gluten free familyA mum's blog about gluten-free living in Australia

Woolies goes gluten free snag mad

It’s been busy time in the gluten free game for the mainstream retailers, especially in their meat and bread departments.

Woolies has gone gluten free snag mad and massively ramped up its home brand gluten free range. Most of the brand name sausages it carries are now also gluten free. It’s almost harder to get sausages with gluten in them these days.

Lilydale also recently announced a new line of gluten free chicken sausages that are also free range. They will go on sale in Coles nationwide, except for WA.

Speaking of Coles, it has started stocking some new gluten free breads and cakes in its bakery section. Read the rest of this entry »

Sainsbury's Free From range

I’ve just returned from a trip that sent me out of my culinary comfort zone and into unchartered territory: the gluten free food aisles of UK supermarkets.

I am happy to say we not only survived, but even thrived on this foreign soil.

I can also gladly report that all the important food categories were catered for:  pasta, bread and jam tarts.

According to those in the know, Sainsbury offers the widest gluten free range which it has self branded as “Free From” and from there we procured some very nice pasta spirals that were exceptionally soft and palatable.

They also have a bread under the same label which I was very happy with indeed. It was a plain white bread loaf that is split in two and spread over two vacuum packs. Not only was it tasty as toast but a bit of gentle persuasion in the microwave rendered it suitable for sandwiches too which was an unexpected delight and added to our lunchtime repertoire substantially. It also was dairy free, which we appreciated very much. Read the rest of this entry »

found at Aldi

Price is always an issue when it comes to gluten free goods so it would be pretty great news if discount supermarket chain Aldi picked up some gluten free product lines in a serious way.

With this in mind I had a search around Aldi at Top Ryde last weekend but all I turned up were a couple of Freedom-brand cereals.

However the good news is that a friend of Lucy’s (my co-blogger) has had more luck. The products in the picture were found in an Aldi in Sydney’s inner west.

According to the person who found them, this gravy mix and tin of spagetti were the only gluten free products in the store – but the unique packaging of these products leads me to wonder if there may be more to come… Read the rest of this entry »

Woolies new gluten free snags

Sausages… manna from heaven?  Okay, perhaps only if you are eight or so but they have become something of a staple food group in our house.

For this reason, tracking down good gluten free versions of this family favourite has become a bit of a hobby.

A butcher a couple of suburbs away has joined the gluten free sausage brigade and even has a preservative free variety – but it is not quite close enough for a weekly visit.

And Coles has decent gluten free sausages in its mainstream sausage range (you know, those cheaper, sawdusty ones that kids seem to prefer).

But I am surrounded by Woolies so for a long time I have had to go for chevapi or specialist brands like Peppercorn which are flavoured with grown-up tastebuds in mind.

But Woolies has finally come on board!  Its new mainstream gluten free sausage is actually pretty nice. (Disclaimer: it still contains all of the usual sausagy health hazards)

So I’m going to have to find myself a new hobby.

MB

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OzeChoc labelled gluten free

A Milo replacement it is not but it does have decidedly Quik-like properties. Either way, the kids really like Dick Smith’s OzeChoc and so do I.

It’s my latest find and one of a new breed of products I am going to dub lurkers because they are not found in supermarket “health food” sections with most of the other gluten free grub. Instead they quietly, modestly lurk among regular products on regular shelves.

But they they are different to products like corn chips and baked beans which may well be gluten free but are not labelled thus.

The lurker makers have not only taken the quality control steps required to ensure their products can be labelled gluten free but also the trouble to declare it loud and proud on the pack.

Because I usually only happen upon them by chance, I thought it may be of use to start listing products we have found that fall into this category.  We will continue to add to this list and would love to hear of any good finds by readers as well. So far we have:

OzeChoc (Dick Smith)

Gluten free burritos (Woolworths brand)

Readymade soups (LaZuppa)

Peanut butter (Kraft)

Frozen gluten free pies and sausage roles (Patties)

Frozen crepes (Creative Gourmet)

Frozen nuggets & fish bites etc  (Bayview)

Frozen pastry, puff & short crust (Pastry Pantry)

MB

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Unlike my co-blogger Lucy, I am not a very inspired baker. I want someone else to do it for me. That means that at the moment, my only gluten free bread source is the supermarket.

The problem with their loaves is that they have food additives I’d really prefer to dodge. So I have been hunting around for an alternative source.

There are some wonderful specialist gluten free bakeries out there but none near me and for some reason, I just don’t fancy ordering bakery goods online. So I figured the mainstream bakery franchises were my best bet.

I checked out Bakers Delight first. No luck. According to its website, as its bread is all baked onsite, the risk of contaminating a gluten free loaf would be too high.  Brumby’s, on the other hand, started offering a gluten free, dairy free, preservative free loaf last September to franchisees who request it.  It is sealed to prevent cross-contamination and frozen to preserve freshness. I’m keen but my local store has yet to take up the offer.

The cross-contamination risk is a big issue for traditional bakers given the intense reaction some people can have to even the tiniest amount of gluten. This, however, has not deterred Muffin Break, which offers a small selection of gluten free muffins and these are baked onsite. This issue is apparently addressed within its franchisee training according to its HQ, and its website says it follows strict procedures to ensure its products are gluten free.

Likewise Sparkle Cupcakery in Surry Hills in Sydney bakes both in the same location. It says on its site that it bakes its gluten free cakes first in the morning to reduce the number of flour particles in the air.

So the treat makers, it seems, have more appetite for risk than their doughy counterparts. Cake for brekkie kids?

MB

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Its raining bread mixes. Hallelujah!

I finally got my big bake-off out of the way and now another brand is about to hit the market.  A company called FG Roberts is launching a new mix that turns into a real live dough that can be sculpted into rolls, loaves, french sticks etc.

It looks yummy from their pics but of course the proof of the pudding (or bread) is in the baking. Hopefully this brand will also be readily available in the supermarket – adding to the four or five brands now on the shelves.

And of course its not just new bread mixes storming into the health-food section. According to a recent report on supermarket trends issued by Datamonitor, gluten-free product launches have doubled since 2005, especially with “major consumer packaged goods companies now jumping on the bandwagon,” it says.

This is good and bad news. The good news is that we have more choice than ever, with gluten free bread, snacks and treats popping up all over the place – even in the fresh and frozen food sections you can buy ready-made pasta, crepes, and chicken nuggets.

The bad news is that with major consumer packaged goods companies diving in for their share of the spoils, some of our choices might actually dwindle. I was hunting around the health food section of Coles the other day for my favourite brand of dairy and gluten free custard and the only product on the shelves was a mainstream brand of GF custard that contained milk.

It reminded me of a recent visit to UK where shelves were stuffed with all manner of delicious (and expensive) ready-made gluten free cakes and breads but very few actual ingredients or mixes for do-it-yourself types with multiple intolerances.

Is this a glimpse of the future in Australia where those with multiple sensitivities may lose their favourite products as big manufacturers jump in with gluten free products that only partially address their needs?

Fingers crossed this doesn’t happen here and in the meantime I guess we’ll just have to keep voting for our favourite products with our dollars and good sense.

LH

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With the silly season now just a guilty food memory, I trudged back to my local Woolworths this week with a sensible shopping list in hand and plans to stock up on the basics.

Stoically I made way to the gluten free section hoping for inspiration… but instead all I got was shoppers block.

Why was this so? A bit of on-the-spot soul searching was called for.

Now that I thought about it, the pre-Christmas shopping frenzy had found me straying further from home than usual, and often into the aisles of Woolies competitor, Coles.

The health food sections of both stores seemed to be about the same size, so what was going on?

I decided to do an amateur analysis of shelf content right then and there at my local and this is what I found:

- half of the space was taken up by cereal, nuts and snack bars in equal measure;

- one quarter of it was taken up by gluten free chips and chip-like kiddie snacks;

- just a quarter of the shelf space was allocated to miscellaneous gluten free products like cake mixes, pasta and flour.

The quantity of chippy snacks seemed especially out of proportion to their importance in a healthy diet. Likewise the snack bars and cake mixes.

Coles’ gluten free section in contrast, seemed to have more variety and we at GFF also sniffed out some gluten free products spreading to other parts of the store including chicken nuggets and pizzas.

Coles also now stocks some of the more innovative gluten free products that emerged at last year’s gluten free expos including new Freelicious crackers, pancake mixes and  pastry.

Woolies, in contrast, re-brands quite a few products under its own gluten free Freefrom banner and few new products of any note have been added to its shelves in the two stores closest to me.

With my very unscientific comparison complete, I hope to take this inquiry several steps further this year.

I will put some questions to those at Woolworths HQ to get the low down their gluten free strategies and those of other retailers also.

After all, the stuff our local shops carry can make such a difference to our gluten free palates.

MB

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I probably won’t shock anyone by noting that gluten free products cost nearly three times as much as their gluten-based equivalents. 

A recent Canadian study found that gluten free products on average cost 242% more.

Today I poked around my local supermarket on a mission to put these stats to the test and found that a couple of the basics actually cost five times as much.

At Woolworths, an unbranded white loaf of bread costs $1.10 compared to $5.70 for the gluten free equivalent.

And while you could bag 500g of no name pasta for a mere 60c, the cheapest gluten free pack – found in the family unfriendly size of 250g – is $1.50.

And these are just the basics. If you want specialty items from far flung suppliers, whack shipping costs on top. 

Why is this so? We at GFF asked this question of some of the local manufacturers. This was their combined response:

1. A smaller customer base means lower production runs, a smaller scale of manufacturing, less automation and therefore higher margins

2. The main gluten free grains, corn and rice, are more expensive – one supplier said three times as expensive – than wheat because they are not produced in anywhere near the volumes

3. Australia also saw its smallest rice crop in history last year, further inflating prices

4. Because production runs are smaller, these ingredients are also bought in lower volumes which means less discounting

5. Gluten free products require extra ingredients such as xanthan gum and guar gum to achieve the same texture as their wheat based counterparts

6. Also, to get the taste and texture right, extra production steps are needed, making manufacturing more challenging and complicated

7. To top this off, in order to declare their product gluten free, manufacturers must adhere to strict guidelines around storage and traceability so everything must be tested and certified

8. Some retailers may also mark up gluten free products, as they would niche gourmet products, however opinions were mixed on this.

So there you have it.

MB

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