King Arthur Gluten Free Bread Mix

I never thought a great deal about bread before I was diagnosed with celiac disease. We would sometimes make homemade bread. I would buy different sorts of bread, especially freshly baked bread. I loved bread, but I didn’t realize how pervasive it actually is. We use it to make lunches. We have it on the side. We use it as the foundation to some dishes on our plates. Bread is everywhere. And bread is one of the main things that simply doesn’t normally work the same without wheat flour.

We like Rudi’s and Udi’s, especially for ease and convenience when making lunches for work or school. But sometimes we want a little more. My wife has always been a better baker than me (and used to make killer sourdough), but while she has learned to bake almost everything gluten free from scratch, she hasn’t yet tackled bread from scratch.

We have, however, tried a number of different bread mixes. Most of the ones we’ve tried have been decent. Some have had a complex flavor I enjoyed, but none of them produced a good, all-purpose loaf with that freshly baked flavor and which also holds together when making and eating a sandwich. None of them, that is, until we tried King Arthur’s Gluten Free Bread Mix.

We had always like King Arthur’s flours in the past and so we were happy to hear the news when they began to move into the gluten free area. (As far as all-purpose flour goes, though, we still think Jules is the superior gluten free flour.) So we tried their bread mix. It’s fairly straightforward to prepare, rises well, and produces a delicious loaf which is good for many purposes, but definitely makes great sandwiches. And it produces the same results consistently every time. (We’ve noticed that’s not always the case with gluten free mixes.)

I definitely recommend this product. You won’t be disappointed.

Udi’s

My daughter has never cared much for bread, even when she was preschooler. She’s been eating the meat, cheese, and pickles out of her hamburgers, hot dogs sans buns, and sandwich meat a la carte for her whole life. But this past year or so, she’s been taking a peanut butter & nutella sandwich to school. I immediately got her a couple of types of the more palatable bread to try and one of them she thought was okay, but hardly great.

I’d heard that Whole Foods had started carrying a new brand that was supposed to be really good, but hadn’t yet made it down to one to check it out. Lo and behold, as I was looking through Sprouts gluten free jubilee offerings, I saw this in the freezer!

I snatched a loaf to try. It’s more flexible than other gluten free breads and it tastes good without reheating it. That’s all good, but the critical thumbs up was my daughter’s. And this bread got it. It’s now the official instrument of nutella and peanut butter conveyance in her school lunches.

While I was at Sprouts, I saw and snagged the following as well.

Udi’s Gluten Free Pizza Crusts were also a hit. I made my daughter her favorite pineapple and canadian bacon pizza while I had a ground bison and black olive one. This was an important discovery because we can take some of these to her camp when she goes. They will keep them in the freezer and they will make her pizzas using them on nights when she would otherwise have few options.

If you haven’t yet tried any of Udi’s products, I highly recommend you give them a taste! Two thumbs up from both my daughter and me.

Wild Wood Art Cafe

Yesterday for lunch I decided to try Wild Wood Art Cafe, a local gluten free bakery! While we will be trying out different recipes for making our own gluten free bread (though my wife will probably do more of the experimenting than I will), I love living in a city that has an eclectic art gallery/gluten free cafe combination.

I decided to get the hot roast beef and cheddar sandwich on their whole grain bun. (They had had a refrigerator go out, so cheddar was the only cheese they had at the time.) The sandwich was absolutely delicious and the whole grain bread had a delightful nutty flavor and great texture. The tortilla chips were a bit stale (minor quibble) but I ate them anyway because the salsa was quite good. While I was waiting for my order, I read a story clipped from the local paper about the owner and the gluten free ding dong alternative she had created. I saw them in the display and will have to try one on a later date.

I also bought a loaf of their basic brown rice flour bread and had a bison burger with swiss and dijon on thick slices of the bread last night. Obviously, without gluten it’s dense and somewhat crumbly. But it held together really well and had a very pleasant, mild flavor. I definitely recommend it.

With the economy the way it is, I’m sure it’s a tough time for many small businesses like this one. I certainly hope they’re around for years to come, though. They certainly have my business.