Ken Schnaper Cooks Up A Gluten-Free Frenzy

The most likely spot to find a Fortune 500 company executive is not typically a professional kitchen.

But every Friday for about five hours, that’s where Westhampton resident Ken Schnaper—former associate council to industrial manufacturer Crane—can be seen, sporting a white coat dotted with flour and a few chocolate stains.

Last week, the 73-year-old attorney-turned-chef walked around Stony Brook University’s Calverton Business Incubator testing his gluten-free, vegan recipes—which he sources from nationwide mills, friends and online—for his newest venture, a food processing company called Regional Buds.

With the chocolate squares to his liking, Mr. Schnaper walked his latest creation down the hall of the building, which houses offices rented by startup business owners, much like himself. His destination: the cooperative taste-testers and his toughest critics—the staff working inside the Buncee office, another start-up in the same complex.

After all, they are Chief Operating Officer Claire Cucci’s favorite—and she doesn’t even eat Hershey’s. “I’m very particular with my chocolate,” she said, as Mr. Schnaper blushed proudly.

That’s saying something, Mr. Schnaper explained, considering all of his products are gluten-free and vegan—a market that is gaining popularity, he said, though it is not yet mainstream. “It took a while to kind of grow itself,” he said of the strict diet, “but now that it’s reached these proportions, people are still floundering to make something that is palatable. Something that has mouth feel. Something that has taste.”

Not long ago, he never could have imagined that one of those people would be him. The attorney was working tirelessly in Manhattan, escaping to the East End for short spurts. “I’d never seen the crocuses open in the spring,” he said. “I’d come on the weekend, and the flowers would be up, and then they were gone the next week. My wife and I just came out and watched the flowers grow.”

When Mr. Schnaper finally retired in 1995, the born-and-bred New Yorker did not last long before boredom set in. He soon found himself working with private investors and charity organizations, until he happened to stumble upon a series of videos developed at Harvard University about molecular food processes.

He was instantly fascinated, Mr. Schnaper recalled. It was in his genes. He grew up icing cupcakes at his uncle’s chain of bakeries, Cheesecake King, in Commack—much to his father’s dismay. “Why won’t you come to my laboratory?” inventor Melvin Schnaper, of M. Schnaper Dental Laboratories, would ask his son.

“I don’t want to go to the lab. I want to go to the bakery,” the chubby boy would respond, later sneaking chocolate éclairs from behind the counter.

These days, Mr. Schnaper’s kitchen is a complete departure from the one he was raised in. Ironically, it actually resembles a laboratory, as his assistants Carol Zamojcin and Adria Daniels mix together experimental flours and different fixings, writing down their findings after each batch comes out of the oven.

The ingredients are from local producers, said Mr. Schnaper, who has collaborated with New York-based farmers and scientists, and beyond. Kansas-based Dr. Scott Bean is the man who turned him on to sorghum, a grain that is a substitute for cane sugar and among the most efficient crops in the conversion of solar energy and use of water. And, above all, it was the key piece missing from gluten-free cooking, barring it from mass public appeal.

“People like to bite into a bread,” Mr. Schnaper said. “When you put together a little shake of this and a little shake of that, you make a matrix, which will support the rise.”

Sorghum has been growing in popularity alongside other trendy ingredients, including hemp seed and goji berries—both of which can be found in Mr. Schnaper’s kitchen, where he’s trading out fondant for flax seed with a healthy conscious.

“It’s not a fad,” Mr. Schnaper said. “People are realizing that if it’s good for that guy, maybe it’s good for me.”