BFree® Foods, Gluten Free, Homestyle Sandwich Bread

Gluten-Free Bread is Notoriously Small

BFree® is a Beautiful Discovery!

I was aware I had issues with wheat in my thirties, but they weren’t talking about gluten intolerance or celiac at that time. Over the past few years, the Internet has become littered with recipes for gluten-free flour. More recently, the big flour mills began turning out gluten-free flour blends for almost any purpose you might want from pizza and bread dough to brownies, cookies and pie crusts. Now we can make foods we could only jealously glare at or, heaven forbid, eat; even though we knew there’d be hell to pay. Nipping at their heels gluten-free bread appeared on grocery store shelves; usually on the bottom shelf. Honestly, none of them filled that need to have an honest slice of bread, redolent of yeasty goodness—one you could make a sandwich with.

Apparently, I’ve been sleeping under a rock because what I thought to be a newcomer to the gluten-free bread market is getting long in the tooth. Established in Ireland in 2011, she (being the bread) entered the U.S. market in 2015. This gem only came to my attention in the last few months. Let me mourn a moment for my loss of years of good bread eating. Takes a deep, slow breath. Okay. Better now.

The BFree products have multiple redeeming qualities in addition to a remarkable selection of options. Yeasty goodness? Yes. In spades. The bread smells yeasty; something painfully absent in most commercial varieties. It’s also delightfully soft. My experience with every other brands I’ve tried finds them ranging from slightly arid to reminiscent of 80-grit sandpaper, and all of them required a trip through the toaster to maintain its shape after filling. One star, upon which I pinned my hopes, dwindled away in a streak of disappointment after surprising me with moments of greatness—about five minutes’ worth after opening a new loaf.

Ah. Blessed velvety touch.

Oh? Uh oh.

Nope. It’s gone.

Hmm. Must have imagined it.

Ode to the Deli Sandwich—Size Does Matter

Most gluten-free breads are lilliputian compared to normie breads.

I’m at the deli counter and ask if they have gluten-free bread. Many supermarkets only offer gluten-free sandwiches in a pre-packaged option in order to avoid cross contamination—a valid concern if you are celiac, but far from fresh-made goodness. But more of us are gluten intolerant than celiac and having a speck of flour cling to our sandwich isn’t going to stall planetary revolutions. Some delis do have “our” bread, but they often will pull an apologetic face and say, “Well. We do, but it costs more (true) and it’s really small (also true). Clearly, they are hoping I’ll just walk away. Sadly, for both of us, I don’t.

When I say small, I mean you’d have to eat two of them to equal a traditional deli-style sandwich. A little math music. Depending on the store, a good sandwich will set you back $8 to $10. A gluten-free sandwich of similar size, i.e. two of them, will set you back $18 to $24. But there I stand, gazing longingly at the display of colossal sandwiches in front of me, slump my shoulders and with a touch of desperation say, “I’ll have the turkey with lettuce, mayo, tomato, onion . . .”. I look at the long list of sandwich additions to see what else I can use to make this tiny excuse for a sandwich into something with bulk. “. . . cucumber, bell peppers, mushrooms.” I stop when I hear a protracted sigh from my sandwich artist.

He shrugs his shoulders and sets about making my lunch, struggling to herd my plethora of toppings into the tiny corral. He wraps it tightly, because he knows he must if there’s a prayer of it getting from wrapper to mouth in one piece, and hands it to me with an apologetic smile, a bead of sweat racing toward the tip of his nose. Who knew sandwich making was so athletic.

I trade the sandwich for 12 hard-earned dollars (I opted out of the $24 version.) and start to unwrap it. A milk-curdling screech erupts from across the deli counter. “No!” His voice drops in cadence but is still quivering. “Don’t open that here.” He hands me a pile of napkins and points to tables tucked away in a nook. An image of the Third Ghost ominously pointing a long, bony finger toward Scrooge’s neglected grave sends a cold chill down my spine. I slowly nod my head, my eyes never leaving his as I sidestep to the assigned location.

I open the tightly bound package, and my lips reflexively curl at the squelching sound the bread makes as my fingers wrap around its moistness, and I think, “Bread is not supposed to be ‘moist’. Bread is not supposed to be the most hated word in the English language!”

Bread should not be moist. Bread should not be the most hated word in the English language.

Thank you BFree Foods for turning my deli nightmare into a rainbow-lit dream.