help with wheat allergy/ intolerance

[Anonymous]

i thought i better tell you—–i don’t think that a regular yeast bread recipe will work with xanthan gum, but most other recipes should. remember to use a mix of flours for best results. these are the 2 we use.

featherlight mix (for 9 cups)

3 cups rice flour

3 cups tapioca flour

3 cups cornstarch

3 TBSP potato flour (not potato starch)

carol’s gluten-free sorghum flour blend

1 1/2 cups sorghum flour

1 1/2 cups potato starch or cornstarch

1 cup tapioca flour

1/2 cup corn flour,or almond flour or bean flour or chestnut flour

i have never found corn flour, yet. i haven’t seen chestnut flour either—-but i know you can find them somewhere, they are just not as common.

when you start reading ingredients, it seems like a wheat allergy is pretty close to needing to go gluten free, because wheat is in so many things.

[Anonymous]

Christine,

Thanks so much. I’m really excited to try these mixes. Lucas has been a mess, so I still haven’t made the bob’s red mill loaf. Hopefully tomorrow. I’m just thinking now i’ll try gluten free and see how he does. Like you said, it seems nearly too confusing to do it any other way with wheat in so many things! Oh, and thanks for the warning about the yeast bread and zanthum gum. I would have had no idea.

Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

Well, I made the Bob’s Red Mill loaf this morning in the oven. I don’t have a stand mixer, so I just used a hand mixer and hoped for the best. We still haven’t tasted it yet, but it’s very lopsided and about 8 inches tall in places! Hopefully it tastes fine.

[Anonymous]

I hope that it tastes good, even if it looks kind of funny! I’m hoping to try it this weekend, so we’ll see how it goes.

[Anonymous]

i made the “butter-basted white bread” from “more from the gluten-free gourmet” the other day. kassie wanted rolls, so i cooked it in muffin tins. they turned out pretty good. they seem to be alot more moist inside than wheat rolls are.

kassie made some muffins today that were really good. she used a regular recipe from a “taste of home” magazine and just used GF flour. they were “lemon pound cake muffins” they had a lemon glaze drizzle put on them after they came out of the oven. even my oldest son (EXTREMELY PICKY) said they were good.

[Anonymous]

Well, my Bob’s Red Mill bread….I think it tasted fine. It’s the first bread I’ve ever had without gluten….and I have to admit, I really don’t like the taste! But I guess I was expecting that it would hopefully magically taste like whole wheat. I followed the directions exactly, but it seemed somehow sweeter or something. I’m not even sure if it was a yeast-y taste or what it was about it. The texture was nice, the crust was nice and browned, I’m just not sure. So I got a different mix to try, just to see if this is what gluten free bread tastes like, or what. I figured before buying cups and cups of tapioca flour, etc, I should test other things to see if I can find a taste I like. It also seemed more moist than regular bread, and the rice bread that I’ve gotten is very moist– maybe this is something that goes along with gluten free?

Christine, a woman at the health food store asked me if I have celiac while on the gluten free aisle and said her daughter is celiac and they discovered these spices from a web-site called “monteray chicken”– but I gather it’s just a mix of spices. I don’t know why spices would be special for celiacs, but she said they are to die for, they taste so good. Just thought I would pass it along. Do you have to do all your spices differently or something? Your daughter’s lemon muffins sound great. I’m thinking if I bake flavored things it might mask the no wheat flour issue for my taste buds. Little Lucas doesn’t know the difference, but I sure do!

[Anonymous]

anne, gluten-free bread tastes best when it is heated in the microwave or toasted. the first loaf that kassie ever made, i tasted hot out of the oven with butter—-and thought it tasted really close to wheat bread. another thing i have noticed about gluten free baked food is that it has a different “feel” in your mouth.

i am going to try baking some bread with bette hagman’s four flour blend. it is a blend of corn starch, tapioca flour, sorghum flour, and garfava flour (garbanzo and fava bean). i have heard that bean flour is supposed to bake into bread pretty well—-but don’t ever tasted batter with bean flour before it is cooked, it is really bitter!

they say that sorghum flour is supposed to taste closest to wheat flour. i like using it—i’m not quite sure why.

i have noticed that gluten free bread seems to be more moist—except for the ener-g brand from the store—but it is nasty.

some spices contain wheat as a filler, that is probably why the lady at the health food store told you about the spices they had found. McCormick brand spices are supposed to be gluten free. there are probably alot of other brands that are gluten free also. when we see an ingredient label that just says “spices” or “natural flavoring” we don’t trust it, unless we know what they consist of. the new labeling laws should help alot with this since they now have to list any allergens that might be hiding under general terms like spices and natural flavoring. a few other terms to watch out for are modified food starch, and caramel coloring. we do not worry about caramel coloring, because it is most likely not going to contain gluten. modified food starch will have to be identified with the new labeling laws—but it might take awhile to use up all the old labels.

kevieb2006-3-10 9:51:49

[Anonymous]

OK, you baking ladies! I see a business opportunity here!!!!!

[Anonymous]

I’ll have to try the sorghum flour, I think the mix I used didn’t have much of that in it. thanks for that tip. I just got some gluten free waffles and they are pretty good. I’ve been using them as bread or toast for myself and putting peanut butter and other things on them like I would onto regular toast.

Thanks for the encouragement. I’ll keep at it. Did any of your kids have sleeping issues from their celiac? Lucas seems to be sleeping better, but I don’t want to jinx us. I’ll let you know in a week if this is for real that his sleeping is better, or just a co-incidence.

[Anonymous]

my celiac kids don’t seem to have any sleeping problems, but they didn’t have celiac when they were babies(that i know of!)

if you like oats, i have a web site for a company that raises oats specifically for celiacs. they had a celiac son, so they went to the effort to grow some with precautions to avoid cross contamination. they are pretty pricey—–$100 plus shipping for a 25# bag. i think i am going to order some, even at that price. my girls like homemade granola. i’m not sure if the oats are available yet, though.

[Anonymous]

Lucas only woke up once last night between 9:30 and 7 am. This is pretty unprecedented for us. He didn’t wake crying, either. If his night wakings have been wheat or gluten all along, it’s just amazing to me. He’s like a different kid with sleeping since being gluten free. I am bouncing off the walls I’ve had so much sleep in the last two days!

[Anonymous]

We had the same experience after removing wheat from Ally’s diet. Sadly, it hasn’t lasted, although that’s the fault of teething and a resurgence of reflux along with it. It really makes me think about kids who sleep poorly, if maybe there’s something going on that just nobody’s catching.

[Anonymous]

It kills me to think of how many of Kaelyn’s issues could have been resolved earlier if we had known about her allergies. I’m just glad that we did find them!

[Anonymous]

Yeah, no joke. If Lucas didn’t have reflux and a hiatal hernia–yet still had a hard time sleeping, I probably would have thought all along that I was doing something wrong and who knows what would have happened..especially if I had never found this website. I really think so many things ARE going undiagnosed or unnoticed, even with our kids who are all seeing SPECIALISTS!!

Kim, have I asked you if Kaelyn had sleeping problems? What kind of issues do you think could have been different if the allergies had been diagnosed earlier? I talked to the ped yesterday and he’s referring us to an allergist, so we can get that ball rolling.

Tiffany, hopefully the teething will be a short term thing, I know for us it seems to affect a week to ten days out of each month. Have I told you my cocktail for teething? Children’s motrin COLD (it’s pain reliever, anti-inflammatory and decongestant all in one), children’s benadryl for hte anti-histime, and Hyland’s teething tablets. The ped said this combo was fine for us. Oh, and i found the Hyland’s teething gel and Lucas LOVES it. He leans his mouth into my hand when I put the gel onto my finger. We tried all the other teething gels and Hyland’s is the only one that works for Lucas. Hope she’s feeling better soon!! Lucas only has ten teeth, how about Ally?

[Anonymous]

Anne, thanks for the tips. Poor thing, she keeps sticking her fingers into her mouth and crying, I know it hurts! I will totally check out that teething gel. She gets alot of relief from their teething tablets, and thank goodness, because we haven’t tried anything else that helps.

If you can believe it, she’s a year old next week and still doesn’t have ANY teeth. One of her cousins got her first tooth on her first birthday, and both Peter and I were late teethers. Figures that her body would just save up all the fun and do a bunch at once. As though the hasn’t had it more than tough already . . . hopefully she’s grow out of doing things the “hard way” was as she gets older!

[Author]

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