Things that have impressed me recently: Dietary Specials

[simont]

It's now been nearly two years since I was diagnosed with coeliac disease. In that time I've mostly come to terms with the required changes in my diet. I've adapted to a life without pizza; I've either learned to cook, or found gluten-free varieties of, the Chinese meals I missed most; I've done the minimal necessary adaptation of my usual bulk self-catering habits; and generally, apart from it being nearly impossible to eat out and often severely inconvenient to have friends cook for me, I basically don't feel too annoyed most of the time by the whole business.

One thing I have had trouble finding, though, is good gluten-free bread. I have several options which are suitable for making into breadcrumbs for stuffing and bread sauce, and one or two which make passable toast if you lay on pâté with a trowel, but last week I would have told you I knew of no GF bread products which I'd be willing to eat in the form of actual bread.

Within the last few days I've been fed three startlingly good GF bread products, all of which were made by Dietary Specials, a company which I previously knew for making decent GF steak pies and utterly inedible GF ready-meal pizzas. I don't know if any of them would be good enough to adopt as a regular part of my diet, but for the occasional sausage butty or light snack they're definitely an improvement on anything I'd previously encountered. I will have to go and buy some more.

Comments

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

Coo! Will pass this on to my dad, he's always grousing about the shittiness of GF bread substitutes...

[simont]

The brown bread products seem to be where their real strength lies. (Or that might just be me: I was a die-hard brown-bread fan before I was diagnosed, and considered most white bread to be tasteless pap.)

[k425.livejournal.com]

I want to try, I think it's Juvela's new bread, which apparently doesn't need refreshing before use, so could make packed lunches. But you have to get 8 loaves at a time, and keep them in the freezer. Because I have nothing else in the freezer, what with no burgers, sausages, chicken nuggets, pizzas etc...

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

DS make a rather good GF chocolate cake mix. As a result I am now too lazy to work out how to make a chocolate cake. :-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

An impressive day :)

It's little things like these that give me the fuzzy "living in the future" feeling :)

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Shinies!

Incidentally you must come over here for dinner at some point - we're turning into the House of Rice, so I should imagine we can scrape up something you-friendly without much of a problem :)

[numberland.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I tried DS bread a while ago and it isn't half as good as other's I've found. The best so far is the Antoinette Savill loaf which is available from Waitrose or online, fairly indistinguishable from normal bread though they full to bits somewhat easily, they also do very, very good pizza bases and chocolate muffins as well. Others which are fairly good are some of the ones at daily bread (unfortunately I can't remember the name, one of the fresh and local brands). The Energy rice bread is okay and easy to get hold of (in Tescos and I think Asda), it's a bit dry and overally light but nice enough.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

A friend just posted this in her journal, thought I'd pass it on: http://www.sallyssizzlers.com/

[simont]

Ah yes, I've seen advertising for them before. Trouble is, they have a fixed delivery weekday, and I've got nobody waiting at home to take the delivery and put it immediately in the fridge. Another instance of too many bits of the world being designed for one-job-between-two couples.