I swear that I am trying to get off this bread tangent, but due to my new job designation, product development, you may be stuck with my baking fixation for a wee bit longer.

Despite attempts to keep our new enterprise totally main stream, avoiding all the pitfalls of trying to accommodate every food preference, allergy, and fad known to man, —low-carb immediately comes to mind—or at least those of our customers here on Gabriola, Jordan thinks that it would be prudent to offer at least one gluten-free bread There have been a number of requests for this bread and other baked-good products, so it seems worth the effort to provide, or at least try to provide one.

How hard could that be?

True gluten intolerance, known as celiac disease (CD) presents in so many different ways and to so many varying degrees of severity that often people don’t know if they really have it. Symptoms can range from a mild bloating discomfort after a meal which probably included bread or other gluten-containing food, to diarrhea, flatulence, irritable bowels, loss of weight and eventually malnutrition. There are also other symptoms that may not even seem as if they are related to a bowel problem: migraines, an itchy rash known as dermatitis herpetiformis, and painful joints. Even lactose intolerance can be as a result of the gluten intolerance.

In a nutshell—I don’t intend to go into all the gory details—when someone has gluten intolerance, the gluten damages the zillions of teeny villi along the intestine walls that are responsible for absorbing nutrients. There is often a family history of this predisposition. The good news is that, accept in the most serious cases of damage, this is reversible.  The bad news is that it is only reversible if you completely stop ingesting gluten, forever.  Even a few molecules can cause damage to the villi.

(There are also cases of gluten allergies, generally in young children, that can cause anaphylaxis. This allergy is often out grown.)

The definitive way to test for CD is by doing a biopsy. Another way is by trying the less scientific approach: the elimination diet method. If the symptom goes away when you stop eating something for awhile; then you probably should stop eating it!

I can’t imagine what it would be like not to be able to enjoy a grilled cheese sandwich with dill pickles or a thick chunk of Italian bread used to sop up the sauce from a plate of gluten-laden pasta. What about oatmeal; all the major comfort foods would be taboo.

Gluten from wheat is also used in hundreds of commercial products like soups and salad dressings as a thickener. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) website is full of warnings of “undisclosed” wheat in products, although I find it odd that many of these products are ones you would assume contain wheat; products such as brownies or pasta.

Spelt, an ancient grain that has made a come-back in recent years, is sometimes a suitable substitute for wheat in bread products. Although it contains enough gluten to be useful in baking, the gluten is more soluble than wheat gluten, and is absorbed better. People with mild intolerance sometimes try introducing spelt to their diets and are sometimes lucky. This should not be tried by anyone with a gluten allergy!

If spelt is not an option, you are stuck with trying to make bread rise without any gluten. Gluten provides an elastic structure that holds in the gases produces by the yeast, causing the formation of tiny air pockets that remain intact after the bread is baked.  When you are making breads with low-gluten flour like rye, you must add other flour such as wheat or a concentrated gluten flour that is available.

Suitable flours for a gluten-free diet include flour ground from corn, rice, beans such as garbanzo or adzuki, and quinoa. In order for these flours to rise, a number of other ingredients must be added to the recipe. Gluten-free bread recipes will contain some or all of these: eggs, xanthan gum, quar gum, tapioca starch, potato starch, and baking powder. It takes a lot to get bread to rise without the benefit of gluten!

Even with all these ingredients, the dough must be handled more gently than regular flour dough, and taking into account atmospheric pressure and the phase of the moon, you may end up with either something that could pass for a loaf of white bread or a curling rock!

I am sensitive to too much guar gum. It basically causes the same problems that gluten causes in some people: irritable bowel and the further consequence of that. I would be in a bit of a quandary if I found I needed to cut out gluten as well.

There are commercial gluten-free bread mixes available which contain the needed additives. You can also buy ready made gluten-free baking powder or make your own from tapioca, cream of tartar and baking soda. Unlike traditional bread, gluten-free bread can often take both yeast and baking powder to make it rise over the edge of the pan.

The least expensive (and most available) of the non-gluten flours seems to be white rice. When you look at chick-pea flour, also called gram flour, the price almost doubles. You can make your own bean flours by lightly toasting dried beans and milling them in a food processor.

I can’t say for certain whether we will be successful or not in our attempt to make acceptable non-gluten bread. (Acceptable in that we would have the nerve to charge someone for it!) There are many good cookbooks available for gluten-free baking, as well as many dedicated websites; surely something will work.  It may be that we end up making some kind of muffin or square that doesn’t require the finesse making bread seems to entail.

But I can promise that I will get off this baking jag soon and move on to other food topics that interest me: aioli, mascarpone cheese, chapattis…oops!