Yum-Yum’s Gluten Free Bakery and Café sits on West Manlius Street in East Syracuse. According to its website, it is dedicated to “find(ing) quality, gluten free food.” It even takes special orders for take-out and for catering.

That’s great and all, but some readers may be rolling their eyes. “What do I care about some gluten-free bakery? What even is gluten and why can’t people just eat it and stop complaining about it?”

Gluten is a type of protein found in wheat, barley and rye, and similar to yeast, it helps baked products rise. Gluten is naturally found in the biological composition of these three grains.

Celiac disease is the main gluten-related condition and affects about one in 100 people. The auto-immune disease is related to genetics and ingestion of gluten damages the small intestine, making it harder to soak in nutrients from food.

However, many people report symptoms associated with Celiac disease, yet still test negative for Celiac. This is not uncommon, and gluten sensitivity can only be treated by following a gluten-free diet. The same goes for Celiac itself.

It’s so important to completely eliminate gluten from a Celiac’s diet because even tiny traces of gluten can upset the small intestine. It is not uncommon for traces of gluten to contaminate oats, a naturally gluten-free grain.

Erin and Mark Fallico started Yum-Yum’s in 2011 in Syracuse and instead of using wheat flour, Yum-Yum’s uses millet, sorghum, tapioca and rice when baking desserts or kneading pizza dough.

The breakfast menu runs all day and features all the fan favorites: pancakes, waffles, bagels, hashbrowns and bacon. It also serves breakfast sandwiches and wraps. All of the items are reasonably priced and most can be made dairy-free.

The lunch and dinner menus are slightly more extensive and include basic appetizers, as well as soups, salads and entrees, and a variety of sandwiches, paninis and wraps.

Its brick-oven pizza comes in several varieties including Hawaiian, Greek, meatlover’s and more. It offers a build-your-own, with over 10 different toppings to choose from.

Kelli Mosher | Staff Photographer

The bakery menu is something else entirely.

There are 40 different types of cupcakes, including weird flavors like eggnog and spiced rum, green tea and almond, sweet potato and margarita. There are also cookies, pies, breads and other pastries.

The storefront itself is nondescript, a brick building with maybe one window. However, walking inside was a breath of fresh air. It looked like a Pinterest board. Decked in bright baby pastels and mismatched café tables and chairs, going inside Yum-Yum’s was like teleporting to a completely different location.

I ordered a Hawaiian pizza and a chocolate bomb cupcake to-go. The pizza dough was fantastic, chewy like regular dough and certainly better than average. Better yet, it didn’t taste gluten-free at all. They applied a generous amount of Italian seasoning, the cheese was soft and stringy and the sauce was tangy.

As someone who’s not a huge fan of Hawaiian pizza, I actually really enjoyed the pineapple. It was sweet, but not sickly sweet like canned pineapples. If I had to guess, I would say that Yum-Yum’s uses fresh pineapple. The ham was also nicely cooked.

For dessert, I enjoyed the chocolate bomb cupcake. It was perfectly sized, not too small and not too big. However, it was served with only a chocolate drizzle and no frosting, perhaps a byproduct of being dairy free. The cake itself was a little dry, but I liked it anyway. The dryness might also be due to the fact that I ordered close to closing time, and it had been sitting out all day. The inside of the cupcake was filled with a delightful cream cheese, and immediately erased my disappointment at the dry cake.

Yum-Yum’s has recently announced that it will now ship orders across the country, perfect for a lazy college student looking to try some really good pizza.

The online store, naturally, can’t be as extensive as their restaurant menu, but Yum-Yum’s sells most of the basics to cover a broader range of needs. It will ship bagels, pizza shells, dinner rolls, sandwich wraps, bread, muffins, pies, cookies and cupcakes. All the carb essentials.

Published on March 20, 2016 at 9:26 pm

Contact: cmrussel@syr.edu | @caseymrussell