diff --git a/pangeo_forge_runner/bakery/local.py b/pangeo_forge_runner/bakery/local.py
index 55ffeeb..709368e 100644
--- a/pangeo_forge_runner/bakery/local.py
+++ b/pangeo_forge_runner/bakery/local.py
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 """
 
 from apache_beam.pipeline import PipelineOptions
-from traitlets import Integer
+from traitlets import Integer, Unicode
 
 from .base import Bakery
 
@@ -29,6 +29,24 @@ class LocalDirectBakery(Bakery):
         """,
     )
 
+    direct_running_mode = Unicode(
+        "multi_threading",
+        config=True,
+        help="""
+        One of 'in_memory', 'multi_threading', 'multi_processing'.
+
+        in_memory: Runner and workers’ communication happens in memory (not through gRPC). This is a default mode.
+        multi_threading: Runner and workers communicate through gRPC and each worker runs in a thread.
+        multi_processing: Runner and workers communicate through gRPC and each worker runs in a subprocess.
+
+        multi_processing is closest to most production runners, as it enables real usage of multiple
+        CPUs on the host machine. **However**, it can mess up logging, so is not the default here.
+
+        https://beam.apache.org/documentation/runners/direct/#setting-parallelism has more
+        information.
+        """,
+    )
+
     def get_pipeline_options(
         self, job_name: str, container_image: str, extra_options: dict
     ) -> PipelineOptions:
@@ -40,7 +58,7 @@ def get_pipeline_options(
         return PipelineOptions(
             flags=[],
             runner="DirectRunner",
-            direct_running_mode="multi_processing",
+            direct_running_mode=self.direct_running_mode,
             direct_num_workers=self.num_workers,
             save_main_session=True,
             # this might solve serialization issues; cf. https://beam.apache.org/blog/beam-2.36.0/