"gluten" news and stories

Shauna, the Gluten-free Girl has been living with Celiac disease her entire life, but has only been eating gluten free for just over a year and a half. In that time, she has felt better than she ever did before and she has definitely learned more about gluten-free cooking and baking than she ever thought she would know. By her own admission, she does not make gluten free baked goods all that often, in large part because it is more complicated than a standard muffin and the pre-made mixes are usually just as good. This particular batch of Gluten Free Blueberry Muffins, however, she made completely from scratch. In her post, Shauna explains how she developed a feel for using gluten free flours - sweet white sorghum flour, white rice flour and tapioca flour in this case - to achieve the familiar consistency of a muffin made with wheat. To the inexperienced, gluten free baking sounds like a challenge, but as with anything else, familiarity makes things easier and Shauna's successful muffins prove that point.

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Back in August, we started looking at a category of beer that is getting increasingly popular as awareness of celiac disease and gluten intolerance grows: gluten free beer. At the time Anheuser-Busch was just starting to test their own gluten-free brew, but it must have been a success because the company is now ready to release their newest product. Redbridge beer is completely wheat and gluten-free and is described as a "full-bodied lager brewed from sorghum for a well-balanced, moderately hopped taste." It contains 4.8% alcohol per bottle and will be sold in six packs at higher end grocery stories (described as "stores carrying organic products) and in some restaurants.

This marks the first truly mainstream GF beer on the market, as others like Bard's Tale Beer's Dragon's Gold and Ramapo Valley Brewery's Passover Honey Beer are all produced by small breweries in small batches and are not available everywhere.

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There are a lot of gluten-free bread mixes on the market from a number of different companies, but Bob's Red Mill is one brand that I see most often, as they carry it prominently at Whole Foods. Reading the packaging on some of their yeast mixes, I noticed that they gave instructions for making the dough in a bread machine and I couldn't help but wonder if the dough would develop properly under such conditions, as even though the yeast will thrive in the bread machine environment, the ingredients are quite unlike the typical flours used in bread. Odds are, they probably work out reasonably well or the company would not continue to instruct people to use the machines. If you want to make GF bread on a regular basis, however, you might want to consider switching to a machine that has an actual gluten-free cycle programmed in to it. The Breadman TR875 is the first one that I've heard of that is equipped with such a feature. The stainless steel machine can handle up to 2-pound loaves and also offers pasta, jam, and pizza-dough cycles.

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After getting stuck under a lawnmower, Des Moines radio personality Van Harden says that he lost his taste for bread completely. Harden said "Doctor's can't explain it," but it could be the case that he experienced a side effect as doctors revived him from anesthesia after his surgery. With no appetite for bread, Harding was essentially living an Atkins-style life, but he did miss the taste pizza even though he didn't actually want to eat the wheat-based crusts.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so Harden came up with a 100% cheese crust pizza, complete with toppings. Think of it as being a stuffed-crust pizza, without the actual crust. Over the weekend, in what appears to be the first release of the product, over 200 were sold at two Des Moines Hy-Vee stores. More store are scheduled to offer the Atkins-friendly, gluten-free pie soon.

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I came across this photo by Olivander on Flickr's close shots pool the other night. 

You may have guessed by now that it's not some sort of new food-irradiation gizmo. That is, if you're the type of person who reads headlines. This electric inferno is the last thing your bread sees before it becomes, well, toast. When will this senseless destruction of gluten-based products end?!?   

[photo: Flickr]