When Langley couple Angela and Lane Albright began selling gluten-free pizza crusts three years ago, everything was made by hand.
Using his arm power and a round, flat pan, Lane could press a pizza shell in just two minutes and 38 seconds.
“I once put in a 20-hour day, went home and slept for six hours, then came back and worked another 17,” Lane said, as he mopped the floors inside the Gluten Free Chef commercial kitchen in Surrey.
“Sixteen-hour days are not uncommon. Very seldom do we work less than 12-hour days.”
The gluten-free ingredients make their dough too sticky for commercial processing equipment, so the only option was to do it the old fashioned way.
“A lot of the industry was telling us, ‘well just change your dough,’” Angela said.
“Add stuff to your dough, ingredients like additives, so you can use traditional equipment.
“We tried that, and it changed the quality of the product, and we were getting all of our success in people saying ‘this is amazing’.
“We didn’t want to change that.”
Angela and Lane knew exactly what kind of machine they needed, only problem was finding a company that sold it.
They decided to build it themselves instead.
After a couple bottles of wine one night, the couple sketched out their machine on a stack of paper napkins, then proceeded to find a manufacturer.
Three months ago they finally received their dream machine.
On a good day, Lane could hand-press up to 120 pizza doughs. Now, their machine can produce 3,000.
“We’ve got to make our machinery do what we need it to do to support the dough, not change the dough to support the machinery,” Angela said.
“We came at it the other way.”
Although neither Angela nor Lane is allergic to gluten, both avoid all food that contains the glue-like wheat-proteins.
Devotees to “simple, natural” foods, their passion began eight years ago when one of their twin daughters was diagnosed with a severe gluten allergy.
At that time, there were not many gluten-free products available on grocery store shelves, and even fewer that appealed to the taste buds of a three-year-old.
Lane said he would send his daughter to school with a sandwich, and everyday when she came back home, everything in her lunch would be gone but the sandwich. Sometimes she would eat the inside of it, but the bread was always left untouched.
“We bought probably seven to 10 different loaves, whatever was on the market,” he said.
“We were buying every product that was out there. There was nothing that she would eat.”
The couple spent thousands of dollars on custom-made menus and advice from nutritionists, but nothing was working.
Frustrated, they started testing their own recipes.
Beginning with gluten-free pizza shells, they soon realized they had a really good product.
They decided to take it to local restaurants to try, and the response was overwhelming.
“We’ve had celiacs crying at our food booths before,” Angela said. “Still, I get calls. I got two calls in the last two weeks. One was from a lady in Toronto who was out here visiting in a restaurant and ate a pizza. And the other one was from somebody in Kelowna who had tried the bread in another restaurant.
“And because it was so good, they asked the servers, ‘what is the brand of this product?’
“And then they took that information and emailed us when they got home and said, ‘can we find this product in our area?’
“It really stands above the crowd in quality.”
Angela and Lane now sell an array of products to restaurants, food service companies and select grocery stores, including Nature’s Fare Markets and Moreno’s Market and Deli in Langley.
Though they had never considered themselves chefs before — the Albrights used to own a publishing business — they are now very passionate foodies.
“We started doing research on why gluten-free was exploding so much, and what we quickly bumped into was genetic modification and pesticides and the level of chemicals used on our food,” Angela said.
“When we started looking into it for our own family, we started seeing that ‘wow, if we’re not using organic rice and the rice is genetically modified, we’re still hurting people.
“It’s gluten-free, but they’re still eating stuff that has pesticides on the raw ingredients.
“We want to be committed to providing something that doesn’t hurt you, that’s actually a good alternative.”
They are also committed to their local community.
The Albrights began a buy-one-feed-one campaign, where for every product sold in a grocery store, one is donated to a local food bank.
“Rest assured, if you’re gluten intolerant and you’re using the food bank, you can’t afford to buy gluten-free products,” Lane said.
“Then those kids are having to not eat or having to eat food that makes them sick,” Angela added.
“I had an accountant tell me, you guys can’t really afford to do that,” she said.
“But it’s what drives us, so how can you not do that? It’s about who we are. It’s the foundation of a community.”
It’s a healthy shift Angela says many are beginning to make.
“People are recognizing that when you have challenging times, it’s your community that supports your business,” she said.
“When you’re going through tough times as a community, the only thing that’s going to make you survive is your community.
“I feel that there is a shift toward local that is beyond just marketing.”
For more on the Gluten Free Chef products, click here.
