30 Days without Gluten?

Giving up gluten was one of the most challenging dietary changes I experimented with, not only as a professional cook, but also as a “mood-based” eater.

Let me back up, and give you some context:

Somehow I’ve managed to land a dream job that allows me to think about food and recipes all day long.

One unanticipated side effect of this particular role is that the work itself makes me ravenous, all day and every day.

I’ll wake up in the morning, make some coffee, and begin reviewing hundreds of incredible photos and videos of dishes from our chefs and from other cooks around the world.

I probably spend more time than the average person thinking about what I would like to cook and eat in the context of the mood and the weather, where my average resting hunger level (on a scale of 1-10) is around eleven.

This daily routine has turned into a bit of a personal obsession with “mood-based cooking”, which isn’t always leading me to make the healthiest eating decisions.

While I love a wonderful and healthy salad, I am also a lifelong lover of pizzas, bagels, sandwiches, breads, and especially pasta.

About once a year, I’ll try to challenge myself as a cook by altering my diet for a month or so to completely avoid ingredients and try something new.

Some of this is for personal health reasons, but also because it’s important as a chef and professional cook to truly understand the diets of guests that you feed. If you are a cook that focuses mostly on meat-based protein sources, going vegetarian (or vegan) for a month can open up your eyes to an entire world of possibilities with healthy ingredients, flavors, and aromas.

Personally, I started this journey with a month of avoiding refined sugars, and found that my energy levels overall were higher. I also realized it’s hard to 100% avoid added sugars—they are hidden in a lot of the foods you find stocked on supermarket shelves!

I’ve done months where I’ve avoided all cheese and dairy products, which was difficult for me mentally, although my body probably felt better. I’ve spent months avoiding red meat, and have experimented with following a vegan diet in the past.

But speaking as someone who dreams about pasta, homemade sourdough bread (I used to bake two sourdough loaves every day, giving one or both of them away), sandwiches, and pizza, gluten felt almost too good to give up…

It wasn’t until I tried to avoid gluten entirely for a month that I realized how hard it was to avoid those traditional gluten-filled items.

There were a few new approaches and recipes that I found were great vegetable-based substitutes. For example, I used this period to buy a zucchini spiralizer to make zucchini noodles as a pasta substitute—I fell in love with some of the dishes (like the zucchini noodles shown below), which are both economical and delicious.

After 30 days, I noticed that my stomach and digestive system generally felt pretty darn great with no gluten in my life. I also lost a few pounds, which was a nice surprise.

I did find myself desperately craving carbohydrates at certain moments, for example when walking by a local bakery or wood-fired pizza place, although I wonder if this is normal.

I wish I had known how to make my own gluten-free breads at the time, but this was before I was baking and experimenting in the gluten-free world!

For our readers, I’m curious to hear more about your personal experience with gluten:

Do you follow a 100% gluten-free diet, or do you more identify as gluten-sensitive with some gluten included in your meals throughout the week?

Email me at [email protected] if you’d care to share your journey, or just to chat about baking or cooking. I’m always looking for amazing dishes to cook at home, fun ingredients, techniques, and recipes.

And in general, feel free to email me just to say Hi or ask a random question, I’d love to hear from you!

In case you wanted to start making your own sourdough bread at home, we have devised some amazing gluten-free recipes!

Making the perfect loaf is a challenge (especially a gluten-free one!). But it is easier than you think!

If you want an easy, simple, perfect bake every time…Check out this gluten-free baking guide from Bloom Healthy!

It’s an opportunity to get the incredible benefits of gluten-free sourdough for life.

Keep an eye out for our upcoming online sourdough bread baking course!

-Andy (Editor, Bloomcooking.com)

If you wanted to comment on the content in this newsletter, or had topics or recipes you wanted to have covered in the future, feel free to email me directly at: [email protected].

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