An Alignment of Philosophy Across Recipe, Ingredients, Preparation & Presentation
Standing in the new front patio area of The Scone Age Bakery & Cafe. Center is Larry and Shelley Jaffe, owners, along with two of their servers.
The husband and wife team of Larry and Shelley Jaffe set out to create a truly clean, healthy-food-from-scratch experience at The Scone Age Bakery & Café in Dunedin just off the Pinellas Trail. Though the Scone Age has been open just over two years, Executive Chef Shelley boasts 30 years of experience in the kitchen coupled with 25 years as a nutritionist.
“Everything I have experienced in my 50 years of life has helped form how I prepare my food,” Shelley said. “I do everything from scratch. From my pastries, to my soups, my sauces and my main courses. I don’t use any processed ingredients, and I use fresh and local whenever humanly possible.”
I sampled several menu items – the Fancy Schmancy quiche, the BLTA (A for avocado), the New York Breakfast Sandwich on a bagel, and of course, a scone with clotted cream and jam. You definitely taste the quality ingredients. And, there’s the pickles.
“We make our own pickles,” Larry said. “It’s got crunch. It’s got flavor. It’s not too sour. The perfect thing to eat on a hot summer day.” Delicious, indeed.
Larry was ready to talk about food quality. “There’s so much garbage in today’s food,” he said. “Everything is mixes off of a truck. They use fillers like soy and starches that are not good for the human body. For example, gluten-free stuff for people who are gluten intolerant or celiac at the extreme. You go to buy something that is gluten free and it’s all loaded up with starches so you’re treating one problem and (creating) another one leading to diabetes, for example.” Larry said gluten-free foods typically use thickeners to make up for the lack of gluten. “Xanthan gum is a thickener,” he said. “Comes from – it’s going to shock people – it’s bacteria poop, excrement. You want that in your food? No one tells you this stuff. It’s a convenient way to thicken things when you don’t have gluten. We refuse to do that. Shelley has worked countless hours to perfect our gluten-free product line.”
As Healthline.com notes, xanthan gum is a sugar that’s fermented by bacteria and has gained popularity as a thickener for gluten-free products.
“It’s just really important to us to provide our customers the healthiest, best ingredients”
Larry said Shelley uses flours like Cassava flour, from freshly-milled nuts, and organic wheat flour, for many items she bakes. “We don’t taint our flours with things that don’t belong there,” Larry said. “It’s knowing how to bake, how to cook with good ingredients. I applaud my wife for not compromising.”
“The sugar we use is called panela. Panela is pure evaporated cane juice. It’s not processed. It has all the molasses, all the nutrients and minerals of the plant.”
Wait a minute. There are nutrients in sugar?
“In the plant there’s quite a bit actually. Amino acids and antioxidants,” Larry said when I said most people believe sugar is bad. “This is good sugar. It’s low on the glycemic scale. It’s 30 percent less sucrose than regular sugar. So it’s a healthy sugar, basically; if you can look at it that way.”
The organic wheat flour and the panela, along with many other items, are available for sale in the café.
“We’re here to service the community, which is why we have gluten free, we have vegan, we have traditional,” Larry said. “Our community is made up of all kinds of people, and the Scone Age represents this variety, not just one diet. We want (people) to get what they want, and we want to give it to them in its purest form.”
This philosophy carries over into how the food is served. “From our inception we decided not to use real plates, real silverware, for two reasons – it wastes a huge amount of water, and you have to spray chemicals on everything. Here we are providing organic ingredients, beautiful foods, and then we throw ’em on a plate filled with chemicals. It just doesn’t align. So, we decided disposables may not be fine dining but it’s mighty fine dining for us.”
A healthy, clean, BLTA sandwich served with responsibly sourced, compostable, plate and fork.
Larry points to a plate and explains that it’s made from a substance called bagasse. “And that’s from sugar cane. … The plant body itself converts to a very biodegradable, compostable product. You could just throw this in your compost heap.” The cutlery is made from sustainable bamboo. “Our whole philosophy extends from recipe, ingredients, preparation, presentation, all aligned.”
The pandemic impacted the business, but not in the way you might think.
“When we were told we couldn’t have anyone in the restaurant, we opened up the window and we just delivered from the window,” said Larry, motioning to the window facing the Pinellas Trail. “When they told us we could have 25 percent inside, I said. ‘Great, that’s 4 people.’” Pointing out the front window he continues, “There was all parking here in the front, and Shelley and I looked at each other and said, ‘Patio.’ So, we moved parking to the back, and literally overnight Lowe’s delivered the picnic benches, we painted them, put the umbrellas out, and we have a patio.”
There have been multiple benefits as a result. For one, people saw the umbrellas and folks eating outside as they walked and rode by on the Pinellas Trail. “It became a great area of promotion, let alone the fact that we could seat a bunch of people out there and they were 6 feet away,” Larry said.
And challenges? People have come to rely on Larry to customize their coffee. “What was a simple operation of pouring a cup of coffee now becomes this major operation of I gotta put in enough cream, I gotta do sugar. I have an uncanny ability to put the right amount of cream in the cup,” he says with a smile.
The Scone Age gets its coffee from Black Gold Roasters in Venice, Florida. Owner Gary Lauters II is a master, award-winning roaster. “He’s fanatical about the beans and taking care of his farms,” Larry said. “... He roasts French roast every week – our own blend basically. It’s flavorful, it’s robust; it’s not too sharp, it’s just perfect. If you’re running specialty coffees it’s expensive … plus we’ve got other coffee houses here … we didn’t want to be in competition with friends.”
“We feel this is our community, and we want it to flourish,” Larry said. “It’s community-oriented from the top down. Love the access we have to the local government and other restaurateurs. It’s a rare commodity what goes on in this city. It’s one of the reasons we love Dunedin. What better place for the Scone Age than to be in Dunedin. We could not be in a more ideal location.”
The front porch at The Scone Age Bakery & Cafe.
The Scone Age Bakery & Café | 332 Skinner Blvd. Dunedin 34698 | 727.216.3248 | Hours: Thu – Sun 8a - 2p