A view inside of the Burlington store.
All our products are baked in a dedicated gluten-free facility
Everything we bake is produced in small batches to ensure quality and freshness so not all items are available daily.
We make all our own fillings, sauces, pastries, cookie doughs, cake batters, muffin batters and bread doughs to ensure they are gluten-free. Where possible and reasonable, we use locally-sourced ingredients. Furthermore, we work very closely with our suppliers to ensure the ingredients they source on our behalf are all gluten-free.
What this means, however, is that we don’t simply open a box and bake & decorate a pre-made item. So, yes, our products take a little longer to make, but we think you’ll agree that it’s worth it.
So if you are looking for something in particular, please phone ahead to see what is available that day to avoid disappointment.
Allergies and other health issues
A number of people with celiac disease and/or those who are intolerant to gluten, also identify as having secondary intolerances and/or other food allergies. These may include but are not be limited to: dairy and eggs; certain GF flours; nuts; as well as soy and/or corn. We’ve also commented briefly on our sodium usage as well as the sweeteners we use. Our overall approach to the secondary intolerances is to limit or eliminate some of these ingredients; however, we have not done away with them entirely.
· Dairy and eggs
Dairy and/or eggs are used in many of our products. On the individual product pages, we’ve indicated those items that are routinely dairy-free or if they can be made dairy-free. However, unless someone has a serious dairy allergy they are often still able to tolerate butter. While we have tried a number of butter substitutes across many products, we found that butter still has the best performance for most applications as well as the better mouth-feel and taste appeal. That said, we did manage to find a soy-free shortening that works for making dairy-free icing which is why we’re able to make some of our cakes completely dairy-free. However, we have had very limited success making items that are both egg and dairy-free since we wanted to avoid loading them up with sodium as well: These are not routinely available so advance notice of at least one week is preferred. Minimum orders may apply.
· Flours
The flours we use include: Arrowroot, Potato starch and/or flour, Tapioca starch, all the Rice flours (brown, white, and sweet), and Sorghum. We custom blend our own mixes to suit the particular application.
· Nut allergies
While we are peanut-free, we are not a nut-free facility: A few of our products use almonds or pecans and although we do not use peanuts it is possible that the nut products we use may have come in contact with peanuts. Please keep this in mind if your allergy is severe and if this is a consideration for you.
· Soy and corn
While we make every effort to avoid using soy in all its forms, as well as corn products, some ingredients may still contain soy (i.e., soy lecithin in some chocolate products and soy oil in non-dairy ingredients). Corn starch is present in both baking powder and icing sugar in small quantities. Unfortunately, when customers specifically request items to be dairy-free it is almost impossible to have it also be soy free. While we have explored several alternatives, many non-dairy ingredients use soy oil as one of its constituent oils. If this is a concern for you, please ask us as to what extent and where these items are used.
· Sodium
With regards to sodium in our baked goods, we are doing our best to reduce our reliance on ingredients that are high in sodium. That said, we use sea salt which has a lower sodium content than table salt and, where possible, have reduced the salt content in all our recipes. The connundrum is that salt is required in many baked goods so simply eliminating it is not the answer. [Interestingly, replacing sodium bicarbonate (the active ingredient in baking powder and baking soda) with potassium bicarbonate may create an entirely new issue; namely, a problem with too much potassium in our diet.] A few times people have commented that our meat pies, for example, seem a little bland in spite of our usage of a variety of herbs and other seasonings. To that we suggest that you add just a small amount of salt when consuming these items since that should satisfy your taste buds adequately and best of all, will still be far less than if we added it at the outset.
· Sweeteners
The sweeteners we use include organic agave syrup, honey, organic cane sugar, organic sucanat, and icing sugar. The latter is the only refined sweetener we use and also contains roughly 2-3% corn starch. We do not use any artificial sweeteners. However, when approached by customers who are also diabetic, the issue is not simply using a sugar substitute when it comes to managing diabetes. We do not pretend to be health professionals so also do not lay claim as to how much or little of our products you can or should consume.
Hold Policy
Please note that we’ve updated our Hold Policy effective August 2012. Owing to our limited storage space, we are unable to store your hold request(s) indefinitely so we ask the following:
Please pick-up the item(s) you requested to be held on the day you specified. If you are unable to get to the store before we close for the day, you need to contact us to let us know before the store closes for the day.
If we have not heard from you within two hours of store closure for the day, we will make all reasonable efforts to contact you to make arrangements for pick-up. This is why we request you provide us with a phone number where we can reach you the day of pick-up. If we are unable to reach you and/or we do not receive further instructions from you, we will, at our discretion, make the item(s) you placed on hold available for sale to other customers.
To avoid this possibility, you may pre-pay for your item(s) to guarantee that your item(s) will continue to be available for pick-up beyond your requested pick-up day.
All item(s) left on hold which are not pre-paid and not picked up by the end of the requested business day will automatically be made available for sale to other customers.
