It’s true: Duke’s Bakery is back in Dartmouth. The hotly anticipated gluten-free bakery opened at 6 a.m. on August 31.

On the first morning, a regular stream of customers came in with congratulations and excitement about the new Duke’s.

As owners Chris Holder and Dorry Silvia explained, what makes Duke’s special is a completely gluten free menu, with dairy free and paleo foods also available. It lets staff bake for people with a variety of allergies and other dietary restrictions.

They learned how to bake this way out of love: Silvia’s nephew has autism, and he benefits from eating the Specific Carbohydrates Diet, a very restricted diet that is grain-free, starch-free, mostly dairy-free, and sugar-free, among other restrictions.

“Everything you know about baking, throw it out the window,” said Holder.

“It’s a strange science,” Silvia agreed.They described how particular their recipes need to be — and how even things like the temperature of the kitchen can affect what comes out of the oven.

“It took me a year and a half, but I got sweet bread,” said Holder.

Silvia and Holder began cooking for Silvia’s nephew, and people said they did a good job. Then, they were invited to participate in a study through the Johnson Center in Texas about the effectiveness of the diet, and cooked for 25 kids for four months each over a period of two years.

Somewhere along the line, they decided that they wanted to open a bakery so they could cook for everyone in the community with dietary restrictions.

“That’s the great thing about Duke’s is a lot of kids call it their bakery, their Duke’s,” said Silvia.

Many of their customers — including many children — are people who have a hard time finding food they can eat at other restaurants.

“One of the best things about doing this is we’ve made five, six years of cakes for kids,” Holder said. “It’s a really precious part of our business.”

She described how the bakery is in the unique position of getting to celebrate people’s milestones with them because they keep coming back, instead of jumping from bakery to bakery like people with unrestricted diets might. They have one customer for whom they baked a wedding cake, a cake for her baby shower, and for every other special occasion. She gave birth two days ago and told them she couldn’t wait to bring in the baby to Duke’s.

“We call her our newest little!” said Holder.

“That’s what’s really special about Duke’s — we’re close with our customers because we have to be,” Holder said.

Laurie Tavares, who works at Duke’s, described how people will walk into the bakery and look around, saying in awe, “I can have everything?!”

She said that many people who eat at Duke’s are used to having only a few options available to them from a whole menu, so they are thrilled to have a variety of choices.

Duke’s Bakery is located at 634 State Road in the plaza with Ritual Sweat Society and the 9th Monarch. They will be open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, visit Duke’s Bakery on Facebook or call 774-762-4663.