Photograph by Robert Scheer
Carol Deritis, owner of Wholesome Classics, shows some of her products.
By Torre Peña
Just add a bottle of your favorite brew and bake.
Preparing the nine-grain beer bread mix, packaged in a beer bottle with a raffia bow, is that easy. Carol Deritis of Saratoga, owner of Wholesome Classics, designed the bread mix as a gift item for gourmet and gift stores.
"It's an under $10 gift idea, and the whole family can enjoy it," Deritis says.
When she stumbled on the idea six months ago, she wasn't expecting the overwhelming positive response the product has received.
"My husband is a home brewer, and so he had some empty beer bottles lying around, and we were just goofing around with it," Deritis says. "At one of the shows, we had a mock-up of it in the bottle, and I started getting orders for it."
Since then, she's added olive and cheesy garlic-bread mixes, elegantly packaged in smoke-colored wine bottles, to her line of products, and for dessert, she offers a Port brownies mix.
Deritis, a local dietitian, founded Wholesome Classics three years ago to promote her nutritious low-fat and non-fat cookie and muffin mixes. "So many of the products on the market are just white flour and sugar, and so people are giving up the fat, but they're not eating healthy," she says.
Deritis, who uses grains and yogurt or fruit instead of butter in her recipes, started packaging and selling them herself at local farmer's markets. Now Wholesome Classics ships nationwide to 600 stores, including Bloomingdale's.
Deritis continues to expand and is in the process of developing a new product, an angel tea-cookie mix in a cobalt-blue Italian wine bottle. The new product will be previewed at the Fancy Food Show Jan. 22-25 in San Francisco.
Locally, Wholesome Classics are sold at the Butter Paddle and Blue Rock Shoot. Orders can be placed at 867-2224.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, October 23, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved