Quick Take
Husband-and-wife bakers Joshua Bradley and Amanda Frazier, founders of Switch Bakery, are opening their first brick-and-mortar café in downtown Santa Cruz before the end of the year, expanding beyond their popular farmers market stalls. Known for their gluten-free and autoimmune protocol-friendly baked goods, the new location will feature sandwiches, salads, fine pastries and breads — all made with carefully sourced, anti-inflammatory ingredients.
When perusing Switch Bakery’s spread of baked treats at the Westside Santa Cruz farmers market, the words “autoimmune-friendly” do not spring to mind. There are wide chocolate chip cookies, chewy and rich with generous pools of chocolate, tall, tender slices of cake decorated with 2 inches of buttercream frosting and roasted strawberries, dimpled loaves of focaccia sprinkled with fresh herbs, and long, crusty baguettes.
Not only is everything gluten-free, all of the ingredients are carefully vetted by bakers Joshua Bradley and Amanda Frazier for chemicals and allergens that can cause inflammation, particularly for people with autoimmune diseases like celiac and Crohn’s disease. Everything is celiac-safe and free of gluten, soy and corn.
Over the past five years, their dedication to sourcing and recipe development earned the husband-and-wife team fans who seek out their products at three farmers market stalls in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties or three retail locations on the Central Coast. Switch Bakery also has a bread club subscription service with 50 members.
Bradley and Frazier decided that it’s time for their bakery to have some walls. Before the end of the year, Switch Bakery aims to open its first brick-and-mortar location in downtown Santa Cruz, in the former Café Limelight location on Cedar Street. They plan to open the café before the holiday season, and offer savory treats like sandwiches and salads, more complicated desserts like pies and fine pastries, as well as their familiar lineup of breads and cookies.
In addition to being gluten-free, and made without corn or soy, organic ingredients like butter and chocolate are inspected for harmful conditioners and preservatives. All of the organic produce is purchased from fellow market vendors. To sweeten their desserts, Bradley and Frazier use organic evaporated cane sugar, maple syrup, coconut sugar, a homemade sugar-free blend made of monk fruit extract, local honey from the farmers market or molasses.
“One of our taglines is ‘We love your guts,’” said Bradley, who developed Crohn’s disease 20 years ago. “It expresses that we’re thinking about gut health as well as being gluten-free.”
Before inflammatory illness changed his eating habits forever, he was a self-described “obsessive” cook, and hosted a fine-dining pop-up series on the East Coast. But the onset of his sudden and severe digestive symptoms perplexed his doctors and caused Bradley to lose 90 pounds in three months. His body was so inflamed that the lab that processed his tests sent a representative to his doctor’s office to make sure he was a real person.
Eating normally became impossible because so many foods, from beef and eggs to wheat, tomatoes and potatoes could cause dangerous side effects. Two years after his health issues began, he and Frazier moved their family from Ashland, Oregon, to Santa Cruz so he could receive treatments and work with some of the nation’s best gastrointestinal doctors and surgeons at the Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto.
Many of the recipes that Switch Bakery uses were developed by Bradley and Frazier while trying to create bread products that Bradley could eat. His illness necessitated that they make all of their family’s food at home, and there wasn’t a bread solution, said Frazier. They missed pizza, baguettes, naan and sandwich bread, and most of the gluten-free products at bakeries and grocery stores contained other ingredients that could potentially cause a range of physical issues for Bradley.
They saw an opportunity to turn their recipes into a business. The couple founded Not Pie Cakery, a bakery company that shipped homemade gluten-free and vegan celebration cakes and cupcakes nationwide. But they craved savory treats, and in 2021, decided it was time to close. In 2022, Frazier and Bradley founded Switch Bakery, with an expanded menu of breads as well as keto-friendly and sugar-free desserts. That same year, Bradley and his clinical nutritionist, Kia Sanford, released a cookbook, “The Crohn’s Disease AIP Cookbook: Recipes to Reduce Inflammation and Eliminate Food Triggers on the Autoimmune Protocol,” to help others manage their own auto-immune journeys.
Home cooking was getting easier, but eating at restaurants was still extremely difficult and isolating, Bradley and Frazier said. “As a family with mixed nutritional needs, going out to eat was a struggle, and getting fun things in your kitchen is challenging when the list of ingredients means you’re always avoiding something,” said Frazier. “At Switch Bakery, we wanted to create something that everyone could eat together.”
The majority of their sales are through their three farmers market stalls, at the Wednesday and Saturday farmers markets in Santa Cruz and the Thursday market in Carmel-by-the-Sea. While growing their business and community through the markets has been a joy, they said, they’re looking forward to having a permanent storefront for customers to visit, regardless of dietary restrictions.
They don’t plan on making any major changes to the former Café Limelight, which closed in 2021, aside from giving the bistro’s interior a decorative update for a “fresh vibe,” they said. Because they’re aiming to avoid any buildouts, Bradley and Frazier hope to open before the holiday season. The menu will include flatbread pizzas, salads, sandwiches, fine pastries like eclairs and cream puffs, baked treats like pies, cookies and tea cake, as well as a range of breads, such as baguettes, focaccia and sandwich bread. In the evening, the café will transform into a dessert lounge with alcohol-free cocktails.
Bradley and Frazier are exploring ways to limit paper waste by using thrifted coffee mugs or stainless steel cups instead of to-go cups, and returnable glass takeout containers.
The new venture won’t affect their farmers market schedule, but the couple is, in their words, “pumped,” to create a home base for their health-conscious customers. Said Bradley: “We’re excited to do something more for the community, and it represents a symbol of health and stability that I haven’t felt in a long time.”
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FOR THE RECORD: A previous version of this story said that Switch Bakery’s products follow the Autoimmune Protocol Diet. Its products are gluten-free, corn-free and soy-free, and safe for those with celiac disease.
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