Just Simply The Bakery grows from market favorite to brick-and-mortar home

Just Simply The Bakery built its following on artisan sourdough, zebra cakes and a farmers market booth that drew regulars at the Morgantown Farmers Market. Now the shop has a brick-and-mortar home in Seneca Center, and the move shows the tightrope Tracy Cotton is walking: keep sourdough as the brand’s anchor, or let the bakery keep stretching into a much broader gluten-free business.

The new storefront sits on the lower floor at 709 Beechurst Ave., Suite 10, Morgantown, WV 26505, in the former Seneca Glass building. Seneca Center describes the bakery as an extension of the same “passion and community spirit” that made the market booth a staple, and the location puts it among about two dozen local businesses in the complex. The bakery says it offers freshly baked goods every day, including its signature artisanal sourdough bread.

That sourdough still matters, but it is no longer the whole story. Cotton started by learning as she went, with help from her husband after she once joked she could burn water. Her daughter later joined the operation after being laid off from an underground coal mining job, and the two expanded the business over several years. West Virginia business records show Just Simply LLC was filed on January 31, 2023, giving the shop’s formal growth a clear starting point.

The product mix has changed fast. Cotton said the bakery began with sourdough and other baked items, then moved steadily toward a nearly all gluten-free operation. After about 18 months, the business was 95 percent gluten-free, and by the previous summer it had reached 99 percent gluten-free. One important distinction keeps the sourdough lane open: it is made separately from the gluten-free products, which gives Just Simply The Bakery a position many gluten-free bakeries do not take.

That balance seems to be working. The bakery’s pepperoni rolls grew from 50 a week to 200 a week as demand increased, while the farmers market crowd that once gathered around Cotton’s booth helped turn a neighborhood bake sale into a destination shop. The Morgantown Farmers Market runs every Saturday from May through November, and the bakery’s first loyal customers came from that steady rhythm. Even as the menu has expanded to include cinnamon rolls, sandwiches, cakes, cupcakes, muffins, scones, biscuits, doughnuts and breakfast items, sourdough still reads like the product that gave the business its voice.