By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com
Editor’s note: On Monday, Feb. 26, The Reporter published an interview with television legends Linda Purl and Patrick Duffy. The pair spoke about music – including Purl’s upcoming show at Feinstein’s at Hotel Carmichael in Carmel – love, fate, and their lives together. Click here to read that interview.
In addition to sharing their lives, Patrick Duffy and Linda Purl also share a heart for service. They express that through “Duffy’s Dough,” a business where all the profits go to fight food insecurity.
“Patrick’s an idea person, and I think I’m sort of project-oriented,” Purl told The Reporter. “Patrick has had a wonderful sourdough starter in his family for over 70 years, and he’s a wicked baker with this stuff. If we go to a friend’s house, we’ll take the rolls, we’ll take the cinnamon rolls, we’ll take the baguettes, and they get good reviews. So a couple of years ago, Patrick said, ‘well, we should start a company with this.’ So we did.”
Duffy interjected, “I said we should start a company with this. So SHE did. We got to make sure we get that right.”
According to Purl, the couple knew little about running a business, so they reached out to friends who could help.
“We make the sourdough dehydrated starter. We have a little cooking book about what you can do with it,” Purl said. “It’s all online under DuffysDough.com. It’s been a really fun project for us. We’re also certified food handlers in the state of Colorado because that’s where we make all the dehydrated starter. And boy, do we look good in our little plastic caps and gowns!”
Duffy told The Reporter all the net proceeds go to food-based charities.
“We give away everything,” Duffy said. “We haven’t made a dime personally. Once we pay for the flour and sugar and packaging, every once in a while, we write a check to a food charity of our choice. We both have had such fortune in our industry that to just say ‘I need another movie’ or ‘I need this or that’ is different than saying, ‘what would it mean to write a check for $50,000 to No Kid Hungry or a soup kitchen in downtown wherever?’ Our goal is to leave something behind that will continue on afterwards and just become a standard of how to take care of your fellow person.”
Purl said she appreciates the symbolism in this business.
“Working with bread is full of metaphors,” Purl said. “There’s the profound thing of the breaking of bread when you get to do that with friends with the end product, but also the resilience that this starter has – you cannot kill it. You feed a little bit of flour and sugar and off it goes. And it’s kind of a miracle, this life force, as it reinvents itself and gives you another loaf of bread or another pancake. It brings people together and it’s reassuring somehow to see this thing that that just keeps going.”
Duffy ended The Reporter’s conversation with a segue that made this old radio broadcaster proud.
“So bringing this full circle would be ‘the new album is this could be the starter of something big.’”
Learn more, order a sourdough starter kit, get recipes, and help support fighting food insecurity at DuffysDough.com.