By Lorrie Baumann

Even an accomplished baker has days when the only feasible option for a fresh-baked treat is a quick stop at the market. A baker with a family member who has celiac disease doesn’t always have that option, according to Jill Bommarito, who comes from a family with a 40-year long history of celiac disease, an autoimmune disease in which the body responds to gluten by damaging the digestive system.

Bommarito doesn’t have celiac disease herself, but she does follow a gluten-free diet that many others in her family require, and over the years, she’d become a proficient home baker. “I couldn’t walk into a bakery and find something that was of a quality level that I could make at home,” she said. “You could do that with cheese, in every department except bakery…. You can find the meats and the amazing yogurts and the Italian aged vinegars. You just can’t find that in bakery – ridiculous flavor that you can put on a plate and no one would know you didn’t bake it yourself…. I like to bake, but I don’t want to bake every single thing in my life forever.”

That quality concern is even more serious for someone whose health depends on avoiding gluten, since local bakeries often don’t have the ability to offer products that are made in a dedicated gluten free facility that can guarantee that there’s no cross-contamination by gluten, Bommarito added. She responded to the conundrum by founding Ethel’s Baking Co., the company she named after the grandmother who taught her to bake and who also gave her the confidence to know she could do whatever she wanted if she really set her mind to it.

The company was born out of a holiday party she hosted for her entire family. At the time, she was pursuing a thriving career in residential real estate, so her time for baking was limited, but for her party, she baked her Pecan Dandy dessert bars so her family members who couldn’t tolerate gluten would have a dessert they could enjoy. “I had a holiday party for my whole family, who liked to gripe about gluten-free food,” she said. “But the conventional eaters were gorging on the Pecan Dandies.”
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That observation brought to the surface a feeling she’d been having for some time – that even though she’d just come off a record year in real estate sales, that wasn’t what she was really supposed to be doing. “I felt deep down that I was supposed to be doing something that brought joy to people. I knew it was going to be food,” she said.

She started Ethel’s Baking Co. in a church kitchen in Detroit, Michigan, and started selling her gluten-free baked goods at farmers markets and then at Detroit’s Eastern Market. From there, she expanded to the rest of the Midwest through Whole Foods. In those early days, her product range included cupcakes and cookies as well as the dessert bars that included the original Pecan Dandy, but over time, she refined that down to the dessert bars, although she recently added small batches of chocolate chip cookies back in. The line of dessert bars now includes Cinnamon Crumble, which tastes and smells like an old-fashioned cinnamon roll; Raspberry Crumble, which has a shortbread crust and tastes like a fresh raspberry pastry; Blondie, which has the indulgence of a brownie along with buttery flavor and chocolate chips; Turtle Dandy, which offers crushed pecans and chocolate layered over toasted pecans and caramel and a shortbread crust; and Brownie, a fudgy treat made with butter and premium chocolate, along with the original Pecan Dandy, which is reminiscent of a pecan pie, with handmade caramel and whole pecans over a buttery shortbread crust. Raspberry Crumble is the newest of the flavors, while the original Pecan Dandy is still a best seller, along with Turtle Dandy and Brownie. They’re all gluten free, and they’re handmade in small batches with each layer baked separately. Ingredient lists are transparent and clean, so that those who have food sensitivities can be sure that the treats are safe for them to consume. “We won’t compromise on the flavor to try and hit a price target,” Bommarito said. “Now more than ever we’re looking for solutions for how to take care of our family.”

Bommarito says she didn’t start her gluten-free bakery because she thought it was a great way to make money, so she’s particularly grateful for the insights she’s gained from her advisory board and from 10,000 Small Businesses Detroit, a Goldman Sachs educational program that provides participants with practical skills to grow their businesses. That support has helped her provide medical benefits for her business’ 18 employees and move her business into a new 20,000 square-foot facility in metro Detroit that will allow her to scale up her business to meet a growing demand. She says the hardest part of all that has been learning to focus every single day on her financials and to figure out how to increase efficiencies and decrease costs while maintaining product quality. “I work every day to stay focused on what our mission is and not anyone else’s…. I learned that regardless of the passion and how great the product is, financials are the backbone of your company,” she said. “I haven’t looked back for one second – this is where I belong.”

A three-pack of Ethel’s Baking Co. Dessert Bars packaged in a plastic cup retails for $9.99, while a single-serve package retails for $2.99. Ethel’s Baking Co. products are distributed nationally by KeHE and UNFI, along with Lipari in the Midwest.