TRR photo by Tom Kane Husband and wife bakers, Petros Voutsanesis and Jessica Plank and their children serve a customer. (Click for larger image)

Scratch bakery opens on Rt. 652

By TOM KANE

BEACH LAKE — Scratch bakery! What’s that?

“It’s a bakery that does everything from scratch,” said Petros Voutsanesis.

He and his wife, Jessica Plank, both of Honesdale, opened the Staff of Life Bakery just two weeks ago. The team has been selling baked goods at area farmers markets in Honesdale and Callicoon.

They don’t use pre-made ingredients, like pastry cream, Danish filling, pie filling, pre-made icing and the like.

“Those things have tons of preservatives that manufacturers use to extend the life of the product over a long stretch of time,” Petros said.

“Where we can, we use organic ingredients,” Jessica, the principal baker, said.

The bakery is located on Route 652 and Clemen U. Muller Street a few miles west of the bridge at Narrowsburg. The building was once an outlet for wood stoves.

“We have a lot of room here but what we need is another baker,” Jessica said. “When we hire somebody, we’ll start making bagels, hard rolls and other things like that.”

Just walking into the aroma is an experience.

They call it a full-scale bakery, meaning that they carry everything from artisan breads, hand crafted pastries, cinnamon buns, Linzer tortes, raspberry crunch coffee cakes, hand-made croissants, Polish babka cake, black olive bread, wheat walnut bread with sun-dried tomatoes – want me to stop?

“We have some tables so people can sit and have coffee and a pastry,” Jessica said.

As time goes on, they plan to sell ice cream and donuts.

“If you know any baker who’s looking for a job, give him or her our number,” Petros said.

The store’s phone number is 570/729-9440.