STORY: Is this the best gluten-free bread in the UK?

“I think we are definitely the best gluten-free baker in the UK,” says Mina Allsopp, founder of new start-up Wildcraft Gluten Free bakery, based in Leeds.

Mina and business partner Sam Havis are both self-professed academics, and hold an impressive six university degrees between them.

Wildcraft recently received three FreeFrom awards: a Gold Award for their Sprouted Buckwheat Sourdough Loaf, Silver for the brioche, and Overall Winner for Best Product from a new start-up.

  “We just couldn’t believe it when our name was read out,” says Mina’s business partner Sam Havis. “We were alongside all the big supermarkets and then our name was called out, it was incredible. We knew what we were doing was good but it always good to have that confirmed from within the industry.”

A self-proclaimed foodie, when Mina moved from Kenya to Warwick to study and then Leeds, she became fed up with the gluten-free substitutes available, especially the bread. So she took matters into her own hands.

“I am academic and there had to be a scientific answer to making good gluten-free bread. I applied science and good deal of trial and error.”

In September 2016 she gave up her job in academia and opened Wildcraft Gluten Free Bakery.

“I couldn’t believe it, hundreds of people came, at the time I had two recipes our buckwheat sourdough and our whoopee pies.” They now make 88 gluten-free products.

They also have a growing wholesale market supplying restaurants and cafés with gluten-free products including pizza bases and pitta bread.

“We are more expensive,” says Sam. “But when you think it takes four days to make our sprouted buckwheat sourdough it isn’t that expensive. And people who can’t eat gluten are so used to paying more that they are happy to pay for something delicious.”

But they say most gluten-free products are so bad that the label carries something of a stigma.                                

“You say something is gluten-free and people immediately think it has to be awful,” says Mina.

“But our products are delicious in their own right and we believe can be enjoyed by everyone. So we are going to rebrand as a Free-From bakery. Everything we do is vegetarian and a lot of it is vegan, such as our bestselling whoopie pies.”