Two years ago, 61-year-old Chuck Carver hoisted a 6-foot-long maple top baking table into the bed of his pickup truck. He drove all around Boulder, hoping to find a baker who would take it off his hands after decades of neglect. With no luck, he returned home.
Little did he know, he would soon be using the table to bake over 100 loaves of gluten-free sourdough every week and sell out at one of the nation’s only gluten-free farmer’s markets.
Chuck purchased the table in 1987 for $600 after working at a pastry bakery in Michigan. He has worked in healthcare as a surgical technician in the meantime, though home baking has remained integral to his life.
He and his wife, J.T. Carver, have traveled far and wide to experience gluten-based specialties. They drove to North Carolina to get their first grist mill, a small mill to make flour at home, attended a Bakers’ Guild Conference in Philadelphia and visited the world-famous Poilâne bakery in Paris.
“It was one of those things, when it gets in your blood, I can’t even explain it,” he says. “It never left me.”
Since discovering joint pain and irritability, Chuck gradually cut gluten out of his diet.
“It was so evident right away that it was gluten…which was devastating,” he says. “And so, you know, you can’t go out to eat readily. There’s all these parameters that get in the way of living a normal life.”
Having endured the grief of losing a diet staple like bread, he wanted to bring his baking experience to the gluten-free community. The reconnection sparked during the COVID-19 pandemic when the Carvers came across microbakeries trending globally online, a movement of cottage bakers catering to their local communities. They named their business Full Circle Bakery, an ode to Chuck’s return to his first passion and with it, the baking table.
Today, the couple bakes out of their remodeled basement in compliance with Colorado’s Cottage Food Act and operates as the only bakery exclusively selling gluten-free sourdough in Boulder.
Sourdough without wheat: A work in progress
“Sourdough” is the common name for leavened breads made from a fermented starter (a collection of water, flour, wild yeasts and lactic acid bacterias) instead of artificial yeast. It gained the name for its sour flavor comparable to yogurt-like tanginess and vinegary acidity.
Proteins in wheat-based flours like gluten are crucial to the dough’s lattice structure and elasticity. When you see a slice of sourdough, those delicate holes in the bread are carbon bubbles trapped by strong gluten webbing. The Carvers can attest that it is difficult to execute that structure without it, which is why a lot of alternative bread options are soft yeasted breads and not sourdough.
“Even our bread, it’s not as good as wheat bread. There’s no way, gluten is an amazing protein,” Chuck says. “We’ll watch these videos of these people [baking with wheat-based flour] that get this stretchy dough. Like, ‘Oh my god, I miss that so much.’”
After months of experimentation, the Carvers have found that their ideal 950 gram loaf is made with a blend of white and brown rice flour, water, salt and psyllium husk — an ingredient that can mimic gluten’s binding properties.
Still, gluten-free sourdough does not hold its shape well in traditional bannetons, an ovular proofing bowl that gives the loaves their shape before baking, and normally flattens out to a pancake. Chuck prototyped his own bread banneton to be steeper and narrower, giving his proofing loaves more height.
They follow similar baking instructions as traditional sourdough, including a steaming period halfway through to achieve that iconic crunchy exterior that sourdough is known for. The Carvers describe the flavor profile of their classic and multi-seed loaves as more neutral and nutty than sour.
Chuck and J.T. are beyond happy with their current product but acknowledge that they’re still in the “infancy” of the gluten-free sourdough movement. They hold no secrets and want to spread the word.
“We would like to seed the community because, you know, we’re too old,” J.T. says. “We’re not going to take over the world with gluten-free … But, what we can do is provide resources, advice, whatever others might need to seed their own business.”
Community before commercialization
The Carvers’ first and most consistent customers were their neighbors, many of whom are gluten-intolerant or have celiac disease. The support fueled Full Circle Bakery to become a community necessity.
Their biggest sales this year came on the second Saturday of each month at the Denver Celiacs Gluten-Free Farmer’s Market from July through October 2025. On the last day, they sold out within the first two hours.
The market was born out of shared struggles among celiacs. Worldwide, the autoimmune disease affects 1 in 100 individuals, though only 30% of cases are accurately diagnosed. Kelsey Cole, the chapter president of Denver Celiacs, says it only takes a tiny amount of gluten (think the size of a ballpoint pen) to trigger any of 200 possible symptoms that attack the small intestine.
Cole was sick of waiting in long lines for the small handful of celiac-safe booths at other farmer’s markets. She wanted to organize an alternative option for fellow gluten-intolerant Coloradans while simultaneously supporting local businesses.
“The most fulfilling part, I think, is just people coming and having such a comfortable space,” Cole says. “Seeing [the] smiles on their faces, being able to enjoy something without having the stressful toll of communicating their needs, because a lot of times people with celiac disease don’t even want that attention.”
Autoimmune diseases are not the only reason people are removing gluten from their diets. Colorado is an epicenter for physical activity and health consciousness, which has led many to think critically about what foods they consume and how it affects their bodies. J.T. joined her husband’s gluten-free journey simply out of solidarity, but believes the transformation has reduced body pain while exercising.
“I used to have this background pain, you don’t even realize how much pain you have until it’s gone,” J.T. says. “I swear, I think the gluten was attacking the joints in my ribs … You probably think I’m insane about this, but when I swim, I can breathe better.”
Accessibility is critical to gluten-free Coloradans. The market hosted over 80 vendors, so shoppers had the much-desired variety they lacked elsewhere. Sarah Kaplan Gould, a gluten-intolerant shopper, was super excited when their partner mentioned a local market offering foods without it. Other markets they had visited in the past were “hit or miss.”
“It’s … always really stressful to eat anything anywhere, and so it’s nice to be in a place where there’s so many options, and [it’s] kind of overwhelming,” Gould says.
