Going Without Bread

Bread. Warm, fresh out of the oven, home baked bread. Toasted and smothered in butter and jam, bread. Does it even get any better than that?

Something I've given up eating over the past year is bread. Despite being a massive bread eater most of my life. When I was little and impatient for dinner, mum would say have a piece of bread. When I spent as many hours riding my bike as I possibly could, and then stuffing myself with as many carbs as I could manage to keep going, bread was a staple. I could put away a loaf in no time at all. I used to go to bed of an evening, already looking forward to my next meal of baked beans on toast and a strong coffee [the coffee is another story entirely]. So to say that giving up bread has been a challenge is something of an understatement. 

My problem with bread, you see, is a little protein called gluten. Found in wheat flours, it is what helps bread become stretchy and soft. Sometimes there is even extra gluten added to bread to make it a bit softer and fluffier [read: yummier]. So it's not just bread that I avoid eating, there's plenty of other foods on the list, but bread is definitely one of the more difficult foods to give up. That gluten though, it does not do good things for my body. It leaves me feeling tired, sluggish, just generally 'not good'. I know that now because I've tried going back to eating bread, and the effect is quite immediate. I also know that it will give my baby a tummy ache when I breastfeed him after eating gluten.

I've tried the usual substitutes. The tiny, ridiculously expensive loaves of gluten free bread at the supermarket, that become even tinier when they're toasted. I ate them for a while, but the fact is, they're just not the same, and the appeal just isn't there. Oh and they're ridiculously expensive [like anything made 'gluten free'], and I really couldn't justify spending $14 on two tiny little loaves of bread. So, back to the drawing board. We tried a box of bake at home gluten free bread, which was one of the strangest and most unpleasant things I've eaten. The chooks got most of that, I hope they liked it better than we did. I'm still looking into alternatives to stock standard bread, but also letting bread slip out of my life. 

Breakfast stir fry.

So, life without bread. Breakfast looks pretty different these days. If I want baked beans, they are served on cooked potato instead of bread, which is pretty good. Or eggs cooked up with potato and a few other vegies. Or a rice based breakfast [hello rice porridge, goodbye oat porridge], a breakfast stir fry is a weekend treat. And what of lunch? Sandwiches are no more, sometimes rice cakes can be a substitute, but for the most part, I end up eating leftover dinner or a more 'cooked' lunch. The food I eat is generally better than a sandwich, but it does require a bit more preparation and cooking, just like with the breakfast foods.

But I'm doing it. I've trained myself to not rely on bread as my 'go to' easy food. If it didn't affect my body adversely I'd be back to eating it in a flash. But it does, so I'm not. And I'm getting used to life without bread. It's all good, it's just different. 

Do you avoid eating gluten? Do you have any suggestions for yummy bread substitutes? Or are you a bread lover from way back [like I was..]?