Thursday, July 17, 2014

Gluten Free Bread Experiment

Because finding an acceptable bread replacement has been a total pain in the ass, I decided to try a bunch and share my results with the masses! I will update this post as the experiment continues.

Bread 1 - Canyon Bakehouse Rosemary Thyme Focaccia
(https://canyonglutenfree.com/buy-gluten-free-bread-products/Gluten-Free-Rosemary-Thyme-Focaccia-Bread.html)
Pros - Refrigerated, toasts well, very flavorful, available for online purchase
Cons - Serving seems pretty small (1/8 of  the loaf), locally only available at Whole Foods (an hour drive away), not precut
Score - 4 out of 5 (will buy again for flavor)

Bread 2 - Whole Foods Light White Sandwich Bread
(Need non-mobile link)
Pros - Toasts from frozen excellently with no sogginess and no hard spots, large slices make real sandwiches
Cons - Lacks my preferred bread consistency (much lighter), crust is ridiculously flaky
Score - 4 out of 5 (will buy again because normal size sandwiches and nice for toast toast)

Bread 3 - Food for Life Brown Rice Bread
(http://www.foodforlife.com/product/breads/gluten-free-brown-rice-bread)
Pros - Texture is spot on (mmm thickness!), vegan (no eggs; if you're into that sort of thing)
Cons - Crazy difficult to separate the slices, toasts from frozen poorly (soggy AND hard crust), really freaking tiny (like two sandwiches is a meal but it's pretty high on the calorie intake at 110 per slice)
Score - 2 out of 5 (might buy again only to test unfrozen)

Bread 4 - Glutino White Sandwich
(http://www.glutino.com/products/breads/glutino-white-bread/)
Pros - Most bread-like bread so far, toasts from frozen well, stumps made for an excellent base to my kale & beans recipie, low-cal per slice (80), reasonable slice size (not as big as #2 but bigger than #3)
Cons - Crust was really hard with my usual toast settings, small loaf with big stumps, 
Score - 4 out of 5 (will buy again)

Next loaf of bread is the Whole Foods Sundried Tomato & Garlic and it's not looking too promising.

Bonus! My "One of Everything" order from Canyon Bakehouse should be arriving soon and I'm looking forward to reviewing their other 6 products! (It will be it's own post.)