Baking isn’t just a side hustle for Michelle Dunn — it’s tradition, therapy and love wrapped into one.
Dunn founded Dunn Delectably on a generational love for baking and community. Based out of her home kitchen in Wilton, she opened the gluten-free baking business in October.
Dunn Delectably’s goods range from whoopie pies to cookies and pizza dough, all baked using gluten-free ingredients.
“I was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2012, a few years after my son was born,” Dunn said. The diagnosis and the scarcity of tasty commercial gluten-free products prompted her to bake her own.
“All the store-bought gluten-free foods tasted like cardboard or sawdust,” she said.
Though Dunn sells her goods at festivals and markets around the Monadnock region, she can’t market her products to vendors until she’s certified.
“Some businesses, like bakeries, can’t sell gluten-free products unless they’re marked with a gluten-free certified label,” Dunn said. “Not all commercial gluten-free products are actually celiac safe, so labeling is a requirement.”
She noted that some products remove the gluten but retain the wheat protein, which celiac sufferers can’t digest.
Dunn hopes to expand into bakeries, restaurants, pizza shops and ice cream parlors. “Ice cream can be gluten-free; the shops just need a proper distributor,” she added.
Keeping her food shelf-stable is challenging because some preservatives aren’t gluten-free. “I don’t add them to my products, but finding ingredients that are both shelf-stable and gluten-free is hard,” Dunn noted.
She found one partial solution involved using Crisco or Ghee in place of butter. They’re not perfect alternatives because not everyone likes either ingredient’s taste, so she’s still searching.
Dunn said she loves experimenting with new flavors. “Being from the south, I love tartness. My mother and I are on a kick to find the perfect gluten-free key lime pie recipe,” she said. She’s also testing different flavored whoopie pies.
The flavorings come from essence. “Essence of lime or strawberry is an oil that comes from the lime’s peel or the strawberry’s skin,” Dunn noted. “It’s like vanilla extract. I mix that oil in to give my food a natural flavor.”
Dunn’s knack for baking was passed down from her great-grandmother. “I spent my childhood in Florida and Wilton,” she said. “Growing up, I was surrounded by strong women who loved to bake. The kitchen was where everyone gathered.”
As a fourth-generation baker, Dunn says baking helps her relieve stress. “It helps me regulate as the process of stirring ingredients by hand calms me down,” she said. “I have baking tools, but it doesn’t provide the same feeling as stirring.”
Gifting the finished products adds to her euphoria. “Baking means love for me. It’s how I express my love for friends and family,” Dunn noted. “In high school, I brought my baked goods to friends. During the pandemic, I made them for co-workers to cheer them up.”
When deciding on a name for the business, she settled on “Dunn Delectably” because she knew her products were delectably delicious.
Dunn noted she doesn’t yet have a website, but plans on building one after tax season. “My day job keeps me busy this time of year with billing,” she said. She will bake full-time after retiring at some point from her job as a national learning and development client relations manager for Opensity Solutions in Boston.
“When I retire, I would love to continue operating out of my kitchen,” Dunn said, emphasizing the kitchen’s layout and size — it takes up half of the first floor. “Our home is newly built and we kept the business in mind while designing the kitchen.”
“As the business grows and I get certified, I’ll have my goods delivered,” she added as she looks to broaden the scope of sales venues. However, for the foreseeable future, Dunn will continue selling her goods at farmers’ markets and local events, including the nation’s semiquincentennial celebration in Wilton on May 9.