Dryad resident Tammy Garner, owner of Breaking Bread, talks about garnering national recognition for her pre-packaged, gluten-free baking mixes on Thursday afternoon at her kitchen in downtown Pe Ell.
Tammy Garner, owner of Breaking Bread, displays Momma's Dinner roll, left, and "Oatback" roll at her kitchen in Pe Ell on Thursday afternoon.
Breaking Bread offers a variety of mixes, including pancake and waffle mix, all-purpose flour, cornbread, breading for frying foods, cake mixes and more. Garner is currently working to develop dinner roll mixes.
Tammy Garner was diagnosed in 2004 with celiac disease, an allergy to gluten, a protein found in wheat. Garner started experimenting with recipes, combining different varieties of gluten-free flour to make the consistency similar to wheat breads and baked goods.
Dryad resident Tammy Garner didn’t let her 2004 diagnosis of celiac disease destroy her lifelong love of baking. When the baking got tough, she got creative.
After several years of working out the details in her recipes, Garner began selling her pre-packaged, gluten-free baking mixes online. Today, Breaking Bread operates out of Pe Ell, and her products are available in stores regionally and online.
“My family eats everything I eat. Our church eats everything I eat, and none of them can tell the difference,” she said.
The irony was not lost on Garner that she lived in the middle of Washington’s wheat country in Ritzville when she was diagnosed in 2004 with celiac disease, an allergy to gluten, a protein found in wheat.
After being diagnosed after years of unexplained medical issues ending with surgery and a liquid diet, Garner tried to use alternative flours for baking, but wasn’t satisfied with the results. Her rural location also made it difficult to find high-quality, gluten-free options.
“It didn’t have any flavor,” she said.
Garner started experimenting with recipes, combining different varieties of gluten-free flour to make the consistency similar to wheat breads and baked goods.
“I had everyone in Ritzville try it,” she said. “I even entered it in the Wheat Land fair.”
Despite her creations’ lack of wheat, she won blue ribbons for her angel and devil’s food cakes, encouraging her to keep going. In 2010, Garner began selling her packaged gluten-free baking mixes online.
In 2012, she and husband Buck Garner moved to Dryad, and in 2013 they moved Baking Bread’s operation into a building in downtown Pe Ell across from the Pe Ell Country Market, which is one of several locations that now sells her mixes.
The most important thing, Garner said, is to get the texture right.
“A lot of people who are diagnosed with celiac miss the texture and the taste and the mouth feel of a wheat-based product,” she said.
Husband and test-subject Buck Garner agreed.
“It took a lot of trial and error to get the grittiness out of the product,” he said. “It’s so hard because wheat is in almost everything.”
Gluten is the protein in wheat and some other grains that binds flour together and creates the springy texture of baked products during the baking process, Garner explained.
She had to experiment to recreate that texture without gluten by blending several different types of wheat flour substitutes, including rice flour, potato starch, tapioca, oat flour and sorghum.
“It’s the blend that makes the texture,” she said.
Garner’s goal is first of all to make a tasty product with an appealing texture, and second, to make it easy even for inexperienced cooks.
“Most people today don’t want to bake; they want to go out and buy something,” she said.
Some people with gluten intolerance or celiac disease are also sensitive to dairy, eggs or corn as well, Garner said, and Breaking Bread’s recipes take that into account.
“All of them can be made, except the angel’s food cake, can be made dairy free and egg free,” she said.
Garner doesn’t have formal culinary training, but spent years cooking for her family and baked with her mother starting in childhood.
She uses three standard-size stand mixers in her Pe Ell kitchen to combine the ingredients for her mixes, then portions them into individual packages as orders come in.
Breaking Bread offers a variety of mixes, including pancake and waffle mix, all-purpose flour, cornbread, breading for frying foods, cake mixes and more. Garner is currently working to develop dinner roll mixes. All of the mixes, when used in other recipes provided by Breaking Bread, can be used to make a variety of bread products.
“It’s taken me the longest to do these dinner rolls,” Garner said.
Garner’s mixes are available at several local stores, including Shop’n Kart in Chehalis, the Pe Ell Country Store, the Rochester IGA and more listed on their website. The mixes are also available online on Breaking Bread’s website and on Amazon.
Breaking Bread was recently awarded the American Choice Award for National Best Brand for Multi-Purpose Gluten-Free Non-Dairy Baking.
“It was surprising to me,” she said. “I said, ‘No way,’ ”
In the future, she hopes to grow her business and teach other people about baking.
