EAT WELL
★ THE SHORTCUT
Housekeeping first: this one is for my Charlotte people. These are three small local bakeries I want more of you to know about, and nothing here is affiliate, I make exactly $0 on this one, just want to spread the love. If you’re not in Charlotte, keep reading anyway, because two of these ship and I’ll tell you how I found all three so you can go find yours. This “method” works for non-gluten-free bakeries too, but those are MUCH easier to find!
The short hit
Want a gluten-free bakery in Charlotte that’s actually GOOD? These three are the ones I order from regularly. All three are dedicated gluten-free kitchens (meaning no gluten in the building at all, not “we can accommodate that”), and all three bake with real and mostly organic ingredients, which at this point matters to me more than the gluten-free part does. My husband does NOT eat gluten-free but he happily devours everything from here because you legit can’t tell. None of them is a shop you can wander into on a Tuesday afternoon though. You need to pre-order (mostly). Here’s how I’d actually decide which to try:
Bread or a special event cake
Plan ahead, they need up to seven business days.
Bagels, muffins, cinnamon rolls, or anything you need SOON
Cynthia’s turnaround is days, not weeks.
A splurge box of gourmet pastries, or you want to actually walk into a place
Walk-ins welcome weekend mornings.
Only ordering from one to start? Make it Indulge Yourself. Best prices of the three, fastest turnaround, and Cynthia will say yes to just about anything you ask her.
My rec? Order from Indulge first, then get on Eleven Eleven’s calendar for whatever your next birthday or holiday is, because her cakes are incredible. If you want to try a few different things before committing, walk into a pop-up at The Accidental Baker.
The picks and details
Indulge Yourself Bakery, pickup in Dilworth. My top pick and the one I order from most now. Cynthia converted her garage into a commercial grade kitchen and has a roll up garage door that converts it into a storefront. It’s adorable. Organic flours, grass-fed butter, organic pasture-raised eggs – high quality REAL ingredients I would use if I were baking myself. Her prices feel like a regular bakery rather than a place with a huge gluten-free markup. She has no minimum order size and she’ll flex on timing when she can. I’ve ordered for next day turnaround without issue. Her breads are all dairy free and vegan. My picks: the bagels, the muffins (pumpkin and blueberry are wonderful!), the cinnamon rolls (made fresh and iced, not take-and-bake).
Eleven Eleven Bakery, delivery or pickup in Matthews. Sussa (the owner) is who I go to for artisan bread and celebration cakes. Everything is organic and non-GMO, they use maple sugar for some of the sweetening. They do custom cakes too. They deliver in Charlotte, they’re often at the farmers markets, and a handful of local shops carry their bread now as well. Everything is made to order which means it can take up to seven business days (though often faster), so plan ahead. My picks: the artisan bread, the strawberry cake, the lemon cupcakes.
The Accidental Baker, delivery or pickup in Oakhurst. The splurge. You can request delivery, or pre-order and pick up, or walk in weekend mornings until he sells out (people line up before he opens so you’ve got to go early!). Organic ingredients, grass-fed butter, a $75 online minimum, and order windows that can run up to a few weeks out when he’s full. My picks: the bagels, the cornetti (like croissants), the cheese danish, any specialty pastries he’s offering that week.
The story
My kids have been gluten-free since the day they were born, which means I have tried basically every gluten-free option in this city. Every bakery, every grocery store brand, every “oh we have a gluten-free option” at a restaurant. Not because I’m thorough, but because when it’s the only way your family eats, you just end up trying all of it eventually.
A lot has changed in the gluten-free world in the past 10 years. Finding gluten-free is usually easy now. A decade ago there was almost nothing on the shelf. Now there’s a whole aisle of it, which sounds like great news and sometimes is. But so much of it leans on chemicals and gums and fillers to fake the texture of real bread. Gluten-free does not automatically mean better for you. A lot of the time it just means different junk.
So what I’m actually shopping for now isn’t just gluten-free. It’s ingredients. Real butter, real eggs, organic flour, and a person who cares what goes in the bowl. THAT is why I like all three of these, and it’s the reason I’ll drive across town for any of them. If one of them were gluten-free but full of junk (there are indeed lots of these options out there), it wouldn’t be on this list.
Let me back up on the safety part though, because it changes what I’m able to tell you.
I’m gluten-free with a sensitivity. I’m not celiac, and I don’t react to cross-contamination, so I can eat somewhere that also bakes with wheat and be totally fine. My brother-in-law can’t. He has celiac, and when he’s celebrating with us, “oh we can accommodate that” is not good enough, because the flour is in the AIR. It’s on the surfaces, it’s in the mixers, it’s floating around the whole kitchen. All three of these are dedicated gluten-free kitchens with no gluten in the building at all, which is what makes them safe for him and not just convenient for me.
I also think having a dedicated gluten-free place is a contributing factor to why the products are better. When gluten-free is the entire business and not a side option, somebody has actually had to work at it. Compare that to somewhere like Sunflour, which has five locations here and bakes its gluten-free from scratch every morning. They say right on their own website that their kitchens handle gluten and they want you to have the full picture before you order, which is more honest than most places bother to be, and I give them real credit for that. I’ve had their cakes and cupcakes a couple times though, and I just don’t love them. I’ve had them taste chalky, I’ve had them be a bit dry. It’s just not something I’m going to make a special trip for. Plus, I could never hand it to my brother-in-law.
For a long stretch we were dairy-free on top of gluten-free, and that was HARD. It was not just that the taste was subpar (it was in most cases) but it also meant I had a hard time even finding options at all. So for years, I just had to make everything myself. And while I loved baking in my pre-kids life, I do not have the capacity to really do it very often anymore. (Though my 8 year old has taken a liking to it and has become our new in-house pastry chef so maybe all of these bakeries will be losing my business soon lol). But it was never about the baking for me, it was about controlling what ingredients went into the finished product. These days, like I said, I’m too busy for baking most days, and having someone else do it to my standard, with real transparency in ingredients, has genuinely made me giddy at times.
How I found all three
Whenever I’ve referred to these people in the past I get asked this, but the answer is boring: I asked.
I posted in local mom groups and Charlotte groups on Facebook, “does anyone know a good gluten-free bakery,” and people answered. And I started trying different options on the list. Most cities also have a local gluten-free or celiac group on Facebook, and searching in there is where the REAL intel lives, because those are people who have already tried everything and have opinions about it. When I travel outside of Charlotte I usually do a search in Yelp for “gluten free bakery” and see what comes up and give it a whirl. I’ve got a go-to place now where I visit my family in South Jersey (where I pick up all the things for the holidays!), and one near our beach house close to Charleston when we are celebrating there. Though often when we are driving to the beach I’ll place an order here in Charlotte and bring the goods with me!
That’s the method. That’s it. Lol. It’s nothing life changing, but it works wherever you are. It may take trying a few before you find one that suits your needs and tastes, but once you’ve got it narrowed down, it feels good to support local!
Eleven Eleven, the first one I found
Sussa’s signature item is an artisan bread loaf. It is closest to a sourdough but it’s not actually sourdough. It was actually one of the first gluten-free breads I’d ever had that tasted like actual bread. It was also the first one I could eat untoasted (IYKYK). Though I do toast it anyway after day one, but that’s preference now, not because it HAS to be toasted like other GF bread. It makes a real sandwich, which sounds like a low bar but if you eat GF it absolutely is not.
Everything she makes is organic or non-GMO and they use maple sugar for some of the sweetening. It’s also all dairy, soy and corn free. The flours are almond, coconut and arrowroot though, so fair warning, this is not the one for a nut allergy.
The cakes and cupcakes are beautiful and they’ll do custom designs too. My absolute favorite thing they make is the strawberry cake. I order it every single year for my birthday. So, so good. The lemon and chocolate cupcakes are great too, honestly all of them are. You can truly taste the quality of the ingredients.
The kitchen is in Matthews but it’s not a walk in storefront. So it’s delivery, pickup at a prescheduled pickup time in Matthews, or grab bread one of their retail partners or farmers market. Mecklenburg County Market carries their bread, and so does Bradford Market in Huntersville, Southern Olive in Fort Mill, Charlotte Vitamins and Berrybrook Farm. If you’re brand new to them, the Beginner’s Kit (from $35) is the easiest way in to taste a few different options in one go. I did want to note that I’ve noticed their prices going up over the last six to twelve months on the cakes, and my honest guess is they were underpriced before for what you’re getting.
The Accidental Baker, the one I stood in line for
Matt, the owner, left a corporate job to start this little bakery gig – hence the name. His wife is gluten-free, so he started trying to perfect gluten-free baking for her, and the hobby turned into a business. He started with a pop-up at the Metropolitan, certain days only, more of a “stand” than a bakery with all the baking happening offsite. That’s where I found him, and yes, we (well my husband, lol) stood in line for it. We had heard word about REAL gluten free bagels and we couldn’t miss out on trying when they were popping up near me! It was worth the wait for sure as GF bagels usually taste like cardboard and these did not lol. Now, he’s got a commercial space in Oakhurst. He won a 2025 Charlotte Magazine BOB Editors’ Choice award and was runner-up for Best Bagel and Best Custom Cake, which I’m mentioning because he deserves it.
What hooked us first were the bagels and the cornetti (similar to croissants). The cheese danish is a favorite around here too because I truly hadn’t had one in 10+ years since I went gluten-free. The Take-And-Bake cinnamon rolls were his original product and they’re still great - being take-and-bake means they are always warm and fresh! He also does a gluten-free sourdough and sourdough English muffins now as well.
Quality is very, very good, with the same organic or grass-fed ingredients as the others. However, it does run more expensive in my opinion. There’s also a $75 minimum on online orders, and while it’s easy to hit once you see the prices lol, that can feel prohibitive if you don’t need a lot at once. If you wait in line for the walk-in hours on the weekends there is no minimum (but you are absolutely spending your time instead.) So this one is a splurge for me, not a weekly thing, but worth it once in a while.
Side notes: A few of his pastries, the cornetti and the danishes among them, are made with gluten-free wheat starch. He labels it on every menu. It’s processed below the gluten-free threshold and most celiacs are fine with it, but if you avoid anything wheat-derived at all, here’s your heads up. Also, I’ve heard he’s rebranding to Panetteria Senza, though there’s no word on when. Mentioning it in case it’s already happened by the time you read this!
Indulge Yourself, the one I call first now
Cynthia is my most recent find and she has become the one I call first. I found her because the Accidental Baker’s window was weeks out and I needed (lol) gluten-free bagels sooner than that, so I googled “gluten-free bagels Charlotte” and there she was, in Dilworth, much closer to my house than either of the others.
Same quality bar as the other two with organic flours, grass-fed butter, organic pasture-raised eggs, purified water. All of her breads are dairy free and vegan, and cupcakes can be made dairy free for a few dollars more, which would have mattered ENORMOUSLY to me during our dairy-free stretch.
The turnaround time is a different universe from the others though. There’s no advertised rush option and I don’t want anyone showing up expecting one, but I have had things ready the next day. Next day! I’d been used to waiting three weeks somewhere else so I did not expect that as even a possibility. I try to give her more notice than that now, for her sake, and she still says yes to more than she has to.
I do have a story about hamburger buns to share which gives you some insight into Cynthia the owner. They weren’t on her menu at all but I asked if she potentially offered them (I didn’t want to meet the minimum order at Accidental Baker lol). She said she’d be happy to try making them, and proceeded to text me a couple hours later saying she tried it and had some samples for me to try. We drove right over and tried them with dinner and they were perfect. I told her as much and she told me she had tried again and made them bigger and I said ‘no, no, the exact way you made them for me the first time’. And now she makes them for me regularly to my specifications lol. They still aren’t listed on her menu but you can get them (and lots of other things!) just by asking.
She customized my order with the cinnamon rolls too. She sells them by the half dozen, I once needed eight, and I asked if she’d just make them a little smaller using her original ‘batch size’ so I could get eight instead of six for the same price. She did! And then told me she liked them so much better so was going to start offering it as 8 instead of 6. That’s the pattern with her, whether it’s something off menu or a shorter turnaround than she’d like: if she can make it work, she will. And that right there is one of my main arguments for buying from a person instead of off a shelf, even if it’s slightly more expensive.
I’ve had the sandwich bread, the baguettes, the burger buns, the bagels, the muffins (incredible), the focaccia, the pumpkin cheesecake, the cookie cake, the chocolate cake, the chocolate chip cookies, the chocolate crinkle cookies, and probably something I’m forgetting lol. Her cinnamon rolls are made fresh and iced, not take-and-bake, and they hold up for several days, which almost nothing gluten-free does. She is happy to give storage, reheating or freezing instructions if you ask as well for any of her items.
What’s really put her at the top for me though is the pricing. Muffins are $3 each and bagels come in under $3 when you buy the dozen, which is how I usually order. A dozen cupcakes is only $30. Her baguettes are full size too, where other places sell you a demi for the same $5 (which is half a loaf for the same money, so not really the same price at all). The one thing I’ve found that lands at the same price as others is the GF focaccia, and that’s a specialty item most regular bakeries don’t even make. Add in no real minimum and a turnaround measured in days instead of weeks, and you make your way to the very top of my recommendation list.
Not in Charlotte?
Ships to you:
Eleven Eleven ships some of their products nationwide, so the artisan bread can come to you even though the delivery van can’t.
GF Sweeties in South Jersey is my favorite gluten-free bakery when visiting my family there, and they ship nationwide through Etsy. Sachiko started it after her daughter had to go gluten-free at twelve and she couldn’t find a single recipe she liked. The kitchen is dedicated gluten-free and peanut free. The thing I love is that her treats are less sweet than a standard bakery, which she says comes from a Japanese influence, and I genuinely prefer the taste. They’ve got a real storefront now in Collingswood too, not far from Philadelphia.
If you’re anywhere near Charleston, Mabel Mae’s is where we go. Everything is gluten-free AND vegan, which is a hard combination to pull off, and they’ve got two locations plus the Mt. Pleasant farmers market. They don’t ship, so this one’s for when you’re down there, but worth checking out.
I do want to caution you for anything shipped - it often costs more, and there’s a reason. Expedited shipping and protective packaging are what keep gluten-free baked goods from arriving stale, and all of that gets built into the price. So if you don’t want to deal with that, keep reading.
Or just find yours:
Go find the small gluten-free (or not!) baker where you live. The one person working out of a commercial kitchen or a licensed home kitchen who has made this their livelihood. In my experience, people running a GF bakery rather than a regular one, seem to have an extra layer of “passion” within them. Plus the baked goods are almost always better than what ships to you or what you can find in a grocery store (and usually cheaper too) because you’re not paying for a box engineered to keep bread alive in transit.
Post in your local mom group or your city’s Facebook group and ask. Search the local gluten-free and celiac groups, even if it’s just a preference for you. Filter for Gluten Free on Yelp. Check out the Find Me Gluten Free app. Ask around at the farmers market. A little bit of effort may unearth a hidden gem you may have never found otherwise since most of these places don’t have brick and mortar storefronts you can drive by.
One practical note for all of these bakeries – they don’t use preservatives, so plan to slice and freeze most of what you buy the same day or next day after it arrives. It keeps a few days on the counter and months in the freezer.
Before you go
Do you have a small local baker you’d drive across town for, gluten-free or not? I’d love to hear what small local businesses you’re supporting! Post your city and what gems you’ve found so others may find them too.
Talk soon,
Kristen ❤️