Tonda Burgin grew up in the shadow of Mount Hood. One of her favorite things to do in high school was to grab her skis and jump on the bus with her friends and head up to the mountain for the day. Now she’d like to to catch the attention of the thousands of drivers who zip by on their way to enjoying the mountain with an offering of gluten-free snacks that don’t taste like, well, gluten-free snacks.

Burgin and her business partner, Christopher Royce, run Liberated Baking, a gluten-free establishment next door to Hillcrest Ski and Sports that specializes in cinnamon rolls, banana muffins and other baked goodies that manage to eliminate wheat without tasting like dirt. In my humble opinion, they are delicious and well worth sampling, especially the cinnamon rolls.

Burgin was a young mom working at Lillian’s Natural Market in Gresham when her daughter Jenna was diagnosed with a wheat allergy. “I realized I’d been poisoning her with all of those homemade sandwiches I was giving her, trying to be a good mom,” she says

That realization forced Burgin to subject her family’s taste buds to the typical pre-made gluten-free foods from the grocery story. “A lot of that stuff ended up in the garbage,” she recalls.

One day at work in the grocery store, Burgin started thinking out loud about opening a gluten-free bakery in Gresham. A customer said she would invest, and her boss said she would buy product. Burgin’s husband heard the story that evening and said: “An investor and a buyer in the same day: I think the universe is trying to tell you something.”

Burgin invested her savings built up from a pre-recession stint with U.S. Bank, borrowed some money from her husband, and recruited her co-worker Christopher Royce, an Air Force vet willing to get up at 4:30 am to get the business rolling. They found a good location in a former Quizno’s sub shop and got to work scrubbing away wheat residue and removing Qs. After two years of planning and test-baking for a brutally honest set of hungry children (“Mom, that looks like cat puke!”), they opened the store in February 2013.

They stocked up on on arrowroot starch, hired some pastry chefs and started cranking out the goodies.

“We jumped off the cliff,” says Burgin. “It was a leap of faith.”

But they knew they had customers waiting for them, because as Burgin says, “For the celiacs of Gresham, there are only two places that are safe to eat: at home or here. We’ve had people come in crying, they’re so appreciative.”

“It’s a place where they can enjoy a treat and not worry about getting sick,” adds Royce. “That means a lot.”

Royce starts his work days at 4:30 am and makes a fresh soup from scratch each day. Liberated Baking also offers tasty sandwiches to go, and sells a variety of pre-packaged take-home items carefully selected for being both gluten free and tasty.

Between word-of-mouth and Facebook, word has spread about Liberated Baking’s banana bread and birthday cakes. Now Burgin and Royce are hoping to reach the heading-to-the-mountain crowd. If you’re ever passing by and you need a treat to fuel up for a day of shredding, swing by and check it out. It’s worth finding out for yourself just how good gluten-free pastries and breads can taste.

One warning, though, as of this writing, Liberated Baking is not open on Sundays. Perhaps that will change as the business grows and the mountain crowd begins to sample those cinnamon rolls.

Last modified: June 17, 2013