Gluten-Free Goodies

Everyone in my house is full of allergies. Joy! As such, we're quite the connoisseurs when it comes to gluten and dairy-free food. I reckon we've tried pretty much everything there is to try. Want a recommendation for nice dairy-free biscuits? Come to me! Want to know which gluten-free bread is like eating a piece of polystyrene? I'm your woman. Mourning the loss of those Tesco frozen g/f pizza bases that actually tasted like the real thing? Me tooooooo. Let's all pull sad faces together and then picket Tesco HQ to get them back in the shops.

We're well used to the utter faff that is having to shop in about six different supermarkets to get hold of the best bits. If only one of them stocked a good range! That would be far too easy, wouldn't it?

The Allergy & Free From Show was held in Liverpool last autumn and I trotted off there to gorge on FOOD I COULD ACTUALLY EAT. Not even going to apologise for the capitals there. Unless you are also a special needs food person, you won't understand how exciting this is.

Anyway, amongst many other utterly delicious things, I discovered Udi's there.



I maintain that gluten-free baking is not hard. All of my cakes are made dairy-free and most are gluten-free too and, having sneakily tested them out on the gang at work, I can report that most people don't even notice the difference until you tell them. I could never attempt this with bread products though. Gluten-free bread tends to not be very good. Yeah, it's got a lot better over the years (trust me, it used to be terrible) but you can't quite recreate that proper taste and texture when there's no gluten in it. You just can't.

Must admit that I didn't have high hopes when I toasted my first Udi's bagel.



Then I ate it. YUM! I reckon it's about 90% of the way to tasting like a normal bagel and frankly, with gluten-free bread products, that's approaching miracle status. They are genuinely delicious. We've been buying them ever since and so I was absolutely delighted when Udi's sent me an email out of the blue and asked if I wanted to try a gift hamper.




Having tried and tested most of the rest of their range, well I didn't like the breakfast bars at all but then I don't like the normal version of that sort of thing either, so I kinda expected that. The granola is fab and we've subsequently bought another of their breakfast products - toaster pastries - which have taken a little experimentation to get to the ideal heat/consistency combination but now that's cracked, we love them!

The bagel chips and muffins also get super high marks and I reckon you wouldn't notice that they weren't the real deal anyway. My tester for the cheesey products that I can't eat also reports back that they're delicious (thanks Helen!).

Double thumbs up from me!

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Thank you Udi's for the delicious goodies - always welcome! I'd been spreading the word about them before that though. A new, great, g/f d/f product is always cause for celebration!