Class at Stanislaus ag center will cover home-based food ventures

Do you make something yummy in your home kitchen, perhaps jam or bread or mustard or mole? A Feb. 23 workshop near Modesto could help you turn it into a business.

The University of California Cooperative Extension will provide information on these “cottage food” ventures. The name sounds charming, but it comes with plenty of rules on permitting, training, sanitation and other details.

“This is an area of interest for many people in our community, but they are just not sure where to start or if it is right for them,” said Terri Spezzano, extension director for Stanislaus County, in an email.

Participants will make some of these products at the workshop, to be held at the county ag center off Crows Landing Road at a cost of $25 per person.

Counties regulate cottage foods under a 2012 state law. They aim to assure that the food is safe to eat and that the operators move on to commercial kitchens if the volume takes off.

Details on the rules are on the website of the California Department of Public Health. Home kitchens can produce foods that “do not support the rapid growth of bacteria that would make people sick when held outside of refrigeration temperatures.”

That means no cream, custard or meat fillings in baked goods. Homemade marshmallows (there’s such a thing) cannot contain eggs. Nuts and dried fruits and vegetables are fine. Mole, the deeply flavored Mexican sauce, can be sold in paste form.

Walk through any farmers market and you’re likely to find a prepared food vendor who started in a home kitchen. And a stroll through culinary history takes you to now-large companies with similar origins.

Marie Callender, for example, first made her pies in a Huntington Beach trailer park in the 1930s, long before her restaurant chain launched. Mary See, the woman behind See’s Candies, did the same a few years earlier in Pasadena.

Are you next?

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 3:11 PM with the headline "Class at Stanislaus ag center will cover home-based food ventures."