use when they leave our custody. It’s a lot cheaper to make your own bread, and it’s a life skill that they can pass down. It also is good for finding jobs. Any bakery, any restaurant, they’re always looking for people who are skilled. By doing this program, it helps them build skills. It helps them learn techniques, see certain things, and get the process done.”

Buckley sees the Community Cooking program as a mix of education, vocational training and community service. “I look at the jail as a sort of multi-pronged program that is vocational, educational and treatment-based or rehabilitative regarding reentry and reintegration, giving people a skill and setting people up for success when they leave,” she said. “If we don’t give people an opportunity to move on, it becomes a life sentence. How do we make it so they can be successful when they leave? If they don’t have options, they’ll resort to the behavior that brought them here.”

She hopes to expand the program’s offerings. Having raised a son who she said existed on mac and cheese and pizza, she wondered about going from bread to pizza. “Could we provide frozen pizza kits or provide the dough for pizza? Could we create a product that is usable by kids, by families? I’ve come to realize, unfortunately, there’s a stigma to food insecurity. You only can get certain things at pantries. Pizza’s a level playing field. So, we’d like to operationalize it.”

Delgrosso loves the idea of pizza-making training. “There’s tons of pizza shops. There aren’t so many pastry and bread shops around. Whether they want to start their own business or go to work somewhere, pizza really opens up a lot more doors.”

Buckley, who was elected sheriff in 2023, said she can see the transformation in some of the women who participate in the program. “Some were here when I became sheriff, so that’s a long time. They’ve grown with us through our women’s programming and regularly provide us with feedback. This has been really meaningful for them, knowing that they are doing work here that’s benefiting people on the outside, in addition to being able to learn a skill and use the time they’re here productively.”

During the Monday baking session, the women take a few moments to talk about their involvement in the Community Cooking program. (One of the five chose not to be interviewed.)

Judy says she likes the camaraderie. “They’re a great group of girls. We all know a little bit about nothing. We seem to pull off all this wonderful bread and cookies, and the girls back in the unit get to have some.”

At home, she cooked Thanksgiving meals from apps to dessert. “Everything I bake is always made from scratch. There’s no box cakes in my house. I have my signature cake. It’s a chocolate buttercream with chocolate ganache. It’s something my son came up with. He was in school for culinary arts and he liked it. I tried it with him and we made a mother-son team. It’s delicious. It’s one of the best recipes I’ve used.”

What would she be doing that night if she wasn’t in the kitchen? “Nothing. Staring at the walls, watching TV, gossiping. Things that aren’t productive. Whereas this is productive and it’s charitable. I’m happy to be a part of it.”

At this point, she’s been part of the team for about three weeks, a “newbie.” She heard about it when it started and hoped she’d be asked to take part when there was an opening. “I always thought I’d be the next one, the next one, the next one. I don’t know, time slips away in here somehow. When Kim suggested my name, I said, ‘I’m in.’”

Sarah’s the quietest member of the team. “I like that it’s an extra thing that I can add onto my job resume, but I also like that it’s extra things that I can learn,” she says. “I never was really a great cook. I can whip up a nice plate of pasta, but anybody can.”

Cassie has worked at several restaurants from Hyannis to Falmouth. She’s waitressed and worked in food prep but never worked as a baker. “I’m trying to build on all of my skills,” she says. “Anything I can do to improve myself and build on my future, I’m going to do it. I sign up for absolutely everything I possibly can in this facility to better myself. This seemed like a cool program to be in. I’m friends with the girls in it and some of the girls that have already left. Cooking is kind of a passion of mine. I like experimenting. I like cooking for people that appreciate it. I like making people happy.”

Kim’s been part of the crew since it started. She’s worked at a sports bar and managed a sandwich shop. She enjoyed baking cakes and cupcakes with her daughter.

“When they told me the bread was going to churches and to people that can’t afford to have baked bread, this is what I wanted to do,” she said. “On the outside, if people didn’t have something, I always gave it to them.”

A woman who was new to the crew was a bit nervous, according to Kim. “We told her, nope, nothing to be scared about. You learn to make the bread, and you learn to love doing it. We learn how to do different things.”

Kim’s s’mores cookies recipe is improvised, with mini marshmallows and crumbled graham crackers added to the chocolate chip cookie dough. It doesn’t work as well as she hoped. The scoops of cookie dough are too big for the mini-muffin tin, the overflow sticks to the metal, and the treats fall apart when they try to remove them.

“I always tell them even if you make a mistake, it’s a learning process,” said Doherty. “I mean, everyone makes mistakes, but it’s what you take out of it that really matters.”

Maybe there’s a metaphor there.

Bill O’Neill got his start in the communications industry delivering the Cape Cod Times on his bicycle. When he was a bit older, he was the lifestyle editor at the Times. As a freelancer, he writes about healthcare, pop music and other topics. He lives in Buzzards Bay and enjoys biking, hiking and kayaking.

Members of the public who wish to volunteer to teach justice-involved individuals at the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office can email Chief of Inmate Services and Programs Barbara Clarkson at [email protected].

Lower Cape Outreach Council
19 Brewster Cross Road, Orleans
[email protected]