Norfolk Street Bakery Cambridge Gluten Free Bread!

I can barely contain my excitement from eating this bread - it truly is superb!

The Norfolk Street bakery is situated towards the east of Cambridge city centre, in a quiet terraced road scattered with little shops and cafes such as this. I have walked past it many times assuming I wouldn't be able to eat anything at it - but how wrong was I!

I bought a GF loaf for £3.10 (I think) which is fairly standard for GF fare, and no more expensive than the average loaf you get from a supermarket. I left happily cuddling my loaf and excited to cut into it and give it ago.

This is what it looked like- bread! It was soft but with a decent crust on it as well. The texture was light and fluffy and the taste was very good. It tasted like bread - slightly sweet with a very slightly bitter aftertaste. But still very very tasty. I was over the moon - a loaf of bread that actually tastes like bread, that is enjoyable to eat and not a chore! So often bread is just a means to an end - something I can toast and spread something on so I don't go to work without breakfast or something to hold the sandwich filling in (often very half-heartedly!). This is a loaf of bread that I can actually imagine sitting in the garden with a glass of wine and dipping in some olive oil and just eating as a nibble - because it tastes good and is pleasant to eat! I could definitely tell it was fresh as well - I was assured that it was made in the early hours of that morning!

Another slice in and I discovered a bit of a hole near the top - goes through quite a long way but not too big. I think this might be to do with proving for too long. It's not a big problem though. It looks like the loaf was baked in quite a small (width and height) but long tin and has mushroomed over the top. I quite like that though - makes it look rustic.

Anyone who lives anywhere near Cambridge and requires gluten free bread HAS to go hear ASAP! I can't believe this place is only a six minute walk from my front door!

P.S. Sorry the photos aren't great - only have my pc webcam to take photos at the moment.

Adapting to the gluten free lifestyle

This post is designed to lead on from 'Diagnosis of coeliac disease' so you should read that first.

Having received the results of my Coeliac test, the news slowly began to sink in. I gave up gluten more or less straight away, before I went to the follow up appointment or saw the dietician. At first I didn’t take it all that seriously, which was a bit of a mistake. I used the same toaster for my gluten free bread as for normal bread, and shared jars of spread with gluten crumbs. I did check ingredients lists for gluten but sometimes I bent the rules somewhat. For example, I was on a journey somewhere and I wanted one of those little packs of sushi for lunch, it said it had wheat in it from the soy sauce. I bought it anyway and just didn’t use the soy sauce, when really the sushi itself could have had soy sauce in it.

Dirty gluten crumbs

The hardest thing to give up were bread and beer. Bread was difficult because my mum was just starting to get good at baking and I couldn’t eat her bread anymore. We went on a gluten free artisan baking course to try and learn how to make nice gluten free bread. However, the course seemed to be more focused on avoiding additives and using natural ingredients than producing decent bread. If you remove gluten from bread, which normally relies on this for structure, texture and is essentially what makes bread bread, you’ve got to replace it with something. Usually this is xanthan gum, guar gum, chia seeds or egg. Some of the bread we made tasted quite nice, but they didn’t really hang together.

Giving up beer was hard because I was an ale drinker. I used to drink cider but I would often end up coughing with an itchy throat and being sick, I realised this was because I was allergic to apples and so I was left with alcoholic ginger beer as my thirst quenching beer-like drink. However, I don’t think alcoholic ginger beer is a session drink. For a long time I mainly drank wine in pubs, or wine spritzers in the summer. In summer 2014, I decided that my quality of life would increase a lot of I were able to drink cider. I take anti histamines everyday anyway, so I thought it wouldn’t be too bad, and it wasn’t. It did make my mouth a bit itchy at first, and I started off by just drinking half pints, and trying out perrys first, because I’ve always been less affected by pears than apples. Now I can drink cider with no problems at all.

I think having started being a bit slack made it more difficult to adjust to being gluten free. I visited the dietician who emphasised how important it is to be properly 100% gluten free if I want my insides to get better, even when I’m not having symptoms.

Now I have my own toaster, which I’ve written on with a sharpie:

I’ve also used toastabags when I’ve been on holiday, but at home it’s easiest just to have my own toaster since they’re only £5 from a supermarket. I also have put ‘GF’ labels on my jars of things that might end up being contaminated:

My lovely flatmate at uni was so understanding that he even put this label on one of his jars when we both had the same pesto:

I always clean up crumbs before I cook now. I do feel better than I did when I was eating gluten- the main thing is that I get ill a lot less often and when I do get ill I get better a lot quicker. My advice to newly diagnosed coeliacs would be to take the gluten free diet seriously from the offset. Try to learn how to explain the disease and answer questions that you will inevitably get:

So what is coeliac disease, is it an allergy or something? It’s not an allergy or intolerance, but an autoimmune disease where the presence of gluten in the diet triggers the immune system to attack healthy tissues in the body. This causes damage to the digestive system, which can cause diarrhoea and vomiting.

If you eat this (holds up piece of bread, for example), will you have to go to a and e? No, but I will feel pretty ill for the next couple of days and it will effect me for several months.

If it’s not that serious, why don’t you just try a sip of my beer? Or a corner of this biscuit? Because even a little bit will still make me ill!

Oh my (friend/aunt/brother) is gluten free, but they know their threshold so they can eat like one sandwich a week or a pint every other day or something… Some people with intolerances are able to tolerate a certain amount of gluten without any ill effects, it’s different for Coeliacs, even a small amount of gluten will damage my insides.

Good luck!