Tucked away at the bottom of Skinner Butte sits a charming little bakery, Elegant Elephant Baking Co.. Sharing a wall with Placido’s Pasta Shop, you’re drawn in with smells of fresh cheese and pesto, and with wafts of the bakery’s Blackberry Hand Pies, donuts, seven layer bars and freshly baked bread.

After 13 years in business, Elegant Elephant has earned its titles of “Overall Best Bite” and voted best “Presentation and Hospitality” from the Chefs’ Night Out festival in Eugene earlier this year. But these aren’t your everyday Starbucks pastries or Voodoo Doughnut: everything made at Elegant Elephant is entirely gluten free.

Twenty years ago, you would have never come across a bakery like this, let alone heard or tasted gluten free bread that didn’t remind you of cardboard.

Jessica Scarola – owner of Elegant Elephant – was diagnosed with celiac in 2005, an auto-immune disease that damages the small intestine when gluten is consumed. She was left with two options: cut out gluten completely or suffer the long term consequences.

“I knew I couldn’t have bread and pizza and drink all the beer that I had been enjoying,” Scarola said. “But I felt better almost immediately.”

After wandering around grocery stores, in a cycle of disappointment as she scanned the aisles for anything gluten-free, Scarola had had enough. In 2005, searching for gluten free options at the store was like trying to find a vegan plate at a Texas barbeque –– can be made possible but unheard of. Scarola decided to change that.

Scarola was diagnosed with celiac at 21, which was not exactly the prime age to cut out one of her favorite drinks: beer. Not understanding the severity of her disease, she saw being gluten free as “a diet, not a lifestyle.”

It was 2011 when Scarola got pregnant with her first child and like any pregnancy, her cravings were beyond her control. But the desserts she wanted? She couldn’t have.

The cinnamon rolls, cookies and cake, all the sweets she yearned for could also be the ones that put her life at risk, all because of one rule: no gluten.

“I would have dreams of going to the mall and jumping over the counter at Cinnabon
and gorging myself on cinnamon rolls,” Scarola said. “Then I would wake up in a deep sweat thinking that I had just poisoned myself.”

“I didn’t really want to start a baking company,” Scarola said. You could call it a “happy accident” as her background as a masseuse didn’t exactly set her up for her cravings of cookies or cinnamon rolls –– but she baked anyway.

“I would complain to my husband about how there were no gluten-free alternatives at any of the places I went to,” Scarola said. “He would say, ‘well you know these products you’re making are really yummy. You could try to sell them?’”

After sending samples of her gluten free scones, brownies and cookies to local coffee shops in Eugene, Scarola’s craving in the kitchen manifested into a dream she never thought possible: an actual bakery.

Despite her family’s shift to a gluten free diet three years prior to her diagnosis, Scarola didn’t want to have to give up gluten cold turkey because of the lack of alternatives.

In 2002 Scarola’s dad, Mike Shippey, was also diagnosed with celiac.

Scarola’s older sister Jennifer and mother Mary Minniti, are untouched by the autoimmune disease taking on roles of supporters yet not really knowing what celiac is or what it really meant to be gluten free.

Minniti went through a deep cleaning of all things notorious for gluten, filling up “three or four bags” of pasta and bread and giving them away to neighbors as presents.

“I read up on it and realized we had to get rid of all the things that were dangerous. I started going through the coverages and reading labels and obviously you get rid of flour and the bread, the basic stuff,” Minniti said. “I went right into action and Mike (Shippey) of course, went right into denial.”

“When Mike (Shippey) was diagnosed, there were no alternatives really. You couldn’t go and get a gluten free pizza in the market; it just didn’t exist,” Minniti said.

“It was a starvation sentence 23 years ago,” Shippey said. “The gluten free bread made a good door stop; it was so hard.”

As Scarola and her parents began to unravel this intricate puzzle of celiac – questions began to arise like, ‘what other foods contain gluten?’and ‘if foods cooked in the same pan as gluten will I be okay?’

“A lot of processed foods, soups, beans and other starches will often have gluten in them and you don’t know,” Minniti said. A whole new world was opening up – one of uncertainty, test runs and analyzing food labels.

After a successful handful of sending samples to local cafes and experimenting with different combinations of gluten free flour and substitutes, Scarola’s business officially opened a store in 2013.

Elegant Elephant continues to serve the greater Eugene community with catering events for weddings and special events and even sells its products to the University of Oregon dining halls since 2015.

Tom Driscoll, associate director of university housing and director of dining services, initially didn’t notice the disproportion of gluten-filled foods to its alternatives but after a backlash from university students, primarily students with celiac, Driscoll began to do some research.

“I was talking to a student with celiac and I was saying, ‘well you know we have gluten free bread.’ and she said, ‘have you ever eaten it? It’s really terrible,’” Driscoll said. “So I tried it and she was right. It was really terrible, but it wasn’t our fault; there just weren’t any good gluten breads available even 10 to 12 years ago.” That was until he found Elegant Elephant.

“Elegant Elephant does a really good job on a niche product –– gluten free foods,” Driscoll said.

Driscoll has been the director of dining services for 24 years now and not until the last decade has he observed an increase in gluten free products, substitutes and overall the “willingness to be tested for these autoimmune diseases.”

For 13 years now Elegant Elephant continues to serve the Eugene community and beyond, where you can find their potato bread at Global Scholars Hall or cinnamon-raisin bread from their location on 120 Shelton McMurphey Blvd where you’ll be welcomed with signs that say, “Everything You See Is Gluten Free. You’re Welcome.”

Whether you’re living a gluten free lifestyle or not, Elegant Elephant has an assortment of freshly baked goods from cookies, macarons, scones and bread –– as if they had gluten.

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