Columbian Cooks Up Maple Bacon Gourmet Popcorn

Earlier this week, Ellicott City Patch wrote about a unique bacon food being served at a chocolate shop in Historic Old Ellicott City—a chocolate covered bacon and grilled cheese sandwich.

Not wanting to be outdone by our crosstown neighbors, Columbia Patch quickly found its own wonderfully unique Columbia bacon concoction: Maple and Bacon Crunch gourmet popcorn by CrunchDaddy.

On Wednesday, Patch reached out to popcorn chef and CruchDaddy himself, Dan Bazis, 44, of Columbia, to find out more about his bacon creation.

Bazis launched his gourmet popcorn company on Jan. 1 with 10 unique flavors, such as honey and cinnamon, white cheddar and horseradish and sesame and ginger.

“The last idea I came up with before I opened was the maple and bacon crunch,” said Bazis. “It was kind of a gimmicky thing, but it ended up outselling the other flavors by 3 to 1.”

To make a gallon of the popcorn, Bazis fries up a half pound of bacon, mixes it into popcorn, then covers it all with maple syrup caramel. To make the maple syrup caramel, Bazis replaces the normal corn syrup ingredient in the caramel with real maple syrup.

The maple syrup and bacon crunch is Bazis’ most expensive flavor of popcorn at $24.95 per gallon, but that hasn’t dulled its popularity, according to Bazis.

“It’s still cheaper than large gourmet popcorn producers,” said Bazis, who cooks up the popcorn in a rented commercial kitchen in Ellicott City and distributes it himself door-to-door to customers who have ordered it online throughout Howard County.

Local food blogger HowChow (who also first reported on the grilled cheese above) gave Bazis’ business a leg up when he reviewed CrunchDaddy back in April.

“I'm serious that these taste like restaurant food,” wrote HowChow. “These are interesting, not just popcorn drenched in sugar.”

Bazis said he is also hoping to be able to sell the popcorn at local stores within the next four weeks.