Patrick Duffy and Linda Purl Bring Celebrity Sourdough Starter to Colorado Springs for Hunger Relief

At Monday's meet-and-greet, Duffy and Purl presented Care & Share food bank with a $5,000 check, the first tangible payout from a bread company built on a starter older than most of its customers. The couple held the event at the Flying Horse King Soopers, located at 2731 North Gate Boulevard, from 10:30 a.m. to noon. The first 100 customers received a swag bag.

Two famous actors brought their sourdough bread to King Soopers with purpose before profit at the center: Linda Purl, known as Pam's mom on "The Office" and a familiar face on "Happy Days," and her partner Patrick Duffy, Bobby Ewing on "Dallas" and Frank Lambert on "Step by Step," are supporting hunger relief with 100% of profits going to charitable organizations working to eliminate food scarcity.

The starter at the heart of Duffy's Dough carries a remarkable paper trail. In 1952, Duffy's parents drove him and his sister from Montana to Alaska in a GMC pickup, towing a trailer house behind them while traveling on a gravel road. It was in Alaska that Duffy's mother received a sourdough starter as a gift from a neighbor. Nearly 75 years later, the same starter, which legend has it traces back to miners from the Alaskan Gold Rush, is used in every loaf of Duffy's Dough. Duffy said his mother kept the sourdough starter even when she had to scrape bits of the dough from the inside of a suitcase full of clothing after it exploded from the pressure of the airplane when they flew back from Alaska.

Duffy himself didn't bake until he graduated from college and inherited some of his mother's sourdough starters from his sister. With his own starter, Duffy made everything from bread to tarts. After making his sourdough pancakes for Purl during their pandemic-born romance, the two thought it would be worthwhile to sell the sourdough starter as their own business. After Duffy and Purl started dating in 2020, the two used Purl's garage in Colorado Springs to start their bread company. Six years later, the couple brought their bread to southern Colorado after partnering with King Soopers to increase their production to a commercial scale.

Since that first day in the kitchen eating pancakes, their experience with sourdough expanded to producing hundreds of sourdough starter kits in the commercial kitchen of Stellina Pizza Café in Colorado Springs' Mid-Shooks Run neighborhood. Without an entrepreneurial background, Purl, 67, and Duffy, 73, said they needed friends to help them give their business legs. From creating a website to learning the ins and outs of business, the couple leaned on friends along the way, such as local bike and tire business owner Steve Kaczmarek. Purl would sit backstage with crayons scribbling out potential logos for the business, taping together mock-ups of their marketing plans with Band-Aids.

They said they chose to partner with King Soopers because of the company's zero-hunger, zero-waste policy. "They are serious about it," said Purl. The Duffy's Dough line available through select Kroger stores includes a Multigrain Sourdough Loaf, Sourdough Loaf, Artisan Sandwich Roll, French Dinner Roll, and Demi Sourdough Baguette, alongside dehydrated starter kits.

The event drew fans from well beyond Colorado. Maria Nechtman grew up in Romania during its Communist regime. She said the popular TV show "Dallas" was the only American show the Romanian government allowed her and her classmates to watch. Her favorite character was "Bobby," played by Patrick Duffy. Duffy said their goal from the beginning was always to give everything away. "We're at the legacy stage of our lives, so we thought, 'What can we do?'" said Purl.

"We have this company thanks to Linda and her perseverance and her knowledge and her friends and everything that has given birth to a way of giving back the memory that I have of my parents on our trip to Alaska," Duffy said.