Gluten Free

[jonboy29]

Hi guys. ive just became a new member after reading comments from some regarding gluten, expats and thailand. I live in phang nga near phuket and have just been told by my doc's to go on a gluten free diet. has any one got any tips on where i cant get gluten free foods. I know its boring but i have to give up beer and thats bad enough, so any healp would be appreciated. Cheers

[thaigerd]

Just couple of weeks ago I saw quite a few gluten free products in CARREFOUR here in Phuket.

Gerd

[jfchandler]

The CarreFour stores in BKK stock a couple different boxed brands of gluten free bread and baking mixes.. Brand name is Basco..

Villa Markets stock a decent selection of other kinds of gluten free products, including cereals. And they sometimes have things like gluten-free bread flours, though they're really hit and miss. All the stores have plenty of rice and corn flour, which are gluten-free.

Having lived here for a couple of years, my impression is that it's tough to find pre-prepared gluten free foods. It's more a matter of making a list of the various raw gluten free food that you like/enjoy, and then working those into your shopping and cooking plans.

[polecat]

Mrs polecat is a coeliac, so I sympathise with you jonboy29.

Afraid we're in BKK, so may be of limited help. However, if other coeliacs are drawn to this thread, here are some tips:

1) Bread: you ain't going to get it. Nowhere does gluten free bread, so you have to make it yourself. This isn't so bad, really as Ogran do a couple of flours that are available from Villa.

2) Pasta: No sweat. Gluten free pasta is available. We get ours, along with gluten free cookies from an excellent little store on Sukhumvit 19 called Maison du Vins. Go down 19, past the Honey Hotel and it's about 10 yards on your left.

3) Cereal. Gluten free cornflakes by Nature's Path, and a couple called Koala Crunch and Gorilla Munch by some Australian brand I can't remember. All available from Central Chitlom and Carrefour Rama IV.

4) Snickers. Yes, you can eat Snickers. But not Mars.

5) Cake. There are some little microwave all-in-one cake mixes called Magic Cake. They are made here and exported to Canada. About 4 flavours. Delicious. About 70 baht. From Central Chitlom and other places.

6) Corn/rice cakes. Made by Ogran again, I think. Mrs p lives on these. Can be pricey, so look out for offers which are frequent. Central Chidlom & Villa.

7) Sausages. Central Chidlom make sausages without any wheat content. Ask them to point them out. We'd always thought they were the best sausages here anyway, even before she was diagnosed.

Good luck.

[jfchandler]

3) Cereal. Gluten free cornflakes by Nature's Path, and a couple called Koala Crunch and Gorilla Munch by some Australian brand I can't remember. All available from Central Chitlom and Carrefour Rama IV.

The Koala Crunch and Gorilla Munch gluten free cereals, both pretty good though targeted to kids, also are pretty reliably available from Villa Markets in BKK...

[cathyy]

If you end up having to make a lot of replacement food items there are numerous websites that specialize in GFCF baking and cooking.

Traditional Foods has a gluten free section.

Frugal Abundance is written by a gluten free lady, so all her recipes are gluten-free.

King Arthur has a good selection of gluten free items used in baking. For more, just Google "gluten free" and surf away. There are many recipe blogs and places to order the things you will need for home baking like xantham gum and spelt flour.

[jfchandler]

I have an interest in baking gluten-free, yeast-free bread at home in my DAK bread machine. So I'm always on the look-out for appropriate raw materials to use here.

While CarreFour stocks gluten-free Basco boxed bread mix, which can be used in a regular oven or a bread machine, and turns out pretty well, it's hard to find regular gluten-free bread/baking flours around these parts. Sometimes Villa Market will stock a gluten-free Orgran brand flour or Arrowhead Mills spelt flour, but that's rare these days. And Verasu shops carry their own brand of spelt flour. But overall, the choices aren't particularly great here, or very reliable. (Corn flour and white rice flour are abundant, though I haven't found particularly good bread recipies for those flours).

So on my recent trip back to the U.S., I had bread flours on my shopping list, and found a great selection at Mother's Markets in the Orange County area of Los Angeles, as well as similar products at the much more broadly located Whole Foods Markets. Both Arrowhead Mills and Bob's Red Mill brand in 1 and 2 pound packages.

So I ended up bringing back most of a suitcase filled with brown rice flour, Kamut flour, Spelt flour, oat flour, tapioca flour and a few others. (Glad for the frequent flyer extra baggage weight allotment). Some of these I've never tried using in bread baking before. But it's going to be fun experimenting and trying to narrow down what works best and what I like in terms of taste and texture.

For instance, I've made homemade oatmeal bread in the past using regular bread (wheat) flour with a cup or so of oatmeal blended in, and it was yummy, especially toasted. But I've never tried making a loaf of bread with just oat flour... though the time will be coming soon.

Curiously, the 2 pound packages of Arrowhead Mills gluten free flours are sold through the company's web site in the U.S. and can be shipped in the U.S. / not direct to Thailand. But the web site prices for those 2 pound containers tended to be in the $7 to $8 range. But in the two markets, Mother's and Whole Foods, the prices were closer to $4 to $5 per 2 pound package and $2 to $3 for 1 pound package. I guess Arrowhead Mills isn't aspiring to do a lot of business through their web site with prices like those.

[jfchandler]

Thanks to Polecat, I've now found "Gluten-Free Heaven" in BKK....

Read this related post and accompanying photos....