WHEN IT COMES to baking, most of us know that there are some key ingredients for cakes and other sweet treats: including wheat flour.
But for those who have been diagnosed with coeliac disease, which is an autoimmune disease, a life without gluten (which is a protein found wheat, spelt, barley and rye) is essential.
For those with the disease, eating products containing gluten means the villi in their small intestine get damaged, which affects their ability to absorb the nutrients from their food, and in turn leads to many different symptoms and complications.
To make things more complicated, a huge amount of processed foods (from chocolate bars to oats) might appear to be gluten-free, but have been contaminated due to the addition of wheat flour, for example, or being made on the same production line as a gluten-containing item.
Thousands of people in Ireland have the disease – the Coeliac Society of Ireland has 12,000 members.
The gluten-free baker
For baker and entrepreneur Sinead Vaughn, of Antoinette’s Bakery on Kevin St in Dublin, a coeliac disease diagnosis came as a surprise after she went to the doctor for tests related to a virus.
“She got my blood tests back and said ‘you never told me you were coeliac!”,” she recalled.
There was one complication – she had just signed on to do a Baking and Pastry Arts degree at DIT.
But instead of giving up, Vaughn embraced the challenge. “I think it’s better that I learned – there’s no course available for gluten-free,” she said.
She went on to work as a baker and in restaurants as a pastry chef, but not in the gluten-free arena.
When she found herself without a job after the restaurant downsized, she converted a room in her parents’ house into a small kitchen, made everything gluten-free, and began selling her products at markets.
Because coeliacs tend to be used to pre-packaged items with a long shelf-life, Vaughn wanted to make fresh baked goods.
In January 2013 she took time off to look at setting up her own permanent place, and found a former dry cleaners that was up for rent, coincidentally on Kevin St, near where she learned about baking.
The business opened in November 213, and Vaughn said that it went very well overall, though at times the process took longer than she thought it would – particularly when it came to planning permission. As for grants, they are also hard to come by, though she is interested in finding out more about them.
Gluten-free concerns
The issue of cross-contamination is a big one, and Vaughn said that coeliacs can find that not all staff in restaurants or cafés know about this.
“There are plenty who are amazing,”said Vaughn, though she added:
We can’t eat chips that have been fried in the same oil as onion rings – [but] I met one waiter that said the oil will kill off the gluten.
At the same time, Vaughn doesn’t want to promote her shop as just for one specific market. “It’s kind of a funny one to market the whole shop because I don’t want to be like ‘everything is gluten-free’, because it might frighten off people who associate gluten-free with packaged foods in supermarkets,” she said.
“I find myself that word of mouth is really the way to go with gluten-free food, that people’s experiences would really influence where I would go to eat.”
How to bake gluten-free
“I can eat a Twirl but I can’t eat a Dairy Milk,” said Vaughn. “So in that respect all the products we get in have to be gluten-free, so I can’t just go and pick up any cornflour, or chocolate chips.”
These products are not always the same price as regular ingredients.
“I try and keep our prices as normal as possible because it is frustratingly expensive. It’s not something I signed up to and it’s a bit of a pain,” said Vaughn. “But I think more and more companies are copping on for want of a better word that making things gluten-free just makes sense.”
Here’s how they put their flour mix together:
(Video TheJournal.ie/YouTube)
Irish crisps manufacturer Keogh’s is also an example of a company looking to get the gluten-free seal of approval for its products (many crisps contain wheat flour).
It’ s not alienating people. Whereas some people might look at gluten-free like ‘regular people don’t want that’. It’s very frustrating.
Though Vaughn did not suspect she might have the disease, she had experienced fatigue and headaches when in her teens, but had been told by doctors it was due to stress.
These “went away completely” when she gave up gluten: “Oh, this is what normal people feel like at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I would be falling asleep in the library I was so tired at the time. I kind of suffered in silence.”
She will soon begin holding baking classes to try and encourage people to get baking themselves.
“I think for a lot of people who have been coeliac their whole life, they’ve never bothered baking – it just seems too difficult. Then for people who would have a kid that’s just been diagnosed and want to bake for them they might be a bit scared.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say