Bob's Red Mill 1-to-1 gluten free flour is a game-changer. You really can just bake your regular recipes and just substitute this in.
The bread texture is way better using Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Homemade Wonderful Bread Mix (vs. the 1-to-1), but the flavor is lacking. Still working on this — maybe sourdough is the answer? or more salt or MSG than the recipe calls for?
So for now I’ve given up making it at home :/
Van’s makes the best gluten free frozen waffles. (I always get the blueberry ones)
Pamela’s gf pancake/baking mix makes better pancakes than any regular mix — so light and with a crisp outside. I add frozen (thawed) berries to the batter for added moisture. I especially like the tang of raspberries.
I get my toast fix from TJ’s gf sandwich bread loaves. There’s a white one and also a multi-grain one (both with checkered packaging); I’m pretty sure it’s basically the same but browner, and yet we always get the green one 🤷♀️ Conveniently, though slightly creepily, they keep indefinitely if refrigerated. I only eat them toasted (I let butter melt into them and add salt and jam or nutritional yeast, and you could trick me into believing it was regular toast) or for gluten free grilled cheese sandwiches.
O’Dough’s gluten free bagel thins are surprisingly thin (maybe half the thickness of a regular bagel), but delicious!
Jovial makes the best gluten free pasta (brown rice flour + water). I get it though Thrive which has the best selection and the best prices. If you end up deciding to subscribe, this referral link will get you 40% off your first order.
For gluten free ramen or chicken noodle soup, I use the rice noodles from Lotus Foods. (I find that you will generally want to cook the noodles longer than the instructions say.)
(The ramen flavoring is fine, but I augment it with organic chicken better than bouillon that I always have a jar of in the fridge.) And I also buy the 4-packs of just noodle bricks with no flavoring. They carry them at Amazon, but Thrive generally has better prices.
The best gluten free crackers and cookies are made by a company called Schar.
They have more items listed on their website than I’ve been able to find in stores, so I can only vouch for a few products, but given their track record, I expect the others (e.g. muffins, soft cookies, breads, etc.) are at least worth trying.
Schar gf table crackers (gluten free saltine replacement, but more buttery)
(I eat these ones with tinned smoked oysters)
Schar gf entertainment crackers (ritz replacements and busted up a bit—which might be their natural state depending on how you source them 😅, a great gluten free oyster cracker replacement in soup)
Schar gf chocolate honeygrams (a little grainy, but in a good way if you like British digestives)
We used to have a lot of Milton’s crispy gluten free crackers, because you can really just eat them solo like chips, but we’ve steered away as we’ve tried to avoid corn. But they’re so good! 😅
There are two other gluten free crackers I get that are more suited for cheese plates (both available in bulk from Costco):
Crunchmaster multi-grain baked crackers (very sturdy)
Simple Mills almond flour crackers (a little softer and a little more flavorful)
For making a gluten free graham cracker crust, we pick up a box of Pamela’s honey grahams at Thrive.
(we haven’t yet tried other brands or pre-made crusts because we’ve only needed it once a year at Christmas (and it was a risky nudge to initially offer a box to the patriarch in charge of the annual cheesecake), so we’ll probably just keep this new tradition 😅)
General grain advice:
As I say on my
(another note: in general, it’s good to soak foods and it’s good to ferment foods, for both toxicity and digestion, so if you can’t give up wheat or other grains, a (soaked) sprouted (fermented) sourdough bread is probably better than the default.
And all wheat is not made equal: US wheat seems notably worse than European wheat, at least for digestion. A friend tested this out recently on a trip to Europe where they basically didn’t have gut issues despite eating bread, but unfortunately they did have eczema itching :/ )
Possibly related: if you are going to consume grains that are blacklisted by the
Also: You’ll find a lot of these products and notes at the bottom of the