Each of these bakers has a unique story, but they share a common philosophy: they work entirely from scratch. They take pride in the quality of their ingredients and hands-on craftsmanship.
Many were drawn to the Mohawk Valley because of its rich agricultural resources. They value the communities that supply their kitchens, the communities they serve, and the connections forged through food.
After long hours spent experimenting and refining everything from crusty breads to delicate pastries and crinkle cookies, these artisans share a taste of the Mohawk Valley, one small batch at a time.
Anthony Leberto
Brimstone Bakery
922 Chestnut Street Fenimore Art Museum
Sharon Springs Cooperstown
“Everything we serve, we make. We don’t serve soda because we don’t make it.” He’s happy to serve you a blueberry-basil lemonade, though. Anthony truly epitomizes From Scratch: everything from sandwich bread and quiche to sticky buns and rhubarb crumb cake made with rhubarb harvested from his garden.
Growing up, Anthony gravitated toward cooking and food was woven deeply into his family life. Originally, however, he went to the Newhouse School and moved to San Francisco to write for a healthcare newspaper. While there, he was inspired by the city’s food scene, where farm-to-table culture was taking root long before it became a national trend. He convinced a neighborhood café to hire him and teach him the basics of baking. He still remembers his mentor’s advice: “Baking is like ballet. Every movement counts.”
His mentor taught him both baking and cooking, making him equally comfortable in the worlds of sweet and savory. He also learned the value of hospitality and customer experience—qualities that remain central to Brimstone today.
Looking back, Anthony sees how each stage of his career led to Brimstone. After a move to New York, he worked as a food stylist for Martha Stewart and her magazine, learning the art of “perfectionism, branding, and merchandising.” He went on to style for other magazines: VOGUE, Food & Wine, and O, The Oprah Magazine before taking on the role of a family’s private chef, which eventually developed into a niche catering business.
He and his husband, Lance, began looking for a weekend escape from New York City. After a weekend at the American Hotel in Sharon Springs, they fell in love with the area, and began looking at real estate. After only three viewings, Anthony fell for the dilapidated one, and he and Lance began a two-year renovation project.
He continued working in NYC and collaborated with Beekman 1802 producing artisanal items. He also built a thriving online business shipping his own sweet treats—cookies, brownies, scones, and biscotti. Eventually, local catering successes led him to look for a brick-and-mortar home. He walked by a structure with a makeshift front porch and thought, “This is a good place for a bakery.” Renovations began again. Brimstone opened as a retail bakery in 2021, and added lunch service in 2022.
Anthony’s warm, welcoming demeanor will greet you when you visit, and you will indulge in fresh food that will undoubtedly delight.
Alex Ritz
Fox Tale Artisan Bakery
407 Canal Place
Little Falls
I can’t recall tasting a better scone (sorry, Kate). Fox Tale’s chestnut blueberry is perfect in texture and likely not attainable at home—most of us don’t have chestnut flour in our pantry. There is the from scratch, focus on locally sourced ingredients aspect to Alex’s baking, but what makes it particularly special is the uniqueness of what she creates: tahini chocolate, Earl Grey lemon, bright hibiscus orange, or a multigrain loaf with einkorn, hemp hearts, and millet. Her first bakery job was at Sofra in Boston, where she was introduced to an entirely new world of flavors, techniques, and creativity.
She calls her path into baking a roundabout one. She started in farming and originally planned to work just the winter season in a bakery. “I loved the idea of being involved in the entire journey of food—from seed to table.”
Her love of baking has deeper roots though, “My grandmother was a tremendous inspiration and, in many ways, the spark behind Fox Tale. Growing up, she imparted her passion for creating joy and nourishment through food.”
Alex grew up in Cobleskill, but spent much of her youth in Little Falls with her grandparents. After living and traveling in many parts of the country, she knew she wanted to come back someday and put down roots here. “I love the rhythm and beauty of small-town life, the rolling green hills of summer, the vibrant colors of autumn, and the quiet beauty of winter.”
A few years ago, the opportunity finally presented itself, and returning felt like the right decision. Being closer to family has been incredibly meaningful, and family has played a significant role in opening Fox Tale.
Fox Tale’s adorable fox serves as a sort of mascot and appears in the bakery’s signage and logo. Alex says she named him Rowen. She calls him her “guardian” as she pursues her love of connecting nature, people, and food.
Martine Cook
Waterville Standard Bakery
128 E Main Street
Waterville
There is nothing standard about the Waterville Standard Bakery. High standards? Absolutely. It is in a league of its own.
Martine Cook’s culinary career took a circuitous route. After culinary school and a month in Provence, she cooked at a hot French-Creole restaurant in Boulder, Colorado, where she worked every station on the line, learning speed and efficiency. Eventually, she grew disenchanted with the industry and spent the next decade teaching, working as a paralegal, and cooking solely for pleasure.
After meeting in California, marrying, and settling in Atlanta, Martine and her husband, Jack, found themselves rethinking their future when the 2008 financial crisis transformed their jobs and neighborhood. “We started talking about how to reinvent ourselves.”
Drawing on Jack’s Middletown roots, access to farmers markets, affordable certification, and favorable home-kitchen laws, they purchased a “hobby farm,” in Upstate New York, where they began growing tomatoes, herbs, potatoes, and other produce for local customers. Martine remembers wandering around with her daughter, Samantha, in tow, looking for a gap in the market where she could carve out her own niche. In 2010, she began baking croissants. As she and Jack raised their daughter, farmed, and sold at markets, they quietly built a loyal following, a network of suppliers, and the foundation for a bakery.
When Jack and Martine began looking around for a brick-and-mortar location, they saw opportunity in Waterville. Other nearby towns had everything they needed, while Waterville had vacant storefronts and room for something new. They envisioned their bakery as a draw to Waterville and a gathering place for the community. Today, the Waterville Standard Bakery is exactly that. “On Saturdays and Sundays, there’s a line out the door before we open. It’s touching and humbling,” Martine said.
If you dream of visiting France someday, this is a good place to get acquainted with what a real croissant should taste like.
Trisha Gordon
Honey & Salt
3963 Oneida Street
Washington Mills
Honey & Salt reflects the balance at the heart of Trisha Gordon’s baking. She loves honey, and there is a favorite honey syrup that ignites nostalgia, while salt nods to the savory side of her kitchen. “The word salt explains anything savory I may make—like my raviolis,” she said.
Trisha attended culinary school, earned a master’s degree in business, and built a career in hospitality. Through it all, she maintained her drive to bake and to own a place of her own. After making 600 apple pies for a local café, she realized it was time to move beyond her home kitchen into commercial space.
Everything Trisha makes is from scratch. She stays true to family recipes, believes in the purity of ingredients, and is unapologetically picky about freshness. Despite the capabilities of her commercial kitchen, she remains intentionally small.
That decision reflects what she values most: relationships. Trisha wants to grow thoughtfully, without losing the close ties she has built with customers and suppliers. “I want to grow organically and make sure I can preserve the authentic, genuine connections,” she said.
Honey & Salt treats can be found at Calabria Coffee, Utica Coffee, The Lifted Cup, and Café Florentine. Customers can also place preorders online for pickup at her Oneida Street location. Once a month, Trisha hosts a pop-up there, which she especially loves because it gives her the freedom to bake whatever she wants.
Brian Weiss
Leavened
240 Bohlen Road
Gilboa
A honeymoon in Italy and France set Brian Weiss on an unexpected path. After years working in hospitality, he returned home inspired by the deep connections between local ingredients, seasonality, and traditional craft he encountered abroad. What began as an effort to make his own bread and pasta quickly became an obsession with naturally leavened bread.
After relocating from Brooklyn to a 200-year-old farmhouse in Gilboa, he started bringing loaves to a handful of local farmers markets and quickly discovered a loyal audience. “Through word-of-mouth and showing up every week, I went from selling 15-20 loaves per market to nearly 80. That’s when I began to feel this might be more than just a hobby.”
Brian’s bread is built slowly and with extraordinary intention. Each loaf is shaped by hand and made with grains that have been grown and milled close to home. He describes Leavened as a “micro” bakery, producing anywhere from three to 300 loaves a week, and distributing them through markets, restaurants, and preorders. His goal is to eventually open an on-site bakery at his Gilboa farmhouse—but for now, his naturally leavened breads are well worth seeking out. LeavenedNY.com.
Andrea Maranville
Sweet Life of A Baker
552 Sherrill Road
Sherrill
When Andrea Maranville was headed to London for the final round of The Great American Baking Show, her father offered simple advice: “Be yourself.” She heard him. When talking with Andrea, her authenticity is unmistakable, and it carries over into her baking.
Before she became known for her baking, Andrea worked in government and politics, including a stint in Albany during the Pataki administration. After a move to Bolton Landing for her husband’s job, she stayed home to raise their four children and began teaching herself to cook and bake.
Over two decades in her home kitchen, she developed recipes, honed techniques, and learned through trial and error. “Every time something went wrong, I made it better. If you fail at something, it’s what you do to turn it around. I failed forward.”
A later move to Central New York brought Andrea back to familiar ground. A graduate of Vernon-Verona-Sherrill, she was excited that her children would have the opportunity to attend the same school district. By then, baking had become much more than a hobby. After appearances on The Great American Baking Show and Food Network’s Summer Rush, she leased kitchen space at the Oneida County Mansion House and hosted monthly pop-ups under the name Sweet Life of a Baker, the name she had already given her food blog.
A bakery wasn’t necessarily part of her plan, but when a space became available in downtown Sherrill in 2021, she went for it. Today, her bakery case is filled with recipes she developed at home and later scaled for customers. Andrea uses only “real ingredients, no fake extracts,” and works in small batches. For Andrea, that might mean 18 cups of sugar instead of two, but her philosophy remains the same: keep it real.
