The Pastry Rebel

How one Lincoln baker turned a food allergy into a sweet Nebraska revolution

 The scent of sugar and spice drifts down the sidewalk at 48th and Prescott in Lincoln, drawing passersby into a pink-walled corner bakery where the pastry case gleams like a jewelry display. This is Goldenrod Pastries, a gluten-free, dairy-free vegan bakery with a national following and Nebraska roots baked deep. 

Owner Angela Garbacz opened the College View shop in 2015 with one clear direction for her contractors: Make it cute. 

“This is a strategic business decision,” she told them. They laughed. She didn’t. 

It worked. The cheerful décor draws people in but it’s the food that keeps them coming back. 

Regulars swear by the dense banana bread that practically falls apart under its own weight. Each winter, fans count down to the holiday cookie box, a merry assortment of limited-edition treats. And when it’s time to celebrate, the confetti cake with its cloud of vanilla buttercream is the go-to dessert. 

But the true star? The crumble bun, a soft pastry with fillings that change with the season: cranberry in fall, lemon in spring, always topped with coconut-oil crumble and vanilla glaze. 

Garbacz started baking at 5, flipping through cookbooks and racing from Food Network shows to her family’s kitchen to try whatever Emeril Lagasse just yelled “Bam!” about. Her path led from grocery-store bakeries in Lincoln to food science classes at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln then to culinary school in New York City. 

That’s where she hit a wall of skepticism. 

“What makes you think somebody from Nebraska can stand up in front of 20 New Yorkers and be successful?” a shop owner asked. 

The comment stuck. “It became a mission to put Nebraska on the map for something different,” Garbacz said. “To show that creativity lives here too.” 

Around that time she discovered her own dairy allergy and began re-engineering recipes with plant-based ingredients. What started as kitchen experiments became a blog, Goldenrod Pastries, launched in 2014 to help others bake without compromise. 

Requests poured in: birthday cakes for lactose-intolerant kids, donuts for adults who hadn’t had one in decades. By year’s end she’d leased a storefront, quit her marketing job and by May 2015 opened her new bakery. 

Ten years later, Goldenrod Pastries’ team of a dozen keeps the ovens humming. The shop earned national attention but Garbacz said staying rooted in Lincoln mattered most. “Nebraska isn’t just a flyover state,” she said. “People here were hungry for something new.” 

Some of her best sellers trace back to her Polish heritage. The beloved peach coffee cake, the bakery’s only other year-round staple, was a dairy-free spin on her grandmother’s recipe. More kuchen than coffee cake, it’s layers of dough, canned peaches and crumble. Her Baba baked it only for special occasions. 

Other pastries come from her team’s creativity. On Sundays, bakers head to the nearby farmer’s market for whatever’s fresh – zucchini, berries, herbs – then turn their haul into small-batch experiments. “That’s what I loved about this neighborhood,” Garbacz said. “It’s full of people who show up for small businesses.” 

Garbacz took pride in serving those often overlooked by traditional bakeries – people with allergies, dietary limits or simply a desire to eat with care. 

“I didn’t want to make food that was just good for gluten-free,” she said. “I wanted to make food that was just plain good, the kind that makes people happy."

Originally published in the November/December 2025 issue of Nebraska Life Magazine.