The warm, toasty aroma wafting from the kitchen. The satisfying airy crunch of the first bite. Is there anything more comforting than toast? It’s a food you turn to when you’re not feeling well. It’s a simple breakfast or a quick snack. It’s an edible plate — consider the myriad of toppings and spreads that pair perfectly with toast.

If you think eating gluten-free makes for a subpar toast experience, think again. Young Kobras’ Bay Area bakery has mastered the art of making delicious, gluten-free, naturally-leavened bread with 100% plant-based ingredients. Beyond their tasty bread, Young Kobras’ values and business practices align with what we do here at Thistle. 

Young Kobras’ Beginnings

Unsatisfied with the gluten-free bread they were serving, Young Kobras founder and “Bread Magician” Geoff Kober started making gluten-free bread at a San Francisco restaurant. With just a few test runs baking bread with whole and healthy ingredients, the loaves were good enough to be sold in the cafe. He is a magician, after all. 

In 2019, after many recipe iterations and a chance meeting with co-owner and Chief Evangelist Juliana Lopker, Young Kobras was born, with a mission to create a delicious and nutritious gluten-free bread. It’s now sold in stores throughout California and ships nationwide. 

Why Young Kobras Stands Out 

Go to any natural foods store or gluten-free aisle at the supermarket, and you’ll see a lot of gluten-free bread varieties and brands. Unfortunately, the majority of these baked goods contain some combination of refined flours, gums, and animal products, and have little to no nutritional value. What’s a bread lover in need of a nutritious gluten-free option to do? Eat Young Kobras sourdough bread!

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With taste and health as their focus, Young Kobras developed their bread recipe using minimal ingredients and traditional sourdough bread techniques. Check the ingredients on their original loaf: starter (water, brown rice flour), sorghum flour, millet flour, cassava flour, psyllium husk, and sea salt. That’s it! Everything but the water and sea salt are organic, and the packaging is commercially compostable. 

Most of Young Kobras’ ingredients are sourced from the US. The brown rice, sorghum, and millet are grown in California and the buckwheat comes from South Dakota. 

Traditional Sourdough Technique: What is it?

In order for bread dough to rise, it needs leavening. Commercial yeast is the most common leavener. Virtually all bread found on supermarket shelves and all bread served at restaurants are made with commercial yeast. Even mass-produced sourdough loaves are usually made with commercial yeast instead of using a traditional sourdough technique. 

The sourdough technique is considered traditional for a reason: it’s the world’s oldest form of leavening, and thought to have been created by accident. Food historians and anthropologists think that thousands of years ago a grain porridge left to sit overnight was found fermented in the morning, with lots of fizzy bubbles present thanks to lactic acid bacteria found in grains. The world’s first sourdough starter! Bread was born!

Also known as wild yeast, sourdough starter is a small amount of additive-free fermented raw dough that imparts a delicious, tangy flavor and chewy texture to bread. It’s very simple to make sourdough starter, but it takes time. With a bit of flour and water, and several days of tending to it on the counter, your patience will result in the sourdough starter you need to make some delicious bread.

Traditional Sourdough Technique: What are the Benefits?

Whole grains contain lots of beneficial vitamins and minerals. However, the human body doesn’t always absorb them very well due to the phytic acid — also found in whole grains — that binds to minerals. Enter the magic of sourdough: the lactic acid found in wild yeast lowers a bread’s pH, which degrades the phytic acid. More vitamins and minerals for us! 

Other benefits of wild yeast baking include increased antioxidants in the dough, higher prebiotic content for nourishing your microbiome, and a lower glycemic index, which makes for better blood sugar control.

Young Kobras Today

Thanks to a growing demand for healthy, gluten-free products that deliver on taste and texture, Young Kobras’ sales have exploded and they’ve expanded both their selection and their vision. Kober and Lopker now see their work with Young Kobras as building the foundation for a sustainable, multi-product, gluten-free, whole grain food company. 

Lopker shares, “Our company makes one of the only completely gluten-free, whole-grain, organic, vegan, and naturally fermented breads. With appealing branding and use of compostable packaging we attract environmentally conscious and health-centric consumers. Our vision to use ingredients directly from farmers who use farming practices that benefit the environment will continue to help build our base of loyal customers.” 

These are the sort of values and practices we can get behind, which is why we’re so happy to include Young Kobra gluten-free sourdough bread on Thistle’s menu. Want some delicious toast? Look for our Sunflower Ricotta, Peach & Basil Toast and our Garden Veggie Cream Cheese Toast on our breakfast menu. For a delicious lunch featuring Young Kobras’ sourdough bread cubes, check out our Fig & Melon Panzanella.
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Among Young Kobras staff, some of their favorite plant-based recipes for their breads include olive toast topped with muhammara, fennel, red bell pepper, arugula, parsley, and drizzled with honey. Another is original toast topped with a creamy almond ricotta pesto, caramelized leeks, and roasted broccolini. If you want a classic with a twist, try peanut butter and jelly on seeded buckwheat. The possibilities are truly endless!

Young Kobras’ Future

The company hopes to win more foodservice and retail accounts, and they have some allergen-free products in the works. But they also have their sights set on ways to make Young Kobras more environmentally sustainable.

Within the next five years, Young Kobras hopes to produce enough bread to be able to source directly from farmers who practice regenerative farming, a set of practices designed to draw carbon out of the air and put it back into the soil. Interest in regenerative farming is the reason the company chose to develop a bread with buckwheat (despite the name, it is a gluten-free grain!). It’s a crop that’s hugely beneficial to soil health. It has a short growth cycle, adds nutrients to the soil, and helps with weed management, making it a very earth friendly crop. 

Young Kobras also hopes to up its composting game. While already committed to composting, they’re currently redesigning their packaging using Tipa products, which will make it home compostable instead of merely commercially compostable. 

Delicious and nutritious gluten-free bread is possible, thanks to innovative food crafters like Young Kobras. We’re so happy to partner with them so we can serve the Thistle family tasty breakfast toasts and crispy lunch salad toppings. Look for these various iterations of Young Kobras’ sourdough bread on Thistle’s menu.