gluten free diet

moneylover

My son in law has just been diagnosed with coeliac disease so must go gluten free
.
He has joined the Coeliac Society and will doubtless get lots of advice from their website, but he and my daughter have their hands full with one year old twins and both working so am aiming to help them hit the ground running

We have all the major supermarkets available to us so would love to know what are the best breads, flours, pasta, biscuits etc available or equally, what isn't worth bothering with. Does anyone make a reasonable sausage, pizza etc - nice to know about these things although, generally, they don't eat much fast food anyway and eat very healthily

Son in law likes the occasional slice of cake so any weblink to a fav cake recipe would be welcomed with the exception of banana cake and very rich fruit cake which he doesn't like.

Also any appropriate food bloggers etc who might be worth following.


Many many thanks

Nicki

Best bread is Genius but no gluten free bread tastes like regular bread so he will need to acclimatise to that. Best flour is Doves Farm. Most supermarket gluten free pastas are fine and I can't taste the difference. Likewise with gluten free sausages - most of Asda premium sausages are gluten free for example and just as good - the gluten in sausages is just cheap filler so gluten free ones taste meatier. Biscuits and cakes he will need to experiment with but I like this Nigella recipe personally

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/chocolate-olive-oil-cake

These are my personal tastes obviously. Others may hate them.

lessonlearned

Sorry To hear about your SILs diagnosis.

The good news is the range of gluten free products has drastically improved over the last couple of years. Most major supermarkets now have extensive gluten free ranges. Even the discounters like Aldis and Lidl now stock GF foods.

If you look online you'll.get loads of ideas and tips.

I dont eat grains at all, not even rice or oatmeal. I eat largely a Paleo diet and have never felt better. The health benefits more than compensate for the lack of biscuits and cake. I now can't stand the smell of supermarket bread.

I am currently experimenting with Paleo friendly baking, using coconut, peanut and almond flours. It's a bit hit and miss but I'm sure I'll improve with practice.

Marks and Spencer's do a great range of gluten free cakes.

d0nkeyk0ng

My sister has this. She signed up to Juvela and Genius websites and they sent out a free hamper of gluten free food for you to try.

Most supermarkets do gluten-free products so much more widely available. You do have to adapt recipes (buy xanthum gum). We use Doves' farm flour. You can also get gluten free cake made. We buy birthday cakes from brilliantbakers and select the glutenfree option. Pizza express, pizza hut and dominos all do pizzas with glutenfree bases (but they're small so for one person only).

maddiemay

Lots of good advice here already. A lot will depend on personal taste, for me the Doves GF flours are gritty, but as seen above many love them. Someone on another thread recently recommended Asda GF flours as being superior to doves, but I need to make a 50+ miles round trip to a store, so cannot confirm this yet.

Quite a lot of GF blogs around, for me the the very best is Gluten Free Alchemist, (no affiliation - just happy baker), her recipes are tried and tested and the nearest thing that I have found to "real food". Recipes involve "flour" blends of ingredients that can mostly be found in H&B and indie health food shops, more expensive than non GF, but that is inevitable.

M&S offer an increasing range of GF products. For me the majority of supermarket GF food (cakes, biscuits etc) is either an awful texture, too sweet, or containing just a whole heap of strange ingredients never heard of in home produced food. for the occasional sweet treat things made with ground almonds or coconut hit the spot. I eat very little in the way of sweet treats, but need to bake for OH, so some of the time I bake GF so that I can indulge too. HM GF Cheese scones are my weakness and replace bread for me with HM soup or a salad, off to make a batch today:D:D

skint_chick

The easiest way to deal with being coeliac is to avoid gluten free replacements for flour, bread etc and change to a plant and meat/fish based diet. For me it makes meal planning a lot easier and healthier as everything is made from scratch. When you don't have much time you can batch cook work lunches and freeze them for heating up at work, and I live off salads in the summer with home grown veggies. Pinterest is great for cake recipe ideas for paleo/gluten free - avoiding ones that have crazy expensive ingredients. Also don't try using coconut flour as a 1:1 substitute it doesn't work as it absorbs too much moisture and makes everything a flaky disaster!


My typical breakfasts are homemade patties made from turkey or pork mince with avocado in the middle (I make them after grocery shopping and freeze individually), or coconut milk yoghurt with a handful of berries (you can buy the frozen ones and thaw them out in the fridge the night before). Lunch is grilled/canned fish with salad or chicken breast with veggies and sometimes homemade sweet potato wedges. Dinner will be homemade stew/soup, meat with veggies done in a skillet. Anything that takes less than 20 mins and can be done on the hob or in the slow cooker.


He'll need to check all the ingredients in things like gravies, precooked meats in the supermarket, frozen oven chips etc as they generally add wheat as a filler.

theoretica

A lot of the time it will probably be simplest for the whole family to go gluten free and then some members add real bread. That's how it works with families I know. Tesco's premium pork sausages are gluten free, and so are many hamburgers. Chocolate brownie recipies are often good, as are the almond and orange or lemon ones I have had.

I hope he feels the health difference is worth it!

moneylover

All very useful and good starting point; knew I would get sensible and helpful advice on MSE. Have used the forums as a first point of call for many queries over the years.

Any more postings greatfully received- will sign up to blogs and try out the flour etc in my role as MIL baker! So far as main meals are concerned my daughter cooks healthily and mostly anyway so it's probably mainly bread that will be different. They love pasta so it's good to hear there is no real difference in taste between gluten free and the usual stuff.
Again, many thanks for all the detailed and well considered replies.
X

thestens

Try making Jamie Oliver's orange polenta cake! Gluten free and the best cake I've ever made!

Sharon87

I would also be aware of some of the 'gluten free' products on sale. A lot of items that are labelled 'gluten free' are naturally gluten free anyway, they just charge a higher price for people who don't do their research. One example - a curry sauce was labelled gluten free, but other curry sauces don't contain gluten anyway. This was on Eat Well for Less on BBC a while back - a family was spending loads on gluten free products when they didn't need to. This is a money saving site after all!

My advice would be do your research and ensure the only 'gluten free' products you buy do usually contain gluten like bread, flour, cakes.etc

For cakes polenta is the main alternative for flour and tastes ok.

Hope you find suitable alternatives for him, you're lucky these days in the fact there's lots of gluten free products out there, mostly bought buy people who don't need to avoid gluten like your son in law does.

theoretica

Sharon87 wrote: »

I would also be aware of some of the 'gluten free' products on sale. A lot of items that are labelled 'gluten free' are naturally gluten free anyway, they just charge a higher price for people who don't do their research. One example - a curry sauce was labelled gluten free, but other curry sauces don't contain gluten anyway. This was on Eat Well for Less on BBC a while back - a family was spending loads on gluten free products when they didn't need to. This is a money saving site after all!

My advice would be do your research and ensure the only 'gluten free' products you buy do usually contain gluten like bread, flour, cakes.etc

For cakes polenta is the main alternative for flour and tastes ok.

Hope you find suitable alternatives for him, you're lucky these days in the fact there's lots of gluten free products out there, mostly bought buy people who don't need to avoid gluten like your son in law does.

For information, there is a difference between being 'gluten free' and having no gluten containing ingredients. This is the risk of contamination. If there is flour in the air in the factory, or on the factory line it can still be an issue, and enough get in to the product to fail 'gluten free' testing. Or not! It is one of the minefields people need to navigate.

Some people who need to avoid gluten can eat oats (it has a protein related to gluten that some people react to). 'Gluten free' oats are much more expensive than ordinary oats, so why bother? If the oats were grown in a field that used to have wheat in it they will be contaminated. If they are ground in a mill that also grinds flour, they can be contaminated... If you are eating a small flapjack maybe you can cope with the contamination when you can't for daily porridge.

If you are baking - check your baking powder first! Buckwheat is my favourite gluten free flour alternative at present.