Buy gluten-free Bread Or Make gluten-free Bread?

[jen2be2]

We could hardly believe that a loaf of gluten-free bread was $7.

We have 6 people to feed and that is going to get $$.

Do you still buy your gluten-free bread at the store, or have you been successful making gluten-free bread with a bread maker? If you make your bread, do you use the pre-mixes or do you make it from scratch?

Thanks!

[Fiddle-Faddle]

I make it from scratch, using Annalise Roberts' gluten-free Baking Classics, but her recipes don't use the bread machine.

[Kaycee]

I make my own gluten free bread. I make mine from a pre-mix in a breadmaker. I play around with it and add different flavours and things, such as seeds, or tomato paste and onion with mixed herbs.

At $6 a loaf, I can't afford to bou it and it tastes horrible, well that is my opinion.

As it is only me eating it, I slice and freeze it so I can grab as I want it.

Are all of the six people you feed gluten intolerant/coeliac? As I am the only one with coeliac here in my household, I would not dream of imposing my diet on the others, so they have their bread and gluten products. My only rule is that I will not be cooking them any biscuits or cakes with gluten in them. The closest I get to gluten would be moving the bread bag around, or making them instant gravies.

Cathy

[Nantzie]

I like Pamela's Wheat Free Bread mix, which is one of the top three or so preferred breads here, it seems. I get a package of six for $20, plus I'm an Amazon Prime member, so I get free two-day shipping. So it's $3.34 per loaf. The four of us (me, my two gluten-free kids, and my gluten-free-at-home husband) go through two loaves of it a week. My kids could go through a loaf in less than a day if I let them.

The other popular mixes that I've seen people raving about here are are Gluten-Free Pantry's Favorite Sandwich Bread mix and Breads from Anna bread mix.

It's just personal taste and preference. If you think about it there are so many varieties of gluten-white bread and gluten-wheat bread there are just at the regular grocery store. It took most of us years in our pre-gluten-free days to settle on certain brands/styles of regular bread. It's the same way being gluten-free. One person's Wonder Bread may be another person's styrofoam loaf.

Nancy

[Juliebove]

I buy some and I make some but mostly we just don't do bread. My daughter is the only one who eats gluten free bread. Technically I "could" eat it but I have diabetes and I find it just has too many carbs for me. So if I make a loaf and wonder of wonders it actually turns out (most do not), she'll eat it for a day or two and I throw the rest away. I find what I make does not usually freeze well. So even if I am saving a bit of money on ingredients, I am wasting money by throwing it away. So I buy bread only when she asks for a sandwich or I find it on sale. She is picky about her bread. Occasionally she'll eat Ener-G but normally it's a rice bread with nuts and fruit in it and it can be expensive. It's also frozen so I thaw it out until I can get the slices apart (even then I waste 2 slices to half a loaf because it's so sticky and crumbly) then pair up the slices, separating with waxed paper and freeze. She gets maybe one sandwich per week, if that. Perhaps more if we find a really good sale.

Now what I do make from scratch are quick breads because they seem to come out really well and I'm usually making them because I happen to have the ingredients onhand. Zucchini bread comes out really well for me. This summer when I had a lot of apples and pears from our trees I made bread from those using the same recipe as the zucchini bread but subbing in grated fruit. I often make this in the form of muffins so I don't have to worry about slicing it and she can just help herself.

I also have a recipe for foccacia that is foolproof and works as well for a sweet bread topped with a fruit pie filling or just plain icing. Everyone loves it and it doesn't taste gluten free. Very easy to make. But since I've tried the Namaste brand pizza dough mix I've been using that as a pizza base. Used to use the foccacia forming it into a circle then another batch of it minus the garlic and Italian seasonings for a dessert.

I realize that cost is a factor but I've had to weight the options. When my daughter was first diagnosed I went out and bought every kind of flour I could find. Some I used more than others and some I never used at all! I didn't know what to buy and if a recipe meantioned something like quinoa or garfava flour, I bought it! But then after having failure afer failure and feeling bad for wasting my time and money on ingredients, I began sticking to tried and true recipes. Even mixes were failing me. Can't tell you how many mixes I tried that just didn't work. I should add that my daughter is not a celiac but has allergies and more food allergies in addition to wheat and gluten. So I can't add soy, eggs or milk to a mix. This is one reason why things don't always work.

For a while, I tried making my own four flour mix. Actually I had two of them. One for the foccacia bread and one for a french bread mix that I actually used for bagels. For some reason it called for different proportions of flours. The two containers were taking up a lot of room in my cupboard and I was still having to buy all kinds of flour. So I decided to lessen the amount of flours I buy. I know stick to a four flour mix already made up, sweet rice flour, brown rice flour, cornstarch, and arrowroot powder. These are the only things I will buy in the future unless I find a super promising looking recipe that calls for something else. Now I do still have some of the odd ones like bean flour and perhaps one day I'll find a recipe that uses them.

But for the most part I find it is just cheaper and easier to avoid bread all together. Instead there are chips, rice cakes, crackers, rice or noodles. I have little insulated containers and my daughter usually takes something hot in her lunch. Or she takes a container of hummus and gluten free preztels. Something like that.

[Juliebove]

I buy some and I make some but mostly we just don't do bread. My daughter is the only one who eats gluten free bread. Technically I "could" eat it but I have diabetes and I find it just has too many carbs for me. So if I make a loaf and wonder of wonders it actually turns out (most do not), she'll eat it for a day or two and I throw the rest away. I find what I make does not usually freeze well. So even if I am saving a bit of money on ingredients, I am wasting money by throwing it away. So I buy bread only when she asks for a sandwich or I find it on sale. She is picky about her bread. Occasionally she'll eat Ener-G but normally it's a rice bread with nuts and fruit in it and it can be expensive. It's also frozen so I thaw it out until I can get the slices apart (even then I waste 2 slices to half a loaf because it's so sticky and crumbly) then pair up the slices, separating with waxed paper and freeze. She gets maybe one sandwich per week, if that. Perhaps more if we find a really good sale.

Now what I do make from scratch are quick breads because they seem to come out really well and I'm usually making them because I happen to have the ingredients onhand. Zucchini bread comes out really well for me. This summer when I had a lot of apples and pears from our trees I made bread from those using the same recipe as the zucchini bread but subbing in grated fruit. I often make this in the form of muffins so I don't have to worry about slicing it and she can just help herself.

I also have a recipe for foccacia that is foolproof and works as well for a sweet bread topped with a fruit pie filling or just plain icing. Everyone loves it and it doesn't taste gluten free. Very easy to make. But since I've tried the Namaste brand pizza dough mix I've been using that as a pizza base. Used to use the foccacia forming it into a circle then another batch of it minus the garlic and Italian seasonings for a dessert.

I realize that cost is a factor but I've had to weigh the options. When my daughter was first diagnosed I went out and bought every kind of flour I could find. Some I used more than others and some I never used at all! I didn't know what to buy and if a recipe meantioned something like quinoa or garfava flour, I bought it! But then after having failure afer failure and feeling bad for wasting my time and money on ingredients, I began sticking to tried and true recipes. Even mixes were failing me. Can't tell you how many mixes I tried that just didn't work. I should add that my daughter is not a celiac but has allergies and more food allergies in addition to wheat and gluten. So I can't add soy, eggs or milk to a mix. This is one reason why things don't always work.

For a while, I tried making my own four flour mix. Actually I had two of them. One for the foccacia bread and one for a french bread mix that I actually used for bagels. For some reason it called for different proportions of flours. The two containers were taking up a lot of room in my cupboard and I was still having to buy all kinds of flour. So I decided to lessen the amount of flours I buy. I know stick to a four flour mix already made up, sweet rice flour, brown rice flour, cornstarch, and arrowroot powder. These are the only things I will buy in the future unless I find a super promising looking recipe that calls for something else. Now I do still have some of the odd ones like bean flour and perhaps one day I'll find a recipe that uses them.

But for the most part I find it is just cheaper and easier to avoid bread all together. Instead there are chips, rice cakes, crackers, rice or noodles. I have little insulated containers and my daughter usually takes something hot in her lunch. Or she takes a container of hummus and gluten free preztels. Something like that.

[Fiddle-Faddle]

I find that the gluten-free bread-machine mixes at my local grocery are $5.79-$5.99, and I still have to add eggs, milk, oil, etc. It's still ridiculously expensive. I can buy white rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, and cornstarch at the Asian grocery for 69 cents a pound, and it only takes 5-10 minutes to mix 9 cups of flour mix, which so far I have managed to store very well without refrigeration, so why would I bother with the pre-made mixes?

[bklynceliac]

The best bread I have found for purchase by far are Gillian's Rolls. They're casein-free as well as being gluten-free, and honestly, they taste just like regular bread to me. If you order direct from the website, they're about $6.50 per dozen, which isn't too pricey. I've tried a lot of other varieties I've seen recommended here, and frankly haven't been impressed. Gillian's is the only company to me that gets even close on consistency and taste.

[Guhlia]

I second the notion on Gillian's. They do fall apart easily, but they taste so "normal" that it's worth the little bit of extra mess. All of the other gluten free breads fall apart too, so why not choose the one that tastes great. I also make my own buns and rolls using Bette Hagman's Easy Pizza Recipe with my own flour mix. They hold together really well and have a texture very similar to regular bread.

[Fiddle-Faddle]

Angie, you're so good at the baking. Have you been able to figure out a way to make the dough in advance and freeze it so you can bake it like "Pop'n'Fresh?" I don't mind baking them for half an hour or so, it's the mixing and rising that just takes more time, organization, and concentration than I can manage in a typical day!