A few months ago a reader of my newsletter asked me about recipes for gluten free pizza dough and bread. I told him I would do some experimenting and get back to him.
This was of particular interest to me because I also have a brother in law who can barely eat anything. He’s not only gluten free, but soy free and dairy free. What is there left?
So I took on the challenge but had no idea how hard this would become. Experimenting takes time, patience and money. All of which I don’t have a lot of it seems. But the desire is very strong and if it takes me a year I’m determined to do it.
In the process when I got started I bought some gluten free pasta mixes to try out and see what the various types taste like.
So my favorite so far is a brand named Schar. This is a product from Italy and one thing I liked about it is that it has very few ingredients. Corn flour, rice flour, pea protein isolate, mono-and diglycerides of edible fats (not sure what that part means).
The next thing I like about it which is my defining determinant is that it tastes good. Now halt. I’ve only tried one of their shapes. The tagliatelli. They are not real long like I expected but it still worked out.
What I did however was create a simple fresh tomato sauce rather than a heavy one because I figured the pasta would be very light since it didn’t have the heavy wheat.
I was right.
The light sauce consisted of tomatoes, basil, garlic and olive oil. The recipe for the sauce is actually right here in this other post. Super easy to make. One thing that I did that a little different was put the tomatoes in my food processor to roughly chop them and get the juices going right away. I wanted to make sure I didn’t loose any liquid so doing it in the processor worked like a charm.
The pasta was great and my husband liked it a lot too.
So we were going to try the penne tonight, but I wasn’t feeling well so opted for cream of wheat which my husband made for me. Tomorrow I should be back to normal and will give it a shot. I’ll let you know.
You can recognize the Schar brand by their yellow boxes. Take a peak here at their webiste: http://www.schar.com/us/.
Now the question remains – will I try to mimic their pasta by hand – probably yes. Will I get it right the first time? No. Am I okay with that? Yes – because when I get it right I’ll share it with you here.
Oh yes, the only down side is the price. $3.99. I’m used to getting deals such as $1 per box. Hopefully prices will come down as it catches on but I’m not holding my breath. However, it was delicious!
You can purchase this brand online at places like Amazon
If you visit Amazon – make sure to check out some gluten free cookbooks
Best of luck and let me know if you have a special brand that you particularly like too!
