Our Story
Leaven & Love started the way most real things do: out of necessity.
Our family needed bread that actually worked. Our youngest could not have dairy. Ashley could not tolerate gluten. Our oldest needed to eliminate it entirely. What we found on store shelves was not food. It was a workaround. Dry, dense loaves held together with gums and stabilizers, designed to pass as bread without committing to being any good.
A friend of ours was baking gluten-free sourdough and selling it at a Central Oregon farmers market. We bought her recipes and her customer list, rebuilt the formula from the ground up, and started baking. In early 2023 we made it official.
What we make is simple: wild-fermented sourdough, gum-free, built on freshly milled whole grains and certified organic ingredients, and given the time it needs. No shortcuts. No additives. Nothing in the loaf that does not belong there. Where our recipes call for sweetness, we use organic coconut sugar, maple syrup, or unrefined organic cane sugar. Never refined white sugar. Every Classic loaf is also completely vegan and free from all nine major allergens, which in the gluten-free space is rarer than it should be.
Our bread is also low FODMAP. The extended wild fermentation process breaks down fermentable carbohydrates that trouble many people with IBS and digestive sensitivities, making it one of the few commercially available breads compatible with a low FODMAP diet.
We are a small family bakehouse operating out of a licensed commercial kitchen in Oregon. That is not a technicality. It means the bread is made the right way, at real scale, without sacrificing the formula that made it worth eating in the first place.
