Gluten free advice

[Edashwood]

My DH has just been diagnosed with coeliac disease. So far it’s going ok as I have found most of our usual recipes pretty easy to adapt.

I’m hoping for some advise from some fellow coeliacs on the best brands of pasta, bread, flour etc to buy as I’ve been overwhelmed with the choice available and some of the things we have tried so far have not been great!! We are in Scotland so can get some stuff on prescription. And what are your favourite treat foods?

Also any advice on baking cakes/bread/biscuits etc would be greatly appreciated!! Basically any of your top tips!!!

My husband was diagnosed about twenty years ago. It’s quite easy to adapt most recipes to be GF and although I cook a lot I also like to have a supply of bung it in the oven food!

Processed food that he likes are

From M and S
Cheese and onion quiche
gf fish fingers
Pitta bread - almost normal!
Sourdough bread

Pasta - we used to buy doves farm but I haven’t seen it for a while. Morrisons macaroni is good.

Schar
Frozen pizza
Frozen bake at home rolls

So many restaurants do GF food now. And Indian restaurants are usually fine apart from the obvious naan bread etc

He likes gf Peroni lager and Old Speckled Hen Gf beer

I find cakes taste fine made with doves farm flour. I’ve made home made bread but it does tend to have a cake like texture.

Tamari is a gluten free soy sauce. Chinese food is difficult but I use it to cook at home to satisfy my Chinese takeaway cravings.

Lots of chip shops do gluten free battered fish. Sometimes just at certain times but at our local one it is always available.

He loves biscuits. His favourite are Schar rich tea and Schar nobbles.

Baked to Taste are a mail order bakery. They do quiche, pies and pasties. He likes the curried vegetable pasties.
Think that’s my longest ever post on Mumsnet!

If you like baking then my number 1 tip for cakes is to replace the sugar with golden syrup in recipes and a bit more for luck. I've found the biggest issue is the dryness of gf flour but golden syrup has always done the trick!

Schar does really good, not too carby sliced bread, and decent pizzas, and Warburton's Tiger loaf is brilliant. I've found Genius a bit hit and miss and generally avoid supermarket GF cakes etc as they're full of crap (supermarket brand GF bread isn't great either).

You can get gluten free oats/granola etc, and I use a gluten free oat flour to make cakes and muffins. GF pitta makes good pizzas too.

I'm addicted to Nairn's gf cheese oatcakes and they do great gf oat based biscuits too. Garofalo do a good pasta that's brown rice, corn and quinoa - carb-y but great.

It's a lot of trial and error, but it's a lot easier than it was years ago (Im not coeliac but intolerant, went gf in the 90s) and there's great recipes online for bread, cakes and biscuits that use healthy flour alternatives and ingredients. I've found the main problem with gf foods is that in compensating for lack of simple, gluten or wheat based ingredients, there's just loads of weird carby fillers and binders, so it's really easy to end up with quite an unhealthy diet!

Yes to Warburtons tiger bread (DD is coeliac but I've tried lots of her foods), BFree pitta and Schar Wholesome Vitality Loaf is expensive but good. Tiny slices as is typical with gluten free.

Doves Farm flour is grim, makes gritty cakes and biscuits although DD likes it. I want to find something nicer so the non-gf people will eat the same cake.

It can be harder to get plenty of fibre in a gf diet so we try and keep that in mind; I have a list of gf sources of fibre inside a kitchen cupboard to remind me. So jacket potato, brown rice, corn, gf oats, nuts, seeds, beans, leafy green veg and coconut.

Snacks wise, aside from biscuits DD eats Schar pretzels, Emily crisps, Munchy Seeds (loads of different flavours), Le Veneziane mini bread sticks and most haribo are safe.

Thanks for all these. We really appreciate it!!

Personally for bread I like Sainsbury's own brand and Genius, toasted or not it's a pretty good everyday bread.

We eat 90% gluten free as a family now because of me!

Cakes wise I prefer to make my own. I have a great Dairy Free sponge recipe which works wonderfully with gf flour (Asda's own is good). DD1 adapted a Millie's cookie recipe for me which is pretty good too. Xanthan gum is a must for sauces, cakes and the like.

Goodfellas do a lovely gf pizza too.

Highly recommend becky excell website and new recipe book. I've heard the fakeaways are particularly good. If you can find it, Promise do lovely bread. Extortionate prices but you get used to it. Schar are my go to for rolls, panini and the frozen ones. I don't rate many of the biscuits but Prewetts are nice for a treat. Morrisons do a chocolate swirl pastry which you part bake. It's amazing. Doves farm and asda flours are much of a muchness these days imo. Lots of Indian takeaway is gf, just ask. Same for pizza although lots have stopped their gf bases during the pandemic. Good fellas do a nice gf frozen pizza in asda and other places. I don't at all rate M&S gf bread - it's the only one I've ever complained about and returned!

Don't just look in the free from section either as lots of products are naturally gluten free (apart from the obvious) and cost less if not branded as so. Gf isn't so bad these days. Gf and low fodmap on the other hand...nightmare!

Oh, and I think I'm the only gf person who doesn't rate Warburton tiger bread! Their sourdough loaf is good though.

Oh, and finally (!) aldi gf hot cross buns are really good

Another recommendation for M and S seeded bread - by far the best for me. Coop triple chocolate cookies for a treat - better than m and s, or Sainsbury's. Morrison's second best there. Waitrose do fresh gf pasta which is nicer for me than dried, but is still a bit gloopy. The very best bread I had was a bakery in the south of France. Sigh!

bowednotbroken I hope you get back there soon!!!

misty9 I think we will have to get this controversial tiger bread and come to our own conclusion!

Dc1 has been gf for 11 years and things have improved massively.
Firstly coeliac UK was very useful in the early days.
Things dc likes are-Warburton bread (we can get this on prescription in our area), tesco spaghetti, Dove flour, we find a lot of the sweet treats are too sweet so make our own, nairns oats, good fellas Pizza, genius breadcakes, Be free wraps/pitta bread.
It is trial and error dc doesn't like any breadsticks but used to love them. Some of the big companies (schar, juvella, genius) used to send taster packs when you registered with them which was great for trying new things.
Check supermarket own brands as a lot have often maked changes to their ranges over the years to make them naturally gf eg tesco ketchup and stock cubes.
Walkers are not great but Seabrook and kettle crisps are great.
Also watch out for labels saying new recipe /packaging changing as this is when you'll find there may be gluten in or a contaminated product.
Our dietitian was great in the early days advising things like toaster bags, separate cupboards, brands of food suitable /not suitable and tips like different butter pots so they don't get mixed up.

I find the seeded gluten free breads much nicer than the white ones. Co Op and Morrisons are the best I've tried. If you want to get into gluten free baking, bear in mind you want your cake mixture or dough to be more moist/wet than you would with usual baking - fruit based or veg based cakes work really well. Treat food wise, I really like the Co Op selection of snacks, cookies etc and Sainsburys is pretty good too. It's often a case of trial and error though!

As everyone else says OP it's very much a case of trial and error and your own personal taste. Gluten free bread is a particularly divisive topic, mainly because most of it is SO bad!

My current favourite is BFree Brown Seeded Loaf, but it's £3 for a small loaf, so it's far from cheap. Sainsbury's used to do a really nice seeded loaf in their Free From range, but they changed the recipe last year and it's horrible now - really dry. Some GF bread is very bloating, thanks its blend of different flours and things like potato and tapioca which bulk it out, so all you can do is try them all. M&S sliced GF bread makes me blow up like a balloon.

The corn pastas are high GI, so I find they spike my blood sugar up and make me very agitated after about an hour. Dove's brown rice one is good, although it does stick together in a lump if you don't stir it.

M&S Made Without range has very nice fresh quiches, as does Sainsbury's Free From.

Jus-Rol does good GF pastry, but I can only ever find puff, not shortcrust. I think Schar do a shortcrust pastry, but I can't ever find it - I think you can get it through Ocado maybe?

You can get good range of gluten free pizzas in Waitrose.

As for treats, really depends what your DH likes. I love Prewett's Dark Chocolate Ginger cookies - they're so nice you wouldn't know they're GF - available from Waitrose. The Sainsbury's Taste The Difference ones are pretty good too and they do nice Triple Chocolate Cookies.

@Edashwood

Well perhaps my posts should have said ‘we’ instead of I. He has only been diagnosed for a few weeks and is a ICU dr so has been a little busy and burnt out recently so yes I have done most of the shopping and cooking recently. But I think you put 2 and 2 together and got 5. And it is a little rude to assume that he is not taking responsible for his own health just because I asked a question on his behalf. I’m not sure where in my posts you got the impression that I was planning on monitoring his food intake 24/7.

Cripes, ignore her. Some people like to pick at anything you say! I did exactly the same thing when my DH went gluten free. I asked friends who I knew were gluten free to suggest their best products while he downloaded an app and did his research that way.

We like Warbutons tiger bread and their seeded bread.

Another vote here for garofaolo pasta and all the nairn's biscuits and crackers. For baking, I tend to look for recipes that are flourless rather than trying to replace the flour. Eg polenta cakes or ground almond cakes.

We recently discovered some amazing corn based crackers from ocado called sanissimo salmas. They are like a cross between crackers and tortilla chips. On a similar note, if you can find masa harina, you can make amazing home made corn tortillas.