I've written before about how I ended up living gluten-free, and I've posted the occasional recipe, but after a conversation that started in comments, it seems like a potentially useful thing to do a diary about gluten-free foods and strategies. There are, of course, plenty of gluten-free boards on the internet, but why not share it with our community here?
I've been gluten-free for more than eight years, and it's amazing how much easier it's gotten, how many more restaurants offer options, how many more and better products are out there. I'm going to share some of my favorite replacements for typically gluten-containing foods, and I'm hoping to learn about others in the comments. This is hardly even scratching the surface of GF topics, of course.
Bread
I didn't eat bread for the first ... gosh, several years I was GF. The products I'd found just weren't good enough to bother. Then I found Glutino. They do a flax seed bread and a fiber bread and a raisin bread that I can't say I'd eat untoasted, but that toast really nicely and—especially important—hold up to sandwiches. So many GF breads just crumble the minute you put anything on them. But thanks to Glutino breads, turkey reubens and french toast are regular parts of my life.
More recently, I discovered Udi's, which is good untoasted. Like so many GF products, it goes stale in about 10 minutes outside the freezer, but if you take it out of the freezer, thaw it in the microwave, make your sandwich, and eat it, it's an opportunity to have the untoasted sandwiches you've been missing.
Pasta
I used to swear by Glutino pasta, but the jerks discontinued it. Now I eat DeBoles multigrain GF pasta. It's nearly as good.
Lots of people love Tinkyada, but when I tried it many years ago, my response was to say "guess I'm going to have to live without pasta."
Flour
Once you find the right flour, you can adapt most of your favorite non-yeast-risen recipes at a minimum. But the thing about GF flour is, you can't just use rice flour or whatever. Or, you can, but you can't expect a very good outcome. You need to use a blend. For several years, we would buy like five different types of flour and carefully blend them into what's known as the Wendy Wark blend, having found the recipe in a cookbook. Then we discovered that Authentic Foods makes a packaged version of that blend, which they call their Multiblend. It's the gold standard of GF flour as far as I'm concerned—and it is not cheap. But if you really want something delicate to turn out, this is where to go.
Among widely available brands, I'd go with King Arthur. And a little xanthan gum. If it's ok for a flour to be self-rising and contain some almond, Pamela's baking/pancake mix is very good.
After a period of trying to convince myself it was decent, I stopped using Bob's Red Mill flour. It contains quite a bit of garbanzo, which has a pretty distinct flavor in many recipes, and it's kind of heavy. But you'll see it frequently recommended in newspaper articles about GF cooking and it's widely available.
Pizza
There are now a number of frozen pizzas you can get in many grocery stores. I was introduced to Against the Grain by Chris Bowers and Natasha Chart, and it's definitely my preference. Foods By George is also pretty good.
It's increasingly common for restaurants to offer GF pizza, though, so you may be in luck. New York's Risotteria is worth a pilgrimage if you can make it—not just for the pizza but for the amazing breadsticks and the extensive dessert menu. If you go, have a chocolate tiramisu for me, please. But really these days there are lots of places. Not always very good, but in urban areas at least, they're out there.
Pancakes
As mentioned in the flour section, I like Pamela's mix a lot.
Desserts
There are good mixes out there. King Arthur brownies and chocolate cake are fantastic. Pamela's has some decent stuff, though I don't recommend the yellow cake mix. Gluten Free Pantry is good.
At Whole Foods, at least, you'll also find some good stuff in the freezer section. French Meadow brownies are very good, though FWIW they recently had some OSHA violations. Hardly grounds for a boycott, but it remains to be seen whether I'll feel guilty next time I eat them. Whole Foods' own GF frozen desserts are also very good. (Yes, Whole Foods itself is politically problematic for a range of reasons. But for some GF stuff it's one of your few options.)
The whole cupcake trend is good for GF people, because several cupcake chains have GF cupcakes where other bakeries don't necessarily. Sprinkles, for instance, has a red velvet cupcake that is not only without question the best GF cake I've had, it probably ranks on the list of best cakes I've ever had. And I'm not even a huge red velvet fan.
Restaurants
Restaurants, except for big chains, are a lot more local, of course. And people vary wildly on how worried they are about cross-contamination issues etc. My own take, influenced heavily by my sensitivity level/the particular symptoms I most commonly get, is I'll do my best to be careful but I'm not going to be a shut-in.
I highly recommend the Triumph restaurant guide, with which I've found some great options while traveling. But never assume that because a restaurant isn't in it, there are no options. While in Providence for Netroots Nation, for example, I was in a red-sauce Italian restaurant where I was planning to just order a naked steak. Then a dining companion asked about GF options and it turned out the place had GF pasta and I had an unexpectedly awesome dinner.
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