Just wanted to drop a plug for this amazing company.

https://auntiesfoods.com/

They are Texas owned, and if you have a gluten allergy, they sell the best products I've found. Their GF chocolate chip cookies are amazing.

I just ordered another bag of flour from them, and the owner dropped in a bag of tortilla mix for free, a recipe for home baked rolls and wrote a personal note.

Kudos!

Never thought something like this would interest me, until my son was diagnosed with celiac and I had to throw out all the flour and noodles. All the gf bread is garbage and most of the flours as well. Does this have the sandy texture or is it better? If it's truly "cup for cup" like they say and there's little different in taste, then that's a game changer for my family!

I've been blown away.

My son has Celiac as well. Honestly not sure if we've tried any of Auntie's stuff but I'll ask the wife.

As for flour, the brand Cup4Cup is the best we've found. It was actually developed by Thomas Keller of The French Laundry. As for bread, Schar is the best we've found.

JCA1 said:

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As for bread, Schar is the best we've found.

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Check out Genius bread. It is in the bakery section of HEB. It seems to be closer to real bread and not as hard as Schar. They also have multiple flavors including a cinnamon raisin bread.

n_touch said:

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JCA1 said:

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As for bread, Schar is the best we've found.

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Check out Genius bread. It is in the bakery section of HEB. It seems to be closer to real bread and not as hard as Schar. They also have multiple flavors including a cinnamon raisin bread.

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Thanks for the recommendation. We'll give it a shot.

This thread has me excited that we might be able to introduce some of the old staples back in a way that doesn't taste like garbage. Thanks everyone.

My wife has had Celiac for going on 13 years now. At that time it was near impossible to get her diagnosis right or to find anything GF on the shelves.

For bread she like's Udi's found at HEB or LiveGFree found at Aldi
For pasta we've found the best is the Barilla varieties found at HEB or Kroger
For flour we go with Bob's Red Mill or King Arthur both found at HEB
Bisquick makes a really good GF pancake mix
Also recently we've found that HEB and Kroger both carry Pioneer GF gravy packets (brown and white).

The GF Barilla pasta is great. Texturally, I actually like it more than the regular.

Kind annoyed with Aldi. All their canned veggies used to be marked and they no longer are and can not get a good answer from them.

A couple add ons to your list:

Live G Free from Aldi rocks. During the summer you can grab frozen empanadas and frozen filled ravioli. They make great quick meals. They also have a General Tsao chicken that is a quick meal when needed and really good. They also have canned fried onions every thanksgiving.

WalMart is great for items as well. They have their brand cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soups. They are the best we have found and are cheaper than going to whole foods.

We also found gluten free oreos a couple weeks ago. Not any of the knockoffs but actual Oreo brand. They tasted the same to me, but it has been forever since we had a regular oreo anyway. Mixed with a couple with BlueBell Vanilla and it was a dang good cookies and cream substitute.

Little bit of a thread hijack, but for those of you with kids that have Celiac or a gluten intolerance, there is a one week sleep away summer camp for kids age 7-15 that serves nothing but gluten free foods for one week a year.

It's called The Great Gluten Escape. It's at camp Gilmont in Gilmer, TX.

https://www.gilmont.org/great-gluten-escape-ages-7-15.html

To tie it back to the thread, that's where we first discovered Auntie's Gluten Free foods. The had to cancel the camp this last summer for Covid, but they sent out the GF foods in gift boxes for those that had signed up.

It was a great growth experience for our daughter who usually can't go anywhere by herself for extended times without us to provide GF meals. It's well run, and the kids make friends with others from all over the country who deal with the same gluten issues.

Interesting thread. I was recently diagnosed with arthritis and part of the whole inflammation testing my doc did came back that I have 1 genetic marker for celiac. I love bread and I homebrew my own beer and I told him there's no way I have celiac disease. However he wants to me to lose weight and try to go gluten free for 6 weeks. I may just be somewhat sensitive to it and I can brew my own reduced gluten beer.

However, what are symptoms people have? Because I don't think I have any and it may just be an irritant.

I've been looking into going GF and it's a lot harder than I thought to cut everything out 100%. Also doing low carb, but not keto, so avoiding carbs has already been part of the plan.

This thread has been pretty informational.

It seems daunting at first because you will want everything that you can not have. Once you are a week or two into it you will easily start to find replacements. We have been doing it for years and I can tell you that it has gotten so much easier now than it used to be. There are a lot more options than before and they have gotten better. In the past they would use so many artificial additives just to make the food somewhat tolerable, and you were really limited in your selection. That and reading every label, looking up every food and so on.

The hardest thing that you will find is restaurants. Many will say gluten free on some dishes, but do not believe that. At most they are gluten friendly since other items are within the kitchen and you are getting cross contamination. There is one here in Houston that is Gluten free and all products are safe simply because they offer no other food but gluten free, and they are a keto bakery as well.

This thread seems like it is going to become a good resource. Just don't get discouraged, its annoying at first, but it is no different than changing any other habit.

I was devastated a couple years ago when my son was diagnosed. I had perfected my pizza dough and biscuit recipes, and then I tasted the Live G Free bread (equal to dog **** IMO) and I figured we'd never be able to eat bread again. Most of the GF flours and their recipes tasted sandy and were awful, then we started to find other brands of GF flour that were better. For example, Pamelas Baking & Pancake Mix is pretty good for waffles, pancakes and muffins. I haven't found one for my pizza dough and biscuits yet but I'm hoping this Annie's stuff will do the trick! I guess I said all of that because it appears the quality of the GF stuff is getting better. I guess as demand rises people/products are stepping up their game to be the best and that's a win for us.

n_touch said:

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JCA1 said:

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As for bread, Schar is the best we've found.

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Check out Genius bread. It is in the bakery section of HEB. It seems to be closer to real bread and not as hard as Schar. They also have multiple flavors including a cinnamon raisin bread.

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Our family likes BFree, which Kroger carries (thought doesn't always restock as quickly as we like).

Their white bread and pita bread are excellent.

For hamburger buns, Kinnikinnick is pretty good. That brand recently started making a soft yeast donut which is also excellent (better than their cake style donuts IMO). You can buy their stuff directly online.

Xantham Gum is your friend. Most of the GF have some in it already jut we still add more no matter what we are making.

n_touch said:

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Xantham Gum is your friend. Most of the GF have some in it already jut we still add more no matter what we are making.

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I have a lot to learn it seems! Any resources out there you recommend?

Cheap flour and trial by fire. We have gone through all the flours from King Authur to the Walmart brand. We use the Walmart brand for cooking, frying and stuff like that. Baking we use Pillsbury. Its the closest to Cup 4 Cup but half the cost.

No true one source. We look up everything. Even now we still look up things at the store.

n_touch said:

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Cheap flour and trial by fire. We have gone through all the flours from King Authur to the Walmart brand. We use the Walmart brand for cooking, frying and stuff like that. Baking we use Pillsbury. Its the closest to Cup 4 Cup but half the cost.

No true one source. We look up everything. Even now we still look up things at the store.

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So have you found the Cup 4 Cup brand to be what it's advertised as...a "substitute" for APF?

Not really. It will make a really dense product. The Xanthan gum helps but you still need a little more liquid or butter sometimes depending on what you are making to make it lighter and not as dry. When my wife started baking she would do half recipes so that it was not as much of a waste if it turned out bad. Just track everything you do so you can tailor it to your own tastes.

What part of town are you in? Off of Louetta in NW Houston Caroline's a Healthy Eatery is all gluten free and keto. She has a lot of different products so you can try baked goods without all the preservatives from the store.

In DFW. Thanks for all the info.

I still think I'm gluten sensitive and not full on celiac. One of the other tells was in my bloodwork with "Embarrassing Low" vitamin B & D according to my doc. From what I've read, gluten sensitivity and celiac inflames the gut lining which prohibits the uptake of those vitamins. Easy enough to fix with supplements.

And I didn't have this issue as a child, as far as I know there's no 'adult onset' celiac disease, maybe ya'll know different.

I watched amazon's What's with Wheat and I'm more convince it's either pesticides and or modifications to wheat that have changes something that's making me a bit more sensitive. I def had the 'brain fog' or whatever that made concentrating difficult, so now taking a probiotic and it's gone away. No idea if it's true or not but whatever.

But as part of dieting to lose weight, carbs are low now and I'm avoiding everything tasty anyway so it's not really impacting me too much and due to COVID fear, we're not eating out much either. Anyway, other things to think about and it totally sucks.

While we're here...anyone have a good pizza dough recipe that tastes like the real deal? Maybe homemade biscuits too?

It's not too bad once you get the hang of it.

Obviously bread, wheat, pastas but what gets tricky is when eating out sauces that may be thickened with flour. Soy sauce is also a no go so anything marinated with it stay away from. A lot of things at HEB may not be marketed as GF but the price sign has a GF label so that's nice.

It wasn't too hard for us because we ate mostly fresh anyways. Meat and veggies and now with GF pastas readily available those are doable.

Like I said easier now than 15 years ago that's for sure. Of you have any specific questions feel free to reach out.

I hit HEB today before iceaggedon. I always cook fresh so for the most part it's not too difficult. But looking for some carbs and exploring new things. With the cold Temps this weekend im going to be smoking a bunch of cheeses, so having crackers for them is nice. And I found a few that are really tasty.

My wife is lactose intolerant and if I'm gluten intolerant **** is going to be dicey. But she can bake her bread and I can eat cheese and we can just sit there and hate stare at each other with envy.

But like I said, I don't think I have celiac, but I need to reduce the gluten.

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My wife is lactose intolerant and if I'm gluten intolerant **** is going to be dicey. But she can bake her bread and I can eat cheese and we can just sit there and hate stare at each other with envy.

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Schar has the best crackers in my opinion. Their saltine type crackers are a little more brittle but they get the job done. Their party cracker is a Ritz type cracker and a staple that we keep here at home. HEB carries both.

Yep

And you're right about the Live G Free General Tso frozen meal. It's actually REALLY good.

When eat that I'll pick up some GF potsticker type dumplings (can't remember the brand) at HEB.

It's nice because besides sushi we don't get Chinese a lot because of the soy sauce issue.

Ag_07 said:

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Yep

And you're right about the Live G Free General Tso frozen meal. It's actually REALLY good.

When eat that I'll pick up some GF potsticker type dumplings (can't remember the brand) at HEB.

It's nice because besides sushi we don't get Chinese a lot because of the soy sauce issue.

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Not Chinese food, but Gyu Kaku (a Japanese bbq restaurant with hibachi grills in the table) uses gluten free soy sauce in all of its marinades.

Ag_07 said:

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Yep

And you're right about the Live G Free General Tso frozen meal. It's actually REALLY good.

When eat that I'll pick up some GF potsticker type dumplings (can't remember the brand) at HEB.

It's nice because besides sushi we don't get Chinese a lot because of the soy sauce issue.

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We do the same. Their egg rolls are pretty good too. Pop them in the air fryer and go.

If you want a good Chinese Substitute, hit up Pei Wei. Their gluten free dishes are not altered and are just normally gluten free except for the GF sweet and sour chicken. The have a solid kung pao chicken. PF Chang also has really good GF dishes but are a lot higher than Pei Wei.