An artist with food offers gluten-free treats

Different Blend bakery, Guilderland

The Enterprise — Michael Koff
Jessica Smith, owner and chef of Different Blend Bakery in Guilderland shows off some of the store’s gluten-free pastries. She says that some of her most popular items are cream puffs, mousse cakes, cookies, and cake slices.

GUILDERLAND — The old Greulich’s Market at 3403 Carman Road is now home to a dedicated gluten-free bakery run by a young woman who is a Guilderland native and a 2010 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America.

All of the baked goods at Different Blend Bakery are gluten-free. Owner and chef Jessica Smith, 26, recently said her interest in that type of baking began when she was a culinary student and was diagnosed with ciliac disease, an autoimmune disorder in which the ingestion of gluten leads to damage in the small intestine.

“It was kind of ironic at first,” she said, “because I couldn’t eat anything we made. Then I became determined to figure out how to make gluten-free versions that were just as good as the originals.”

Different Blend’s baked goods contain no wheat, barley, or rye, or any of their derivatives. Smith is able to use gluten-free flours such as white rice brown rice, sorghum, amaranth, and millet flours. She also uses starches such as potato, corn, arrowroot, and tapioca.

She started the business out of her home in 2011, and opened the brick-and-mortar location in November 2015. She grew up a mile from Greulich’s, which is where her parents still live. Her family shopped at Greulich’s when she was a child.

All her life, Smith says, she has been interested in art, which she says led naturally to a love of cooking. “I don’t use paint; I use frosting,” she said. “I don’t use canvases; I use cakes.”

More Guilderland News

  • “I mean it’s crazy,” said Guilderland School Board President Seema Rivera. “We’re asking for things for our kids … nothing exorbitant. And then … we have to send money to Crossgates. I think it’s insane.”

  • Project applicant David Zhang was before the Guilderland Planning Board at its March 13 meeting with a proposal to reconfigure 1975 Western Ave.

  • “We need housing and you don’t, in my opinion, want people who aren’t going to live in a house to own a house and then just rent it out short-term a week at a time, a weekend at a time, a wedding at a time,” said Robert Randall at the public hearing. “The people living next to them no longer have a neighbor; they have strangers living next to them.”

The Altamont Enterprise is focused on hyper-local, high-quality journalism. We produce free election guides, curate readers' opinion pieces, and engage with important local issues. Subscriptions open full access to our work and make it possible.