Rising to the Occasion
Cottage food laws give home bakers a new path to entrepreneurship. Photos // Lisa Corson, Cheryl Waller
When you pick up a just-baked loaf from Upper Crust Bread in St. Louis, it feels like you’re grabbing a treat from an especially talented friend. Although for years Jeffrey Moll has been best known as the lauded mixologist behind the bar programs at Planter’s House and the now-shuttered Randolfi’s, he recently added a new title to his résumé: cottage baker. Upper Crust takes online orders early in the week; pickup is Saturday afternoon at Moll’s apartment in South St. Louis. Text him when you’re there, and he’ll appear in his driveway, masked up, toting a bag of bread scorched from the oven and wrapped in parchment paper.
“I started making bread a couple years ago,” says Moll. “People at Planter’s House have been telling me to start selling it for a while, [saying] ‘You’re getting really good at this.’ It was kind of the perfect storm; finally it just came to a head [during the pandemic], like, let me see if it’ll work. I’ll give it a shot.”
Moll launched Upper Crust Bread in early 2021, offering naturally leavened sourdough loaves that are baked in his apartment once a week. He has classic options such as country loaf, Turkey wheat and focaccia, plus specialty flour loaves, including buckwheat, sesame-semolina and rye with caraway. Most intriguing, however, are the more unusual loaves such as paprika-rosemary, turmeric-poppy seed and walnut-black sesame. You’ll also find compound butter, sauerkraut and Japanese-style milk bread on the menu.
Moll was able to start Upper Crust thanks to Missouri’s cottage food law, which went into effect on August 28, 2014, giving home bakers a new path to entrepreneurship. Missouri Senate Bill 525 specifies that Missourians can sell baked goods that are made in their residence – as opposed to a commercial kitchen – directly to consumers. Many states have similar laws, though Missouri does have a few very specific restrictions on the practice: Baked goods are defined as “cookies, cakes, breads, Danish, donuts, pastries, pies and other items that are prepared by baking the item in an oven,” with an additional stipulation for “canned jam or jelly” and “dried herb or herb mix.”
Although the cottage industry has been on the rise for years, the pandemic has led to a renewed interest in the business model. With countless chefs and bakers furloughed from full-time restaurant jobs and others stuck at home during quarantine, many turned to a favorite pastime: baking. The cottage model allows these home bakers to turn a profit from their sweet treats, albeit with a few other constraints.