Sweet Laurel's explores how good can gluten-free be

By Ryan Zepeda --

Her big break came from heartbreak.

Sweet Laurel’s guiltless bakery opened Saturday and sold out both weekend days despite having a staff of five cooking round the clock.

The Pacific Palisades storefront right in the hubbub of Sunset Blvd. seems to be a sensation with its grain-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free pastries. But the startup business was birthed out of five years of severe fatigue, constipation and infertility that turned Laurel Gallucci’s honeymoon into a nightmare.

Eventually, Laurel -- whose smile and demeanor is the only thing sweeter than her no-refined-sugar cakes -- was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Disease, a rare auto-immune deficiency. The normal synthetic hormone treatment did her no good. She had just recently married and couldn't enjoy life.

“I saw my friend disappearing,” says her business partner, Claire Thomas. Hashimoto’s decimated her already slender figure. She dropped 40 pounds.

So, almost on a fluke, at the suggestion of friend, she adopted a paleo diet, and she steadily gained strength. She even has a baby.

While gluten is not bad for everybody, it wrecked havoc for Laurel. She believes the GMO wheat grown in America is what is causing more and more people to develop gluten intolerance.

Recovery brought happiness.

“I had a whole entire lifestyle change going grain-free and dairy-free,” she says. “I started to get my energy back and renew my health. It made such a big difference.”

But not baking brought heartbreak.

Laurel grew up with seven siblings, for whom she was always whipping up delectable chocolate chip cookies and yummies. She was a great student through Lighthouse Christian Academy of Santa Monica and got her teaching credential -- but what she loved most was baking.

And all of a sudden, everything used in baking was banned from her life: sugar, flour, milk. It was a severe regimen.

She could have moaned the woe-is-me’s, but instead she began tinkering with ingredients. She discovered that almond flour worked well and pure maple syrup substituted refined sugar. She availed herself to organic eggs, coconut oil and pink Himalayan salt.

Her first chocolate cake beat hands down everything on the market. It had better texture and authentic taste than other gluten-free treats, which lacked the lightness, the fluffiness, the slight moistness produced by cake flour.

Her good friend, Claire of the The Kitchy Kitchen blog, was thunderstruck. “This is not supposed to taste this good,” she remarked, polishing off the chocolate cake.

After she wiped off her hands, they shook hands -- on a business deal. They would share the goods with others. They called the first creation "the chocolate cake that changed everything."

First came the cookbook and presentations on television shows. Then came orders from supermarkets, mostly around L.A. but some from New York.

Three years later, and they opened a store Saturday. Others are planned.

The pink and white storefront with green umbrellas shading tables out front feels like Spring. The store is decorated with fresh and fake flowers. There is coffee and cappuccino to round out the healthy offerings. A slice of cake costs $10, and a whole cake is $60-75.

I tried the six-layer vanilla coconut jam cake while my journalism teacher and editor tried the “decadent” chocolate caramel layer cake. Both of them had the right texture and were only slightly sweet. My teacher ordered a cappuccino, which he got with dairy. You can get them with almond milk to be completely dairy free.

“It’s been great. It’s been very busy,” says Laurel. “We sold out of stuff on Day 1 and Day 2. And we had a line out the door most of the day.”

Ryan Zepeda is a sophomore taking Lighthouse Christian Academy's journalism elective