Gluten Free Concepts owes its existence to a life changing diagnosis of celiac disease. When David Jensen walked out of the doctor's office that day in April 2007, he had the answer to what had caused him many years of digestive problems, and a huge challenge ahead of him; how to eliminate the gluten contained in wheat, rye, and barley from his diet without giving up the foods he loved. It was an intimidating prospect.

Dave's wife Debbie realized that the safest thing to do would be to go completely gluten free at home, so they packed up the bread, cookies, crackers, and chips they knew had wheat in them to give away to family members. In addition to those obvious products, one visit to the local super market and some label reading unveiled a multitude of additional products that were unexpectedly found to contain gluten. Cake frosting, tomato soup, salad dressing, canned chili, and vitamins, were just a few foods they found that had a gluten containing ingredient listed somewhere on the label.

Dave and Debbie are lucky enough to live near a Fred Meyer store with part of a small aisle in the "nutrition center" devoted to gluten free products. The selection they found there included cookies, crackers, cereals, pastas, bread mixes and just a couple of types of bread.  The prices were somewhat stunning, but they bought a selection of products to try and went home to start taste testing.  Some of the products looked strange - some looked similar to wheat products - but they had one thing in common, they all tasted very different from "regular" wheat versions.

The bread, however, was the most disappointing of all.  The first thing Dave noticed when he opened the package of one brand was a pungent chemical smell.  The bread itself was hard, dry, and tasted nothing like bread.   He told Debbie that he thought the wrapper probably would have tasted better. On the next trip to the store, Debbie bought a bread mix to try. The finished product tasted more like bread, but it sank down in the middle after it baked, and it was very crumbly when she sliced it. Dave started to wonder if he'd ever be able to eat a sandwich for lunch again. 

This initial failure to find bread that was edible brought out Debbie's instincts as a baker. She had learned to bake from her grandmother more than 40 years before, so baking bread from a recipe seemed like a natural next step. A few hours of internet research turned up information on available cookbooks, recipes, and the location of Bob's Red Mill, a company with an extensive line of alternative flours. Some of the loaves made in those early weeks might have passed for doorstops, and others were little more than collections of bread crumbs. It would have been easy to give up, but Debbie kept saying to Dave, "there's got to be a way to make good bread without gluten."

In the course of investigating gluten free baking in the Portland area, and what events might be happening in the Celiac world, Dave and Debbie came across information about the GIG (Gluten Intolerance Group) National Conference scheduled for June 2009, in nearby Seattle. Attending the conference gave them both the opportunity to meet and network with many people who live a gluten free lifestyle, and the companies who make products for them.

What had just been the seed of an idea to start a commercial bakery sprouted that weekend as a multitude of conversations yielded the same sentiments. "I just wish I could go into a restaurant and order a hamburger," "Why can't gluten free bread products actually taste like bread?" "If only I could buy hamburger buns in the store that taste good," were comments they heard over and over again. Gluten free food vendors from all over the country assembled in several meeting rooms at the conference, bringing with them many kinds of bakery items.