I just want bread that tastes like bread.
I was a sandwich girl until I was diagnosed with celiac disease at 27. I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania, a region known for cheesesteaks and sandwiches. My grandfather brought over hoagies for our family to share after church every Sunday. I would order a sandwich in college, no matter how many of my girlfriends ordered salads. I loved sitting down after a serving shift with a big sandwich and a Smithwicks. I would buy an Italian from Wawa right before getting on the Chinatown bus on Filbert St. back when I made the Philly to D.C. trek regularly in my early 20s. I was friends with the same guys who once drove three hours from our central PA college to Philly for cheesesteaks - and I defended their quest for cheesesteaks to incredulous classmates for several months.
Sandwiches aren’t just nostalgic for me, but seem like the easiest way to eat: you have bread, some kind of yummy spread, meat, cheese, maybe some bacon (!), and veggies. They are fast and portable. Sandwiches are a low maintenance food and it’s actually one of the things I miss the most on a car trip; it takes a lot longer to figure out what snacks I can eat at a rest stop than it does to order a sandwich from a Wawa kiosk. (A good sandwich also sounds so much more appetizing than lukewarm hard-boiled eggs from a cooler.)
How can I miss sandwiches so much, you may wonder. There are so many gluten free breads out there! There are, but a good number of those breads taste like cardboard, are expensive, have to be kept frozen, and fall apart if you touch it. WHAT GOOD IS A SANDWICH, A LOW MAINTENANCE, PORTABLE FOOD, IF IT FALLS APART? If my sandwich snaps in half when I am trying to eat it and my dogs snaps it up mid-air, I’d rather just eat a salad. (I think this is one of the reasons I am in a long-term relationship with kale; it’s one of the few foods that can fill me up as much as my beloved sandwiches once did without any of the gluten-riffic consequences.)
If you can’t tell, this is one of the things that annoys me the most about being celiac. I’ve tried almost every gluten free bread out there and most annoy me way too much to enjoy the damn sandwich. However, there’s one bread recipe I’ve found that I will eagerly endorse and I make about every week or two.
Danielle Walker’s Against All Grain is one of my favorite gluten free cooks/bloggers. Walker tests all of her recipes repeatedly in her own kitchen on her (admittedly) very picky toddler and husband. I have a theory on gluten free cooking: if partners and children will willingly eat the food, it probably doesn’t taste gluten free. Why would anyone choose gluten free fare over gluten filled food unless it tasted just as good - right? This is what I adore about Danielle’s recipes: not a single one tastes “gluten free.” They are all full of flavor, nuance, and can “pass” as food you’d want to eat anyway. (She’s also about to release a new cookbook, Meals Made Simple. This may be obvious, but I’ve already pre-ordered it.)
Her grain-free sandwich bread is the only bread I really eat now. After you’ve made it a few times - and as long as you have a hand mixer - it’s relatively easy to prepare and it bakes in less than an hour. It does need another hour to cool off, but once that time is up, you have soft, TASTY, reliable bread to make your own Italian sandwiches on. I make one big sandwich about once a week with this bread (usually on a heavy training day when I just wants carbs and meat). I use avocado as my spread and layer turkey, salami, cheese, bacon, lettuce and tomato between the slices of bread. It’s as mind blowing as the sandwiches I remember my grandfather bringing over every Sunday, minus the salt and gluten of his beloved Italian hoagies.
Alright, here’s the link. Be warned: once you start poking around her site, you’ll be inspired by all of her gluten free recipes and probably have to make another trip to Yes! for more ingredients. I promise, they’re all worth it though!
http://againstallgrain.com/2012/05/21/grain-free-white-bread-paleo-and-scd/
What’s the catch, right? (There’s always a catch in gluten free food!) You do need some different ingredients, but if you are gluten free, you may have most of these at home already, like coconut flour. (I’m also a huge fan of coconut flour, so I feel like it’s a good thing to have on hand for other gluten free recipes.) Cashew butter can be challenging to find - and is somewhat expensive - but we’ve found it in the D.C. area at Yes! Organic Market, Whole Foods, and some Harris Teeter locations. You can also buy it on Amazon, but it’s actually the same price as it is in stores (arg!). One jar typically yields two loaves of bread though.
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