It’s my second to last day in Seattle and I realize I have to choose between two of my most lusted-after vegan spots. My bike is parked on Capital Hill where I’m staying at my friend Eli’s place, one of the cleanest vegan punk houses you’ll find in Seattle. It’s Saturday and all my local friends are busy teaching youth bike clinics in the Central District, working at shops in the Pike Place Market, and making coffee on Capitol Hill. This leaves me with a free day to retrace my own roots of riding around the summertime city whose hills and bike paths I once knew as well as the freckles patterned on my arms and legs.I end up choosing the gluten-free pastries and lunch at the Flying Apron Bakery’s new café location in Fremont, a cozy neighborhood north of downtown, over the “veganized” conventional brunch at the Squid and Ink in the Georgetown neighborhood of south Seattle. Georgetown does have its post-industrial charm, teeming with hang out spots for workers, struggling artists and grungy hipsters, and the thought of a “cheese omelet,” biscuits and gravy or nutty waffles certainly has a pull. But it is doesn’t take long for me to know I’m going to turn north, towards delicate rice flour tea cookies, cardamom chai cupcakes and chocolate-covered peanut butter energy balls. The ride will take me snaking down forested Interlaken Boulevard, over boat-dappled Lake Union and along the blackberry bush-lined Burke-Gilman trail, returning me not only to some of the favored tastes of my Seattle days, but along some of the city’s most idyllic paths, as well.
“Bucking the System”—the birth of an alternative bakery
The Flying Apron Bakery is aptly situated half a block up a long hill at the onset of Fremont Avenue. It is within view of the clustered shops and restaurants that form the triangle of downtown Fremont and the drawbridge arching over the ship canal which extends from Lake Union—close enough to capture foot traffic, but just far enough out of the hubbub to maintain its own circle of calm. Bins of used records and books spill out of the adjoining storefront, and oriental carpets drape the sidewalk two shops down. Outside of the café, red wire tables and padded chairs scatter the sidewalk, unfortunately not protected by any shade, and smells of organic grains and fruit sweeteners beckon you in.
I am momentarily dazed by the colorful array of treats piled high and coming fresh off the racks, and carefully make my choices. First, I enjoy my lunch of an individual pizza with a rice flour crust topped with organic veggies and marinara, along with a raw kale and cabbage salad sprinkled with pumpkin seeds—all organic for $7.95 plus tip. Dessert is harder. I decide to go all out and order a small planet-sized slice of the raspberry short cake to have with a cup of black tea with soy milk and agave nectar (available at the condiment bar). The cake is three luxurious layers of agave cake (made from garbanzo bean and rice flour), fluffy vanilla frosting, and fresh raspberries—and proves to be impossible to stand up alone on a pastry plate.
I had an advantage in choosing when faced with the tantalizing display of dozens of sweet pastries and savory breads; two years ago I worked in a downtown Seattle coffee shop that housed the Flying Apron wholesale kitchen and exclusively sold their healthy delights. Back in 2006, the bakery was still a split enterprise, maintaining its tiny original to-go window location and having, two years earlier, branched out to acquire the wholesale kitchen in the underbelly of the Elliott Bay Book Company in Pioneer Square. In 2007, nearly one year ago, Jennifer Katzinger dissolved the two locations to create her own storefront café in this choice Fremont spot.
When the Flying Apron Bakery was founded in 2002, its sunny-faced owner and founder was still Jennifer Dowd, and it was a family enterprise run together with her father, Bill Dowd. Jennifer, recently married to Joseph Katzinger, has been the business’ sole owner since 2004. Jennifer and Joseph own a house in Shoreline where they live with their seven-year-old pitbull/lab mix, Neve. Jennifer is tall and slender with dark blonde hair and a ready smile; she is quick to give you a hug and though a little scattered when it comes to names, remembers each face she sees.
“I’ve been baking my whole life,” says Jennifer, “and have been fascinated with creating new recipes.” So she and Dad decided to start a small, “low-risk” bakery in a building shared with the raw/vegan Chaco Canyon Café in Seattle’s University District. “I was most excited about egg and dairy-free baking, but also about whole grains,” Jen explains, saying she had trouble finding the kind of sweets she wanted to eat in Seattle. As the bakery got rolling out of its subterranean service window and farmer’s market booths, she and Bill soon learned that many Seattlites had a shared interest in cruelty-free, wholesome baked goods.
Through her products and business, Jennifer strives to create as minimal an impact on both animals and the environment as possible. This is clear with the company’s other founding credos: all organic ingredients, no refined sugar, and wheat-free. No refined sugars or flours provide the assurance that there is no bone char behind the purifying of your tasty treat. The bakery also strictly uses biodegradable cellophane packaging for to-go orders. What more could we ask for? How about gluten-free oats? With the new space, Jennifer made another impressive transition from all wheat-free and mostly gluten-free to100% gluten-free, a seemingly minor though life-affecting change for those living with Celiac Disease and other gluten allergies.
A recent study conducted by Dr. Alessio Fasano of the University of Maryland School of Medicine found that 1 in 133 Americans, over 2 million people, are living with Celiac Disease, an serious allergy to gluten that does damage to the small intestine. Nancy Kloberdanz of the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America (GIG), formed in 1974, reports that in her ten years with the organization, “the number of patients and those servicing the needs of people with gluten allergies has grown tremendously.” Kloberdanz also cites new research that individuals with the developmental disorders ADD, ADHD and Autism thrive on diets free of gluten and casein (a protein found in all milk products). Back in 2002 Jennifer was just working with dense and crumbly quinoa and chickpea flours as a way of standing out from the crowd.
“I started out designing wheat-free recipes as a form of creativity. I was also excited about bucking the system by trying out alternative grains,” Jen explains. “Over time, I learned the difference from customers between gluten-free and wheat-free, and realized it would be safer if we went all the way.” So she stopped using spelt and barley and switched to gluten-free oats. According to foodallergysolutions.com, oats do not contain gluten, but often trigger sensitivities to it, as they have traditionally been processed on equipment that also processes wheat, barley and rye. Flying Apron now only sources oats that ensure no cross-contamination.
When the Flying Apron was back in Pioneer Square, there was an ample contingent of out-of-town customers, their eyes fixing onto the stacks of Espresso Brownies, Pecan Tarts and Carrot Muffins. Many of them, coming from Southern California or Alaska, never thought they would be able to eat a muffin or scone again, and went home with boxes of pastries to freeze and enjoy until their next visit. One little girl came in with her parents and requested a ginger cookie. “I’m sorry honey,” her dad said tenderly, assuming they had wandered into a conventional bakery, “you can’t eat anything here.” He explained to me that she was highly allergic to both wheat and dairy and they were scarcely able to find a bakery that omitted both. I nearly busted out of my skin with excitement when I turned to the child and said, “Guess what, sweetie—you can eat ANYthing in this case!” It took several minutes of convincing the cautious mom and dad that this was actually true, and in the end they bought their glowing daughter two or three pastries for the road.
An eclectic clientèle
As I sat for several hours in the new Flying Apron location on a sun-dappled Saturday afternoon, there seemed to be a steady stream of customers lining up along the display of layer cakes, scones, cookies, and breads. They would walk away with crisp white boxes of treats, or sit down to a latte with a light lunch or snack. The make-up of the crowd was eclectic—tanned, pastel-wearing middle-aged women, punks with long beards and faded rock t-shirts, young couples with matching bike gloves, fit individuals in snug workout clothes, older women in eccentric dress, single dads in a rush, and heavily-accented groups of visitors.
I began to wonder what common thread it was that brought all these people into the shop, and so I turned to the small crowd of half a dozen customers scattered at the shared antique wooden tables inside the café to find out. Surprisingly few were vegan—Jennifer estimates only about twenty percent of her customers are—but at the end of the day, the more people who choose the Flying Apron over conventional bakeries, the less money that goes into the oppression of animals.
Rob and Fehrat, two diehard regulars who come from the downtown Belltown neighborhood to visit the café. They have three pastries between them, and Fehrat is munching on a saucer-sized marionberry Tea Cookie as he explains, “I come here because I am looking for something that is healthy but still tastes good, and sometimes you can’t combine the two.” The two men in their late twenties or early thirties say they eat all types of food—Fehrat calls himself a “carnivore”—and come to the Flying Apron not because it is vegan but because the staff is friendly and the food is wholesome.
Nearby sit Beth and her boyfriend Dan, two twenty-somethings who look to have wiped their plates clean of a savory lunch and are sipping from hour-glass shaped water glasses. Beth is a vegetarian living in Fremont who is always looking for healthy vegetarian and vegan options. Her brother turned her on to this place and she has since become addicted to the chocolate chip cookie. Dan admits that he is not crazy about the pastries, preferring traditional fluffy baked goods, but he won’t turn down a Cinnamon Pecan Bun.
Seated at a small table and surrounded by reading material and an ample lunch is Lleyn, an extremely petite woman in her sixties who reports excitedly that one month ago she became a vegan. Lleyn, a longtime local animal rights activist, is a clairvoyant and animal communicator living in Capitol Hill and working at Soul Food Books in Redmond. She helped pass the 1994 Pasado Law in Washington State, which considers anyone with the intent to harm animals a felon, and switched to an animal-free diet when she learned about the interconnectedness of the meat and dairy industries. Lleyn is visiting the Flying Apron for the first time, having found it on a list of local vegan and vegetarian resources published by Sidecar for Pigs Peace, a shop in the University District whose proceeds directly fund a Washington State pig sanctuary. Lleyn is dining on a calzone-style curried vegetable pocket, quinoa salad and a bottled protein shake. She has never tried quinoa before, and everything about her experience delights her.
Fremont welcomes an organic vegan business
How are Jennifer and the Flying Apron crew settling into the new Fremont location? Well, it certainly isn’t anything all too new, as their founding shop was in the neighboring University District and their products have long been sold at the Fremont Saturday market and the nearby massive organic grocery, PCC. Since the widely-mourned closing of Touchstone Bakery in 2006, a mostly vegan bakery and workers’ cooperative once situated just a few blocks from the new Flying Apron storefront, the community has been ready for another vegan, organic café to move to town.
“We feel really welcome and appreciated in Fremont,” Jennifer says, agreeing that the neighborhood is certainly a veg-friendly one. “This location has attracted people avoiding certain foods for whatever reason—a vegan choice, an allergy choice—as well as many seeking us out not for those reasons, but just stopping in for the atmosphere and the organic food.” Many customers are neighborhood locals who have wandered in and keep coming back.
With a strong crew and new manager, the bakery is continuing to expand and take on more than Jennifer could have imagined, she says. The specialty cake orders are still their strongest point, but the new savory lunch menu has been a hit and is only growing. Jennifer is thinking of introducing a Friday night tapas menu, and perhaps a monthly dinner. But the business isn’t too good for its roots; you can still find them at six local farmer’s markets, and see Jen cashiering behind the counter between loads of dishes and batches of dark chocolate muffins.
Jennifer plans on taking a step back from the business in the coming year, as she and her husband, Joseph, just found out they are expecting their first child. As for the longevity of the Katzinger family and their benchmark business in the Seattle area, says Jen, who has lived in here since age five, ”I plan on sticking around. This landscape is in my blood.”
