The Gluten Free Maker
Coeliac-friendly treats that will tempt more than coeliacs? Vicki Bruhns-bolderson has you covered.
Hawke’s Bay local Vicki Bruhns-bolderson began her career 40 years ago, training as a chef in Sydney. She spent years doing just about everything you can think of in hospitality – cooking here and overseas, running several renowned restaurants, including Bayswater Café in Napier and Bolderson’s in Hastings, opening a specialty food store encompassing one of Aotearoa’s first artisan bakeries (Bolderson’s Urban
Food Store), creating the EIT Chef Training Institute, running operations for White Island Tours and working for Vetro Mediterranean Foods – before realising she needed a change of pace. It coincided with a dietary change for Vicki, who was diagnosed as highly gluten-intolerant in 2019.
“I knew gluten wasn’t great for me – when we ran the bakery, I used to feel quite unwell by the end of a day of tasting,” she says. “But I wasn’t coeliac and I just thought, oh, it’s okay. Then I went to a naturopath and nutritionist and she did some testing and said, ‘Nah, you just have to get rid of the whole lot.’”
Vicki cleared out her kitchen and started from scratch. But after repopulating her pantry with the gluten-free products she’d found at the supermarket, she felt decidedly frustrated.
“There were so many things that hardly tasted like anything,” she says. “There seemed to be this feeling that if [a product] was gluten-free, you didn’t have to worry about whether it tasted good.”
As a keen chef, Vicki began crafting glutenfree baked goods at home for herself and a few friends and family – when it struck her that the demand for delicious gluten-free baking must extend beyond her circle. Determined to give gluten-free a glam-up, she began developing gluten-free goodies full-time. She decided she would sell her baking for delivery locally and use social media to reach others.
Fast forward almost a year and things have snowballed. Vicki now delivers boxes of her gluten-free baking all around the North Island – and she offers a highly customisable product. Customers can choose between classic mixed, savoury-only, dairy-free and vegan boxes, or choose to build their own box, item by item (there are 17 goodies to choose from). And although it’s hard work, Vicki likes to keep things small-scale and still makes everything by hand in her own kitchen.
She says her most popular products are probably her pizza bases – “You would not believe how hard it is to find a good glutenfree pizza base that’s thin and bubbly and crispy,” she admits – and her seed crackers, oat-free granola and crusty French country loaf. But her own favourite is her lemon cake, made with ground almonds and topped with a crackly layer of sugar.
All Vicki’s products are made using her own non-gummy, non-gritty gluten-free flour blends, which took five months to develop and balance brown rice flour, white rice flour, tapioca, potato starch, buckwheat and corn.
“I’m trying to get as close as possible to the mouthfeel of a wheat flour. Glutenfree shouldn’t have to mean a huge textural compromise,” she says. “And I think it’s really nice that there’s a lot of goodness in the flour before you even start making things with it.”
Quality ingredients in general are key for Vicki, who says many of her ingredients are organic and lists Chantal Organics as a major supplier. A full list of all the ingredients used comes with every box, so recipients can feel totally reassured about what they’re eating.
The beautifully packaged boxes would make a lovely gift, although with their reasonable prices, they’re equally suitable as a regular part of your shop! Vicki currently takes orders via email (vicki@thegfmaker.com) and you can view her range on Facebook and Instagram.
“You would not believe how hard it is to find a good gluten-free pizza base that’s thin and bubbly and crispy”