2 weeks ago
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Nothing looks ‘gluten-free’ astatine Wholegreen Bakery’s Alexandria cafe, the 3rd Sydney outlet for laminitis Cherie Lyden.
If you basal extracurricular Wholegreen Bakery & Cafe successful Alexandria, the prima streaming connected your backmost earlier a model lined with seeded sourdough loaves, caller raspberry tarts, velvety caramel-hued tiramisu slices and chickenhearted and beef pies with flaky lids of aureate puff pastry, it’s imaginable the past happening connected your caput is gluten-free.
Nothing looks “gluten-free”. Nothing suggests a mediocre imitation of nutrient commonly made with wheat, rye oregon barley products. Nothing seems apologetic oregon falling isolated oregon conscionable mostly sad, arsenic was the lawsuit historically with items prepared to radical diagnosed with coeliac disease, non-coeliac gluten sensitivity, allergies oregon irritable bowel syndrome.
Everything astatine this gluten-free bakery-cafe thrums with a come-hither marvellousness. Wholegreen Bakery’s Alexandria bakery and cafe, laminitis Cherie Lyden’s 3rd Wholegreen outlet with counterparts successful Waverley and Sydney’s CBD, is simply a year-and-a-half old.
Fronting the bakery’s mill headquarters, it’s a hole-in-the-wall cafe stacked with gluten-free loaves, buns, baguettes, croissants, tarts, slices, pies, quiches, sausage rolls, biscuits and toasted sandwiches.
In a no-through road, and surrounded by airy manufacture factories, it has outdoor seating connected umbrella-shaded woody seat tables, beardown Colombian Connection coffee, beverage and acold drinks.
The happening to retrieve present is to pounce.
Wholegreen Bakery customers, agelong impassioned by the assortment of products, determination similar panthers.
One infinitesimal you’re admiring yeasted sourdough effect loaves, dusty with achromatic atom flour and studded with figs and raisins, oregon bronze-peaked citrus meringue tarts, sunshine-yellow Portuguese custard tarts oregon pert passionfruit beverage cakes with lime and mint icing.
The next, they’re gone, disconnected and down the roadworthy nether the arms of radical who knew they had to get successful quick.
It pays to snaffle beautifully flaky cornflower petal-speckled peach danishes oregon pillowy, orb-like sourdough and brioche buns, rich, sesame seed-flecked pork and fennel sausage rolls oregon slow-cooked grass-fed beef pies arsenic soon arsenic you spot them.
That pie, a 2023 Bronze Medal victor astatine the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show, has a buttery shortcrust basal holding onion, sauteed carrots and brushed beef chunks successful precise good gravy topped with a cleanable puff pastry lid.
Equally beauteous is the free-range chicken, mushroom and leek pie, its poached thigh meat, aromatic with oregano, sealed successful yet much fantabulous pastry.
You tin marvel astatine this being gluten-free, but the taste’s the thing.
For anyone who has coeliac illness oregon is gluten-intolerant, eating these pies – oregon a roast rootlike frittata slice, a ham, food and Dijon mustard toasted sandwich oregon the acheronian cocoa and raspberry brownie – is simply a wholly relieving and/or life-saving experience.
Lyden, a trained nutritionist, and marque ambassador for Coeliac Australia, was inspired to make gluten-free baked goods aft her daughter, Lucia, who works down the counter, was diagnosed with the coeliac illness arsenic a young child.
“I besides got diagnosed successful my 40s,” Lyden says.
“I wanted to make truly delicious food, beauteous sourdough breads and pastries that Lucia would ne'er get to effort normally, due to the fact that I didn’t privation her to miss retired connected anything.
“I wanted her to unrecorded a gluten-free beingness fearlessly.”
Earlier this year, Lyden oversaw the Cardboard Cake, a cunning one-off collaboration with advertizing bureau The Hallway that upended each jibe astir gluten-free nutrient tasting similar cardboard.
Made with chocolate, butterscotch and espresso, and utilizing a bespoke baking tray to imitate cardboard’s corrugations, it magicked creamy, wafery coffee-cocoa sweetness with the giddy lark of seemingly biting into a brownish packaging box.
Dear Wholegrain Bakery, delight bring this stout, melty undulating triumph back.
Lyden says 1 of the astir rewarding things astir founding and processing Wholegreen Bakery nutrient and cafes is watching children with coeliac illness oregon gluten intolerance eyeing the baked goods with the cognition they tin devour it all.
“It’s much than a bakery,” Lyden says. “It’s a community.
“People tin devour with confidence, there’s nary cross-contamination and we are Coeliac Australia accredited.”
She says a ample portion of her lawsuit basal is radical who don’t request to devour gluten-free food.
“There’s nary judging here, nary oculus rolling, nary being told it’s a fad,” she says.
“From the precise beginning, I’ve conscionable wanted radical to travel and bask food.”
The low-down
Vibe: Cut-above gluten-free baked goods, from loaves, buns and baguettes to croissants, tarts, slices and pies, positive toasted sandwiches and blistery and acold drinks.
Go-to dish: Free-range chicken, mushroom and leek pastry followed by Portuguese custard tart.
Average outgo for two: $40, positive drinks.
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