Meet the Ilkley mum taking on the big boys with her homemade baking recipes

Louise Gross, 52, had been creating low-carb baking recipes for years, before the early-pandemic baking craze gave her a cunning plan.

The Addingham resident started Go Low Baking in her own kitchen back in May 2020, creating bake-at-home mixes for everything from brownies and bread to cookies and crackers.

The business has since gone from strength-to-strength, with Go-low recently being named among the top food and drink producers globally, picking up Great Taste Awards for its seedy crackers and easy wraps.

Former recruitment business owner Louise had started baking in her spare time to help accommodate the dietary needs of herself and her family.

"I had three children in three years,” she said. “So I wanted to lose the baby weight, and a family member told me about the keto diet.

"I lost the baby weight, but I also found I had a clearer head and had more energy.

“Years later, we found my middle daughter is also gluten intolerant, and a low-carb diet tends to be gluten-free.

"So I would play around with recipes for brownies and wraps, and things like that.”

Keto, or ketogenic, diets are based around getting more of your calories from fats and proteins while cutting out most carbohydrates, such as white bread and sugar.

In the early days of the pandemic, Louise would find the popularity of keto, as well as the lockdown baking craze created the perfect conditions for her new business.

"Lockdown was an idea time to start,” she said. "Everyone was baking, but also concerned about their health.

”We got off to a really good start – initially we were selling on Amazon, but now we have a wholesaler and work with stockists."

So how quickly did it take off?

"It was immediately, really,” she said. “The brownie mixes were definitely the most popular product, and the seeded crackers.

“When you’re eating low carb, it’s hard to find products that are really crunchy, because sugar often helps to give things a crunch.

"So the fact that the crackers and cookies we make are crunchy made them really popular.”

While her mixes are yet to find their way onto supermarket shelves, Louise said the company was currently “in talks” with a large retailer.

"We have had interest from the bigger players,” she added. “But we are also interested in speaking to the small health food chains, so we are on the brink of being listed in some of those.

“I don’t want to run before I can walk. It would be amazing to get into Planet Organic or Selfridges, then maybe the supermarkets in the medium term, but it would depend on how that would work from a business point of view.”

But Louise hasn’t forgotten where she started, and still tests her products on her most discerning critics.

“If I’m creating a recipe, I try it out on my children first,” she said. “If they like it, I know I’ve hit the right tastes for most people.

"If they don’t like it, they won’t hold back!”