Ready, Set, Go: Organize Your Kitchen
IF YOU’RE LIKE MOST FOLKS starting a cottage food business, you already know your way around a kitchen. It may very well be your favorite spot in the house, where you bake up your holiday cookie favorites or Sunday morning muffins.
The key next step, and what this chapter covers, is how to shift from being a homespun casual cook to viewing your kitchen as the base for a viable business enterprise. It’s like your kitchen now has dual personalities. On one side, it’s still the hub of your family meals and routines. On the flip side, it transforms into an efficient production facility where you pump out your pickles and pound cake like nobody’s business.
Take your kitchen setup seriously and make the time to organize systems that ensure food safety. By keeping things under control and practicing proper procedures, you avoid stress, inefficiency and food safety issues. This chapter will offer suggestions on how to do just that.
Five Steps for Setting Up Your Home Processing Facility
By now you figured out your recipe and developed your product and the marketing that goes with it. Next, set up your kitchen so you can make ten dozen brownies as easily as one dozen. If you’re operating out of a tiny apartment or urban kitchen, this will take especially careful planning. Since you can feed your extended family a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, you can pull off making cases of strawberry-rhubarb jam, too.
As much as you can, separate personal use from business use; in some states, this is required by law. There will be overlap in your kitchen, particularly as it relates to use of space, from counters to mixers. The magic of a cottage food business is that you don’t need to buy a lot of new equipment. However, items that are clearly business-only, such as product ingredients, need to be stored, labeled clearly and tracked separately.
The KitchenAid stand mixer is a go-to appliance for author Lisa Kivirist in her home kitchen at Inn Serendipity. JOHN D. IVANKO
Step 1: Assess Equipment
What recipes are you making? What equipment do you need to make it? Write out a list answering both these questions. The list will vary depending on the type of food product you make; typical answers for baked products and canned items are covered below.
For baked products:
• Stand mixer
A stand mixer will be much more efficient than a hand mixer when it comes to preparing batters and dough. A stand mixer frees up your hands for other tasks, and, with its mighty motor, the batter at the end will have a smoother texture and bake more evenly. Most models come with a wire beater attachment that adds air as it turns to keep batter light and fluffy. A stand mixer, a heavy and clunky piece of equipment, requires more storage space; they’re not cheap either. The difference between various models comes down to how they handle dense dough; the more solid — and pricier — models tend to do this better.
Stand mixers come with different bowl sizes, ranging from three- to seven-quart. If you’re in the market to purchase a new mixer, bigger will always be better and more efficient for mixing multiple batches. If you have the funds for a larger mixer up to the seven-quart size, give it serious consideration. Having extra mixing bowls helps, allowing you to prep one bowl while another is mixing, and extra small bowls mean less washing if you’re only beating something small. Double-check that any extra bowls you order work with your make and model of stand mixer. KitchenAid (kitchenaid.com) mixer accessories have a reputation for being interchangeable.
Another stand mixer add-on particularly helpful to cottage food baking enterprises is a pouring shield, a plastic edge that sits on top of your mixing bowl and keeps ingredients, particularly light stuff like flour, inside the bowl where they belong. A range of other add-on attachments use the stand mixer motor and transform it into another appliance, from a food processor to a pasta roller.
A hand mixer is much lighter in weight and better for small, simple tasks, like whipping one egg white. Because a hand mixer has less power than a stand mixer, avoid over-tasking it with denser dough or batter; otherwise, you’ll burn out the motor. Oster (oster.com) makes a rechargeable, cordless hand mixer that’s versatile and easy to store.
COOKINA Cuisine Reusable Cooking Sheet holding two croissants, easily lifted off the non-stick surface. COURTESY OF COOKINA/POIRIER RICHARD INC.
• Baking pans
Multiple baking pans help you operate efficiently by maximizing baking time. While one set of cookies bake, you can prep another and keep rotating. Most home ovens have three racks that can accommodate three cookie sheets, so having six cookie sheets will triple your output in half the time. Buying identical pans helps with storage since they fit on top of each other easily.
The most versatile pan in your baking setup will probably be the sheet pan, also called a cookie sheet. You’ll be using this pan so much that it’s worth the time to research one that will hold up to hundreds of uses. Cookie sheets come in various materials, sizes, thicknesses and finishes, insulated or not, with rims or not. To bake items evenly without burning, thicker sheets work best and are less likely to warp over time than thinner or insulated sheets. Sheets with rims tend to be easier to handle, and the sides prevent anything from running over and spilling in your oven. Of course, get as big a sheet as will fit in your oven to maximize baking space.
Some new products make baking easier. The COOKINA Cuisine Reusable Cooking Sheet (cookina.co) from Poirier Richard Inc. creates a non-stick, easy-to-clean alternative to aluminum foil, parchment or wax paper. Place it on your sheet pan or baking tray to bake without oil. The sheet is easy to clean with soap and water afterwards and does not hold odors or flavors from previous uses. It is 100 percent non-stick and PFOA-free, reusable and reversible. The company also makes a COOKINA Gard Oven Protector to catch spills and a COOKINA Grilling Sheet for barbecue grilling.
Another route to go is food-grade silicon bread or pastry liners and flexible molds from Sasa Demarle (sasademarle.com). They have a Silpat Workstation Roul’pat (silpat.com) that is coated with silicon on both sides, allowing you to roll out any kind of dough without using flour; it also allows for spreading nougat, cooked sugar, chocolate or caramel. Their molds come in various shapes and sizes for pastries, specialty breads and muffins, but you’ll need to go to a restaurant supply store for these. Their Silpain non-stick baking mat for breads has perforated qualities. The water seeps through the mat, leaving a crusty finish for your homemade biscuits and breads.
• Cooling racks
Don’t just let your baked items cool in the pan. Cooling racks are essential for the baking process. Unlike trivets or hot pads, they allow air to circulate underneath the rack, so the item in your baking pan cools down faster and doesn’t over-bake or dry out.
Cooling racks can take up a lot of valuable counter space, so look for a stacked rack that uses your existing cookie sheets and lets you stack four, one above the other, with plenty of air space for circulation in between each. King Arthur Flour (kingarthurflour.com) makes a stacked rack that holds four sheets and folds down for easy storage.
For Canning:
Even if you’re already a home canner, when you’re making cases of products, you’ll want to have the following canning items on hand.
• Water bath canner and rack or pressure canner
If you’ve been getting by with a stock pot and a MacGyvered rack out of rolled foil, let your business launch be the reason to upgrade to an official water bath canner with a fitted metal rack. Designed to fit perfectly into your water bath canner, these sturdy racks are easy to lift out and allow you to both put in and take out a full batch of jars all at once.
Pressure canners went through a major redesign in the 1970s, resulting in today’s modern design that’s much safer due to improved gauges for regulating pressure. While pressure canners are an approved method for sealing jars, they involve more steps and detail than water bath canners. The National Center of Home Preservation (nchfp.uga.edu/) has specific resources for the step-by-step process of safe pressure canning.
Not all plastic is suitable for food storage or for using in the food preparation process. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that plastics that come into contact with food are of a higher purity and not harmful to humans. If you’re looking for storage buckets and bins — or a plastic container for proofing your bread dough — below are a few considerations.
• Use recycled containers previously used for food.
Restaurants and other food service establishments can be good resources for free, large, food-grade containers, such as five-gallon buckets that were once filled with potato salad or soy sauce. Of course, you’ll need to clean and sanitize them thoroughly before use.
• Look for food safe symbols.
A cup and fork is the universal symbol for food-safe plastic.
• Identify HDPE: Number 2 plastic.
The plastic recycling number “2” indicates “high-density polyethylene” (HDPE), one of the most inert and stable forms of plastic. All plastic food-grade buckets used at restaurants will be made from HDPE. Not all HDPE plastic is safe, however. Look for the stamped markings FDA, NSF or the cup and fork symbol to confirm the plastic is food-safe HDPE.
• Buy from a kitchen retailer.
Purchasing items specifically designed for the kitchen, such as food storage containers from the Container Store or Bed, Bath & Beyond, will ensure food-grade plastic is used. Restaurant supply stores that service caterers will have larger, more functional plastic food-service containers that are often cheaper than those available at chain retailers.
• Wide-mouth funnel
Keeps your product in your jar and off your counter. Norpro (norpro.com) makes a stainless-steel version.
Works better and safer than kitchen tongs to help move hot jars for the water bath.
• Lid wand
Enables you to remove sanitized jar lids from the boiling water without burning your fingers or contaminating the lid.
• Large cleaning brush
Helps scrub out any debris as you prepare your jars. Typically made from a sponge material adhered to a handle.
Canning in a home kitchen requires attention to the recipe and the process, but it’s not hard if you have the right tools. JOHN D. IVANKO
General Equipment
In addition to the key baking or canning equipment, think through the following equipment for your cottage food operation that, while shared with other people in your home, is still essential for your enterprise.
• Refrigerator
You already have a refrigerator — now you need to sort out how to handle the increased storage needs your enterprise will bring. Be sure to cover, date and label all ingredients used in your items. Go for square food storage containers since they use space more efficiently than round ones. Required by many cottage food regulations, place a thermometer designed for refrigerators in the back of your unit and make sure your unit maintains a temperature between 38 and 44 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 7 degrees Celsius).
Depending on what you’re making and your available space, you may need a second refrigerator. This second unit, used exclusively for the business, could be a capital business expense. It will both give you extra space and avoid confusion with your home items and what the kids know they can snack on. A second refrigerator will also minimize food odor issues, which could jeopardize the taste of your products. Home refrigerators may hold a range of items and the smells they bring with them, like a spicy curry, garlicky potatoes or a fish dish. A second refrigerator stops such smells influencing the flavor of your dough or frosted cake.
• Food processor
A real ninja in the kitchen: the food processor. It can slice, dice, chop and puree, making a variety of prep tasks more efficient. Get a food processor with a large cup size for large batch processing; Cuisinart (cuisinart.com) has bowl sizes that range from seven- to fourteen-cup. Food processors often come with a wide open tube at the top called a “feed tube” that allows you to push larger pieces in at one time. Look for a model designed for effective storage with retractable cords and specific compartments to store attachments like blades.
Kitchen Considerations: Ovens and Cooktops
Before visions of a cottage food business danced in your head, your oven and cooktop probably served as the workhorses of your home kitchen. Whether you own a dual element with an oven built in underneath the cooktop or two separate units, you probably use them every day, for everything from baking birthday cakes to simmering soups. But now that you’ve stepped up production in your home kitchen, make sure these two pieces of equipment can handle the new workload. Do your research to ensure you invest in what’s best for your needs.
Options and considerations vary, depending on if you use gas or electricity to power these two large appliances. For cooking, professional chefs and home foodies tend to be loyal to gas since you can better control the heat and the gas burners; both heat up and cool down fast. But electric appliances come with built-in safety features, because they don’t have pilot lights that can go out and cause gas leaks. Electric cooktops come with different burner sizes to heat pots or pans efficiently. Flat-top electric cook surfaces are also easy to clean.
The other kitchen contemplation involves potentially investing in a commercial-grade oven or cooktop, akin to what you’d find in the kitchen of a restaurant. Some variables to think about when researching commercial equipment:
• Determine space and setup requirements
Often double the size of a standard home unit, commercial appliances generally require more floor space. Additionally, because a commercial oven generates high heat, such a unit needs to be at least six inches away from the wall and may also require the wall to be tiled or covered in metal to protect it from this heat. Commercial units may also require more complicated, and therefore expensive, ventilation. Be sure your house can handle the gas or electric needs of such commercial units. Remember, most ranges use gas.
• Research heat output and insulation
Generally, home units are much better insulated than commercial-grade units, meaning the commercial versions will let off more heat into your home and often be hot to the touch. A commercial oven might then cause you to run — and pay for — more air-conditioning in the summer if you operate a baking business. Do you have young kids in the kitchen at times you’re not baking for the businesses — little hands that might touch the unit and burn themselves? Alternatives include commercial models specifically designed for the home. Higher-end appliance companies like Viking and Wolf offer such units that, while pricey (they run into the thousands of dollars), provide commercial quality and function but are well-insulated and designed for a home kitchen layout.
• Check insurance requirements
Because of the high-heat nature of commercial equipment, your insurance policy may not allow such an oven or cooktop under your standard homeowner’s policy.
Another home cooktop option to consider is induction. Induction instantly heats up a pan by using an electromagnetic field. This leaves the cooking surface cool to the touch as soon as the pan is removed and does not heat the air around the cooktop. While safer and more energy-efficient than either gas or electric, induction cooktops come at a higher price tag of more than a thousand dollars; they also require all pots and pans to be made out of something with iron, like steel or cast iron, which may require an additional investment.
• Timer
Don’t lose track of time when you have multiple recipes baking, proofing and mixing. Most smartphones come with timers. The good old wind-up versions are great standbys and can be carried around with you to different rooms. Avoid over-using the oven or microwave timers, prematurely frying the electrical motherboard and losing your oven controls in the process.
Step 2: Inventory Ingredients
Since you’re doing larger batches than you typically would for home use, you’ll need to take managing your ingredients up a notch. “Make do” or substitutes in a recipe are out. Having everything on hand before you start is essential.
To get a handle on your ingredients, list everything you need for your recipes and their approximate quantities. As you scale up in quantity, consider converting your recipes to weight measurements. Changing “cups” to “ounces and pounds” makes calculating total amounts easier. Use a calibrated scale for weighing quantities.
Should you purchase larger quantities in a bulk bag, you’ll need your own storage containers and a system to keep track of your ingredients and make sure they’re fresh. Heavy-duty, food-grade plastic bins can be found at the Container Store and restaurant supply stores. This one-time investment ensures that your ingredients remain fresh and safe while in storage.
Whether your ingredients are refrigerated, like milk or butter, or stored in the pantry, like chocolate chips, use the “first food in, first food out” inventory principle; use the oldest ingredient first to keep inventory fresh. If an item doesn’t have an easy-to-read expiration or “purchase by” date, write the date you purchased it directly on the package with a Sharpie permanent marker. Make sure everything is sealed and covered when stored. If you store items in glass jars, mark dates on the glass with the Sharpie. When the jars are empty, use rubbing alcohol to remove the permanent marker notations. Adhesive stickers can work, too, but they’re more likely to fall off or get stained when wet; plus the labels leave glue residue on the jar when it comes time to remove them.
Some cottage food laws require that ingredients you use for your business be separated somehow from those used in your home for personal consumption. For refrigerated items, CFOs often dedicate a shelf to work ingredients. For dry ingredients, bins, cabinet shelves and racks may be set aside for business-use-only ingredients.
Step 3: Organize the Kitchen
Now that you have a handle on your equipment and ingredients, how will you use your kitchen space most effectively to access and use these items when you’re in production flow? Organization improves your operation on many levels: efficiency; cleanliness; ease of use; food safety. Take the following actions to organize and streamline your production.
• Clear clutter
You can never have enough workspace, so move out anything non-essential, especially anything decorative. Create as large and clear a workspace as you can. Potted plants, antiques, collectibles and that random cookie jar need to go. Kitchen space may be limited, so pack up seasonal items like the Thanksgiving turkey roaster or summertime ice pop molds and store them far away. You probably have some dishes taking space in your cabinets that are only used intermittently or for larger dinner parties. Again, find space somewhere else.
• Designate cabinets specifically for business inventory
This separation gives clear distinction between your personal kitchen and cottage food business and may enable you to calculate and manage your expenses more clearly. If you just dip into your home inventory for ingredients, how will you figure out how much money you are making? Focus on high-volume dry goods that you use for your business, like flour and sugar for baking, and keep those separate. That teaspoon of salt or cinnamon might not matter so much to your bottom line, but some ingredients, like vanilla extract and saffron, are expensive. If your recipes regularly call for high-cost ingredients, keep a separate set of these for business use only. Always keep cleaning supplies stored separately and away from food products.
• Add storage space
Any under-utilized spots in your kitchen? Can you add shelves? Chrome wire shelving racks can hold up to 500 pounds. Mount some sturdy stainless steel S hooks on them to hang your large pots or bulky utensils. Likewise, add hooks to the inside of your pantry door to hang lighter items like kitchen towels or a strainer.
Keep your key supplies where you can access them readily and you’ll reduce your preparation time. Consider adding a lazy Susan spinning turntable inside cabinets that holds items like spices and flavorings for easy access. If your cabinet runs deep, consider adding pull-out shelving so you don’t always have to reach into the back and fumble around looking for items.
Don’t forget, you may need storage space for your final product, depending on what it is. Canned items are easiest since they’re shelf-stable and can go anywhere in the house that is cool and dark, like on basement shelving. Most baked goods not yet packaged can go in large food-grade containers, then be stacked. Items made close to the time of sale can be placed directly from the cooling rack to bakery boxes or bags for transport.
Step 4: Manage Time
Managing your time is integral to your cottage food business mix. To reduce stress, increase enjoyment and ensure profits, keep the following considerations in mind.
• Plan your schedule
How and when you work in the kitchen will depend on what you’re making. Canned items like jams and jellies can be made weeks before a sale. Your production schedule for those items will be based around when the ingredients are available. If you’re making strawberry jam from your bountiful garden patch, you’ll need to reserve time blocks for major canning sessions during that peak June harvest. You can then label at your leisure and sell year-round.
For baked and other fresh goods, your production timing needs to be closer to the actual sale. If you’re making one key item, like a large order of cinnamon rolls for a breakfast meeting at an office, you can get everything organized the night before, bake the rolls that morning and you’re done. However, if you’re preparing for a farmers’ market or festival booth where you envision selling a range of baked items, plan your production schedule accordingly. See if there are some items, like cookies, that can be made a day or two in advance so you can free up the day before for the items that need to be super fresh, like bread or muffins.
• Establish family boundaries
While cottage food laws open up a wealth of stay-at-home business opportunities, integrating a business into established home routines isn’t always easy, especially if everyone in the family is used to 24/7 kitchen access and snacks on demand.
Carve out specific time blocks for your business kitchen work. While an older child may be capable of offering assistance, younger children likely to stick fingers in batter should be kept out of the kitchen when you’re filling an order. Rearrange your refrigerator magnet collection and post your production schedule for the week for all to see. When planning your day, avoid letting your business take over your life. Of course, you want to care for your customers. But this shouldn’t come at the expense of your family or personal well-being.
Parbaking
Consider “parbaking” when planning your baking schedule, especially at a time when you need a lot of fresh items finished simultaneously for a market or event. Parbaking means baking bread or other dough-based items partially and then freezing them and finishing the baking at a later time. For bread, this initial baking phase both kills the yeast and cooks up the inside of the loaf, forming the internal structure of the proteins and starches that gives the loaf its spongy internal texture.
After this initial bake, cool and freeze the item. When you’re ready for the final loaf, bake it a bit more to form the crust. This saves time during your final baking rush and typically won’t diminish the taste or texture of your product.
Experiment with a few batches to determine exactly what parbaking procedures work for your specific recipe. Generally cut about 25 percent off your full cook time for the initial bake; for example, if your bread cooks for an hour, parbake it at the same temperature for 45 minutes. With parbaking, you want to bake the bread long enough to get it to an internal temperature of about 185 °F (85 °C) for softer crusts such as sandwich loaves and at least 205 °F (96 °C) for harder, more rustic crusts.
Once the item cools after the initial bake, let it fully cool to room temperature. Give it time as this can take up to two hours for a dense loaf of bread. Once completely cooled, tightly wrap the item in plastic wrap like Saran Wrap, add another layer of tightly wrapped foil for added preservation and freeze.
Right before you need your final product, take the loaf out of the freezer and place it in an oven preheated to your regular baking temperature; bake it that remaining 25 percent of your full baking time, typically ten to fifteen minutes or until golden brown.
• Take physical care
Standing on your feet for hours in the kitchen can quickly add up; you’ll feel it in your bones. Remember that by caring for yourself, you’re boosting your business success in the long run. Keep changing positions. Sit down and do certain activities at a tabletop as much as possible, like decorating cookies. Take stretch breaks and do a few yoga moves to get the blood flowing in between tasks. Get outside for some fresh air, perhaps with a walk around the block or meander through your garden.
Consider investing in a gel mat, a heavy-duty floor mat made from polyurethane that cushions the hard floor and makes things easier on your joints when standing for long-periods of time. GelPro (gelpro.com) and Imprint (imprintmats.com) both make such mats that retail in the fifty to one-hundred dollar range. They’re well worth the investment if you are standing in one place at the counter for hours on end — you won’t feel it nearly as much in your legs at the end of the day.
Before starting a kitchen processing session, feed yourself first. Make sure you eat a healthy meal and drink plenty of water. It’s easy to forget this step and later find yourself “testing” or snacking on those batches of shortbread as they come out of the oven. You want your muffin business to bring in cash, not add a muffin top!
Keep the cooking process fun. Play some music to sustain your energy. Try listing to podcasts or books on tape to make the processing time more interesting and less tedious. At times, you may find yourself feeling lonely or isolated as a one-person operation. Besides inviting “helpers” to participate, consider donning a headset phone and chatting with friends or family, if it’s not too distracting from the business at hand.
Step 5: Practice Proper Food Safety
Proper food safety procedures form the foundation of your business, ensuring the quality and safety of your product. Make our cottage food industry proud by proving that a fully licensed commercial kitchen isn’t a synonym for food safety; home-based operations can be as safe, if not safer. You wouldn’t poison your own family, so why would feeding the public be any different? Remember you are cooking for the public and look at your kitchen from the eyes of a potential customer; make sure it sparkles and confidently communicates cleanliness so that anyone would feel safe eating what is prepared there. Making something in your home kitchen and sharing it exemplifies the ultimate in trust. Celebrate that fact by prioritizing safe procedures in your kitchen every day.
Having reviewed your state cottage food law, you’ll have noticed the requirements related to sanitation and food safety. It may be as simple as reading and practicing a basic checklist of proper procedures. Or there may be a specific requirement list and a mandatory on-site inspection. Don’t panic if your kitchen will be inspected; just make sure it is spotless and double-check any list of requirements. The morning of the inspection is not the time to do anything unusual, like unplugging the refrigerator to clean behind it. What if your refrigerator doesn’t readily start back up again or the temperature isn’t at the “safe” level on the thermometer? Don’t jeopardize your inspection. Have everything ready and operational the day before and avoid the stress.
Many states require some form of “certified food handler” license, similar to what employees in restaurants would have. ServSafe, operated through the National Restaurant Association (servsafe.com), offers an annual online food handler certificate for a nominal fee that meets many state’s requirements. ServSafe takes about an hour to complete and covers five areas: basic food safety; personal hygiene; cross-contamination and allergens; time and temperature; and cleaning and sanitation.
Some considerations to keep in mind when setting up and operating a safe food business in your home kitchen include those below.
• Wash those hands
Hand washing is the first line of defense to prevent the spread of illness-causing bacteria. Wet your hands and rub with soap for at least twenty seconds; sing “Happy Birthday” as a timer and make sure to scrub under your nails where bacteria often dwell. Wash hands before and after handling food, after handling uncooked eggs or after blowing your nose, coughing, sneezing, eating and using the bathroom. When in doubt, wash.
• Sanitize the prep area
Your food preparation area needs to be spotless at all times. Scrub surfaces before and after they come into contact with food, including utensils and cutting boards, using hot, soapy water. Then sanitize. A simple and inexpensive solution of one gallon of water mixed with one tablespoon of bleach will serve as a sanitizing solution to wipe counter surfaces. Place in a well-labeled spray bottle and use on any surfaces that come into contact with food. Let the surfaces air-dry.
Try some eco-friendly cleaning options and save money and the planet at the same time. Fill a spray bottle with equal parts vinegar and water and use this to clean the top of the stove and appliances. Don’t worry about the vinegar smell. It disappears when dry.
• Separate your cutting boards
Use separate cutting boards and plates for produce, meat, poultry, seafood and eggs. Nothing made under cottage food law can contain meat, poultry or seafood, so it’s best to keep any of these items you have in your home for personal use sealed and stored separately in the refrigerator.
Co-author Lisa Kivirist cutting rhubarb stalks to prepare her half pints of Serendipity Rhubarb Shrub for sale at Inn Serendipity. Reaching back to colonial times, shrubs use vinegar and sugar to preserve fruit flavors. JOHN D. IVANKO
• Wash fruits and vegetables thoroughly
Run produce under cold water and scrub with a firm produce brush, a food-grade model with sturdy nylon bristles for removing any soil.
• Keep children out of the kitchen
Keep kids out at all times when you cook or bake for the business. Establish firm boundaries in your family between when you are “working” and when things are in “home mode” and the kitchen space goes back to family space. If your children are still young, this may require you to work late at night or early in the morning when they’re still sleeping. You could also make arrangements for childcare so you can focus in the kitchen.
• No pets in the kitchen
Check your specific state regulations, as some states do not allow any pets in the home at all if you are operating a cottage food business.
• Keep insects out
Make sure all window and door screens remain in good repair and without any tears to prevent all insects from entering your kitchen workspace.
• Make sure your water is safe
If using a private well, make sure you annually test your water for coli-form bacteria and, possibly, for other chemical contaminants if you live in an area with chemical agriculture.
• Keep records of each of your product batches
Keeping records of your product batches is essential. You can do this by hand in a simple notebook where you record the date, what and how much you made and what ingredients you used. If any issue ever came up regarding your food handling procedures, you will have these logs to reference. We empathize: record-keeping sounds dull and detailed. But records that document the proper procedures you took will show that you employed the highest standards possible should any question arise.
Most cottage food producers are exempt from the sort of third-party inspections and regulations large food producers must adhere to. However, remember you’re still responsible for every last item you make. A written log indicates you take this role seriously.
Don’t agonize, organize. A place for everything and everything in its place makes an efficient and safe kitchen.
Lisa Kivirist in the kitchen. JOHN D. IVANKO