The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Wheat free

Mako's picture
Mako

Wheat free

I'll start this discussion since I asked for the category.

I'm lookin for any books/resources for wheat free baking, after making a dozen loaves of bread for Thanksgiving I come to find out yesterday that I'm allergic to wheat.  bummer.

 

is there a BBA for alternative breads?

 

clazar123's picture
clazar123

There have been so many requests for breads that address so many different needs.What a great idea to have this as a separate forum.I have friends that have allergies and will be curious to see what develops here.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

That is made in Germany.  Hammer Mühle (www.hammermuehle.de) They have quite an assortment of glutenfree mixes.  I bought their Mehl-Mix hell (hell means light) for white bread and contains starch (potato & corn) flour (corn & rice) and guarkernmehl (E412 much like xanthum gum  E415).  Claims to be free from wheat starch, milk, egg and soja.  Got on sale half price for €1.94 per kilo.  Their site sell several types of mixes some include not only rice but chestnut flour, and teff.

Mini

Janknitz's picture
Janknitz

Has some GF recipes--I haven't tried any of them personally, but I have heard from a few people who did  that they're pretty good. 

Mako's picture
Mako

I'm sure that gluten free is equivalent in bread baking circles but apparently my allergy is to wheat, not gluten... 

 

I'll have to see, thanks for the info, time to look up King A for all my alt.grain needs

 

I usually buy 50 pound bags of wheat montana (1 bag white, 1 bag wheat) at the local wheat montana store (bakery and deli I'm lucky).  The price will be a shock.

 

 

clazar123's picture
clazar123

If you have a true wheat allergy,you may need to be aware of how you will react to grains in the same taxonomic family as wheat-ie genetically related to wheat, such as rye and barley.And beware the claims that spelt and kamut can be substituted without worry.They are very closely related to wheat and an almost no one with a wheat allergy can substitute them.Even if they can initially, they usually develop allergy symptoms in short order.Now they have more things they react to.

http://wheat.pw.usda.gov/ggpages/topics/Celiac.vs.grains.html

This is a little technical but actually reading in between all the tech jargon provides a pretty good summary. Wheat allergy and celiac (gluten intol) are very closely related in terms of what triggers the symptoms and sometimes both allergy and celiac can be triggered by non-wheat proteins in other grains that are very similar to the wheat protein that causes your symptoms now.So as far as practical suggestions on what to eat or avoid, follow celiac recommendations since the triggers are almost identical.There is a difference in wheat allergy but the difference is usually what happens at the cellular level.

"All grasses not in the tribe, Triticeae, were consequently classified as safe, including rice, corn, various millets, ragi, teff, Job's tears, wild rice, and oats (see attachment III). Plants that did not fall in the grass family, such as the dicotyledenous plants, which are very distantly related to the grass family, would be highly unlikely to have seed proteins toxic in celiac disease. Some of the dicot seeds of interest include all beans, buckwheat, quinoa, and amaranth."

Wheat,rye and barley are from related families.(Look at the illustrations at the bottom of the page in the link). Oats are from a different but very similar family (protein-wise).There are other grains that are more distantly related that are safer for people with celiac or allergy to eat.

The family trees give a great visual representation.And this is the kind of article where you highlight the gems buried in each paragraph-just the author's writing style.

I'm glad this new forum topic started.There are many people that can benifit.Bread comes in many forms!