Avon Mom Transforms Pandemic Hobby Into Organic Sourdough Micro-Bakery

A neighbor's gifted sourdough starter, passed along about four years ago when the pandemic was winding down, turned into something Kate Buffone never expected: a licensed organic micro-bakery running out of her Avon, Connecticut home.

Buffone, 38, opened Breadheads in February, offering weekly porch pickup menus featuring sourdough breads, English muffins, cookies, and other baked goods. The business name is a nod to her two bright red-headed daughters, Ella, 9, and Mia, 6. Orders are placed through Hotplate, and customers can sign up for text reminders when the weekly menu drops.

The origin story is one sourdough bakers will recognize immediately. "About four years ago, my amazing neighbor gifted me some sourdough starter. I knew nothing about it. It was fizzling out of the pandemic, and I had some time," Buffone said. "I dove right in and realized baking my own bread and my own other really yummy baked goods was much easier and healthier than buying it at the store."

Buffone found the process therapeutic and started producing enough loaves to share with friends and family. Her husband Jim, along with others close to her, encouraged her to turn the surplus into a business. That push, she said, is how Breadheads began.

The top seller is her brown butter sourdough chocolate chip cookies, available by the dozen or half-dozen. Close behind are her sourdough English muffins, which she describes as having the traditional nooks and crannies with a sourdough tang. Both items reflect the sourcing standards Buffone applies across her entire menu.

"The biggest thing is that all of my ingredients are organic and even the milk I use for my English muffins is 100% organic, grass-fed milk. The butter I use in my brown butter cookies is organic butter," Buffone said.

The plastic-free kitchen is part of the pitch, not just a side note. "My neighbors and friends loved the fact that it was organic flour and made with nontoxic kitchen equipment. There are no plastics in my kitchen," Buffone said. Her flour carries no pesticides, and the consumer-friendly home-bakery model keeps prices accessible enough that Avon resident Helen Erazo-Haro has been ordering weekly since Breadheads opened.

The baking instinct runs deep for Buffone. Originally from New Jersey, she grew up alongside a mother who worked professionally as a cake decorator. "I grew up in the kitchen baking with her," she said. That foundation, combined with a gifted starter and a pandemic-era kitchen experiment, eventually became a ballet teacher's second career, one loaf at a time.