Dolce Lou Brings Gluten-Free to Seattle's Etsy Scene
Meet Phebe Rossi at a networking event, and she'll be likely to hand you a little package of two chocolate cookies and a business card. "I'm a baker," she says. "I don't know how to talk to people!" She seems convinced when she says it, but her personable nature belies the statement. As does the fact that this Northwest native, self-educated baker, and owner of Dolce Lou Bakery successfully promotes her company's products through word-of-mouth advertising alone. 
http://www.etsy.com/shop/DolceLou
She hands me two baby cupcakes (one spiced chocolate, one strawberry with pistachio frosting - both gluten free) and offers me a seat on the bright red couch of a sitting room connected to Queen Anne's Cookspace, where she rents space along with other small business owners. Someone in another bay is making macaroons. I examine the cupcakes and ask her how long she's been baking.
"My whole life," she laughs. (I find that a lot of people who love to bake give this answer. Baking, I'm beginning to think, might be something you're born into.) She's only been baking gluten free for a few years, after discovering that life-long health problems were stemming from an undiagnosed allergy to wheat. As a gluten-free baker, Phebe's story is unique in that she doesn't have Celiac Disease, and she can digest gluten just fine. But, she points out, once you give up wheat (which causes her respiratory distress, among other classic allergy symptoms), you may as well just go the whole way and cut out the rest.
Listening to her talk about connecting with wedding planners and caterers, blending her own flours in different combinations for different products, and browsing the etsy shop where customers can order cakes, cookies and other custom treats, you realize that Dolce Lou's has gluten-free baking on lockdown. And, you realize that there is a lot more to the gluten-free world of baked goods than the average person remembers... for instance, when I bake at home, I usually reach for the rice flour first. Dolce Lou's baked goods rely less on rice, incorporating things like millet and sorghum instead.
Although the baking facility is shared and therefore not a dedicated facility, there are no bakeries using traditional flours at work in the kitchen while Dolce Lou's is there, and Phebe is careful to clean everything intensively and keep as much of her work as possible on cutting boards and trays she brings into the space with her. She says she's confident that her products are free of cross-contamination, even though she always notes to customers that all her work is done on shared equipment.
Currently, Dolce Lou does not sell to any retail shops, and can only be found online or at one of two farmer's markets: Georgetown on Saturdays, and Bellevue Crossroads on Tuesdays. But she's also started hosting occasional tastings, which you can find out about through facebook. And she says she keeps samples on hand for those skeptical about gluten-free eating, because she believes that most people would be healthier if they omitted (or at least significantly reduced) things like gluten and dairy in their diets. "You get used to feeling a certain way, and you don't know any better," she says, expressing concern that more of the adult population is walking around with food sensitivities than is aware of it. She carries samples because she wants people to understand that there is happiness outside of gluten; that the gluten-free lifestyle is not a sentence. People should "be willing to try something new because it's good," not just because it's good for them. 
Really, she says, "If I can make somebody smile, or make their day because I feed them a cookie? That's what I want to do."
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