Cottage Industry

The Joys & Challenges of a Home-Based Food Business

by Peter Barrett and photographs by Roy Gumpel, June 29, 2011

Three years ago, Mor Pipman and her family moved to Ulster County from New York City. The Israel-born visual artist had always wanted to have an old church as a studio, and she and her husband found one in Glenford, with a former community hall behind it to live in. Funky yet spacious old buildings with lots of character, and some land for their kids to run around on: It was the quintessential story of cramped urbanites seeking a better life in the country. But then her husband, a nurse, lost his job.

“I got scared. I wanted us to be able to live a little better,” she says, explaining the genesis of her new venture. An avid baker, last spring Pipman obtained her home processor’s license, and began Much Mor Bread, baking several times a week and selling locally at farm stands, Kingston Natural Foods, and Cheese Louise on Route 28. In her large, charming kitchen, furnished with shelves and cabinets made from the building’s former wainscoting, she bakes four days a week, making a dozen or so of her 27 different varieties of bread and a few sweets like brownies, biscotti, and cookies, as well as some jams.

In New York, the State Department of Agriculture and Markets is responsible for issuing Home Processor licenses, known officially as a 20-C exemption. To get licensed, a person calls up and makes an appointment for an inspector to come. If you have a well, you must have your water tested for coliform bacteria beforehand and show the results to the inspector. Pipman says that the inspection was easy, though she did scrub the place vigorously in anticipation. Once certified, a home processor can make “traditional” jams and jellies (traditional here means lots of sugar) as well as candies and baked goods like bread, cookies, double-crust pies, and brownies.