Every barrio in the Philippines has a community bakery, its own panaderya that supplies freshly baked pandesal from dawn to midnight.

Growing up at the south end of Pulang Lupa in Las Piñas, we were awakened daily by the honking of the pandesal delivery bicycle, which sent us kids rushing to our front yard where the day’s ration of pandesal was carefully nestled atop a gumamela bush, out of reach of dogs, cats, chicken, and other free-range creatures.

Our mad dash to the bread bag ensured that the pandesal was still hot and not soggy from the steam of freshly-baked bread. We paid for the bread by leaving money in a paper bag atop the gumamela bush every Sunday morning. We never lost a single bag.

Pandesal was the breakfast staple in our five-generation household. There was no dietary precaution against pandesal raising the blood sugar of my grandparents and great-grandparents.

The old pandesal recipe saw drastic changes, especially during the hot “pandesal” craze. The staple shrank, was tinted with yellowish food color, and sweetened.

Community bakers, according to Lucito Chavez, president of the Asosasyon ng Pilipinong Panadero (APP), are pushing for the nationwide adoption of a “standardized pandesal” formula, using less sugar to avert future price increases.

The standardized formula will return pandesal (salty bread) to its traditional recipe.

The pandesal currently being sold by both community and industrial bakeries, Chavez explained, has deviated significantly from the traditional formula, requiring a huge portion of sugar, which has recently become expensive.

Agricultural products like squash, camote, potato, sweet potato, carrot, malunggay, as well as ube, can be incorported to pandesal to as much as 25 percent. These local products face supply and quality challenges due to poor post-harvest capacity, lack of a robust cold chain infrastructure, and high transportation cost.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) projects the Philippines will import 240,000 MT of refined sugar this crop year 2023-2024.

Tinapayan Festival, a community bakery which has been around for 40 years, introduced nutrient-packed, cost-efficient pandesal varieties that solve the rising prices of fuel, sugar, and wheat. Use of bountiful vegetable harvest in pandesal is a novel and practical solution for farmers’ seasonal problems while providing nutritious and affordable bread.