Triumph Dining publishes The Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide, The Essential Gluten-Free Grocery Guide, and The Gluten-Free Restaurant Rescue Pack. The book titles are self-explanatory. The “rescue pack” is a set of cards you can give waiters or waitresses at restaurants that explain gluten-free cooking in very clear language.

The Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide

Sienna and I tend to travel a lot and one of our favorite things to do when we travel is eat. (Actually, I don’t need to be traveling to love eating, but that’s another story.) The Triumph Dining Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide is a listing of over 5000 restaurants in all 50 states. As of this writing, the guide is in its fourth edition and it shows. It’s exactly 500 pages long.

Basic information about each restaurant is given:

• What kind of restaurant (American, Seafood, Thai, etc.)
• Pricing ($, $$, $$$)
• What meals they are open for
• Web address, if available
• Address and phone number
• Notes (call ahead, dedicated or not, alert your server, gluten-free pizza crusts, etc.)
• GF menu or no GF menu

Restaurants are split into four groups depending on whether or not they have a gluten-free menu and whether or not they are a chain. The listings also have icons to designate the following:

• Gluten-free menu available
• Gluten-free specialty items available (beer, pasta, etc)
• Dedicated gluten-free establishment
• Chain Restaurant with a gluten-free menu

One thing that I’ve seen in other guides like this and that is missing here is driving directions from local highways. This makes it really easy to find your way to the establishment if you’re driving through a town or city.

At the end of the gluten-free guide is a section of lists and menus of 80 national and regional chains. Almost all of these have notes as well. Some of the notes are quite extensive and informative on their own. The real jewel in the crown of this book, however, is the first few chapters. These contain very helpful information about how to best deal with restaurants and waiters. Besides giving tips on how to convey information in a way that people will understand, the authors also talk about building short and long term relationships with restaurants.

The Gluten-Free Grocery Guide

This aims to be a guide that you can carry along with you to the grocery store so that you can look things up to see if they’re gluten-free or not. It is in its second edition and covers over 1,000 brands and 30,000 products.

The front section begins with an index, and continues with an introduction, a section of tips for grocery shopping, an overview of food labeling laws, and information on how best to use the guide. The guide itself is broken up into sections like most grocery stores are. So there’s a produce section, a baking supply section, a soup section, etc. At first I didn’t understand this way of organizing the book. I thought that there should be a master index at the end of the book where you could look something up. I still kind of think that there should be something like that.

However, I decided to test the book and thought of a couple of different things I might want to look up as if I were in a grocery store with the book in hand. I was able to find tamales very quickly (Prepared Meals, Trader Joe’s, Tamales, Chicken Tamales). And likewise, canned pears were easy (Canned Goods, Fruit). Bacon was just as easy (Meat, Bacon). Though I’m sure that sooner or later I would be able to stump the book, it does seem to be organized well.

The book ends with a list of common ingredients so you can see what is safe and what isn’t. The list looked pretty complete to me.

Although it’s an impressive book, I feel a lot more excited about the restaurant guide. Once you get used to reading ingredient lists and looking for all the different indicators for wheat, I think you get pretty good at it. A book like this would end up being a great supplement for people who, after reading a label, still find themselves unsure, or people who would rather consult a book than a list of ingredients.

The Gluten-Free Dining Cards

These cards are in English on one side and in other languages on the back. There are ten cards and the languages covered are: English, Chinese, French, Greek, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Thai, and Vietnamese. As I mentioned earlier, the cards lay everything out very clearly. They are broken out into three topics: I Cannot Eat, Please Check, and I Can Eat. I think the I Can Eat section is an especially great idea because often times at restaurants, when a waiter or chef is presented with a food allergy limitation, it’s like they suddenly get amnesia and can’t think of anything they could ever feed you. Most people really want to be helpful and are happy when given some advice about what would work along with being told what won’t. At the end of each card there’s a nice “Thank You” and a box with instructions about cross-contamination. The cards are awesome. I definitely plan to have one on hand when we go to Italy in September.

Wrap Up

We are simply stunned at the amount of information and level of organization of these guides. They are very high quality and provide a lot of helpful insight and advice on how to be gluten-free. The information is organized in a thoughtful manner and helpful icons are sprinkled throughout each book. Although we’re kind of on the fence about the Essential Gluten-Free Grocery Guide, we’re unabashedly excited about the Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide and the Gluten-Free Restaurant Rescue Card Pack. (Later Note: We are giving away these Gluten-Free Guides here. Enter to win!)

We want to know: Have you used either of these guides? Can you think of any uses for them that I missed? Let us know in the comments!

Times we have visited: n/a
Overall rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: n/a

Final note: We find it a little uncomfortable to be advertising a product that we’ve reviewed, but we really think we gave Triumph Dining a fair review.

The bad news: When we embarked on reviewing this book, we were discouraged by the fact that we don’t have a Zojirushi BBCC-X20 Home Bakery Supreme 2-pound Bread Machine. In the book, Roberts discusses what bread machines can be used. She notes that the V20 Zojirushi is basically interchangable with the X20. She also had people test her recipes using bread machines other than a Zojirushi. The machines she lists are Panasonic, Breadman, and Cuisinart. She notes that “Most were able to maneuver their programmable cycles to produce bread of fairly comparable taste, texture, and appearance.” (The italics are hers.) We were able to get our hands on a Zojirushi for testing and didn’t notice much of a difference in our own tests. See our Gluten-Free Bake-Off here.

We should mention that the Zojirushi BBCCX20 is on our Bread Machines for Gluten-Free Baking List. Here is another site with useful bread machine information.

Here’s the good news: We were still able to use these recipes to make delicious bread.

More about the book: Besides the Dedication and Acknowledgements and the index, the book is broken up into five chapters. Chapter one is an introductory chapter telling about the methods she used to develop the recipes in the book. The index looks like it’s pretty well built.

Chapter two talks about baking in general and includes a lot of helpful information about gluten free flours (the different kinds, what they do, how to store them, etc.), xanthan and guar gum, making substitutions, measuring, and thermometers. Chapter two also includes the basic bread flour mix she uses throughout the book. She uses millet flour, sorghum flour, cornstarch, potato starch, and tapioca flour in her base mix.

The third chapter is about using bread machines generally, and the Zojirushi BBCC-x20 bread machine specifically. She took recipes from her book Gluten-Free Baking Classics and updated them to work with a bread machine instead of baking in an oven. This includes a discussion of the main differences between the two. She also came up with ideal settings to program into the Zojirushi bread machine to make the perfect gluten free bread and presents them here.

The next two chapters are bread recipes. Chapter four includes recipes for “sandwich breads”—various recipes that use eggs and milk. Chapter five includes recipes to make bread without eggs and milk, which she calls “artisan breads.” The artisan breads are basically vegan. Roberts notes that artisan breads do not stay as flexible as sandwich breads.

Here is a list of the bread recipes in the book. Almost all of these have at least one variation. One of the recipes has a total of five variations. For example, the Multi-Grain recipe has two variations—one with pecans and another with walnuts.

Chapter Four:

• Basic Sandwich Bread
• Oatmeal Sandwich Bread
• Rye Sandwich Bread
• Pecan Sandwich Bread
• Walnut Sandwich Bread
• Multi-grain Sandwich Bread
• Cinnamon Swirl Bread
• Challah Bread
• Babka (Ukranian Style)

Chaper Five:

• French-Italian Sandwich Bread
• Oatmeal Artisan Bread
• Rye Artisan Bread
• Pecan Artisan Bread
• Walnut Artisan Bread
• Multi-Grain Artisan Bread
• Golden Italian Artisan Bread with Raisins and Fennel

You get extra points if you noticed that there are a suspicious number of duplicates in these two lists. I didn’t go over these with a fine toothed comb, but it would appear to me that, for instance, the Walnut Artisan Bread is very similar to the Walnut Sandwich Bread, just without eggs and milk. I would expect that more experienced bakers will know that they would be able to figure out how to adjust a recipe to exclude eggs and milk, but I am glad to have the assistance of someone who had the time and patience to come up with variations that work.

On to the bread. We decided to make the Walnut Artisan Bread. I should note here that our really really ridiculously good looking Head of Research for Gluten Free Portland dot Org, Sienna, made the bread and also probably saved the day by being able to figure out how to make our bread machine act as much as possible like a Zojirushi BBCC-X20 with her special program. We have a Breadman Pro bread machine. Sienna used course 2.11, which is the “Rapid White Dark 2.0 LB” setting. This was the course that most resembled the program Roberts came up with. Here are the differences: Ours had no preheating. Ours kneaded five more minutes. Ours rose ten minutes more and had two punch-downs. And last, ours baked ten minutes less. (We were able to make up for the ten minutes baking time by finishing the loaf in our toaster oven.)

Here it is on the cooling rack. You can’t really see from this angle, but the bread is shorter than most of the breads we make with this bread machine. The color is good, however.

The walnut bread is dense and delicious! The crust is perfect. The bread toasts up well, makes good sandwiches, and is amazing with some honey or humus spread on it. We both agreed that this was our most favorite gluten free bread recipe yet. Our previous champ was Gluten Free Mommy’s Gluten-Free Millet Oatmeal Bread (click here to go to the original recipe on Guten Free Mommy).

Now that we have tested to compare making these recipes with two different bread machines, including the one the author recommends, we feel more comfortable recommending it to people who don’t have a Zojirushi. We do feel that the recipes are the best we’ve had as far as flavor goes, but we’ve been a little disappointed with how well they rise.

We’re really curious about this one: Would you buy this book knowing that it’s written for only one bread machine? Would you buy a bread machine because of a book? Do you like this author? Let us know in the comments!

Times we have visited: 10+ (So your mileage may vary.)
Overall rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: Same

Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine
by Annalise G. Roberts
Surrey Books – An Agate Imprint
Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine on Amazon

“What should you do if you think you are gluten-intolerant?”

“What causes gluten-intolerance and celiac disease?”

“What are some strategies for eating gluten-free at restaurants?”

“How can you decypher food labels and medications?”

“If a food package says ‘wheat-free,’ is it gluten-free?” (No.)

“Could her lipstick be making you sick?” (Yes.)

The first four chapters of the book deal mostly with the basics, such as defining gluten intolerance and celiac disease, the symptoms of celiac disease, ways your life is going to change, what gluten is and how you can avoid it, and the possible consequences of not avoiding gluten if you have celiac disease.

Chapters five through nine build on the basics. Chapter five is about how to make your kitchen gluten-free. Six talks about different kinds of food you might find in a kitchen, like mixes, grains, pastas, frozen dinners, snack foods, or breads. Chapter seven reviews the grains, flours, and starches in more detail. So amaranth, buckwheat, Indian ricegrass, Job’s tears, millet, quinoa, ragi, sorghum, teff, the different kinds of rice flour, tapioca flour, potato flour, xanthan gum, and guar gum. It also has information about the differences between some of the flours and starches. Chapter eight is about shopping for gluten-free items. Among the topics of this chapter are where to buy flours, pricing of gluten-free items, and how to get a store to carry your gluten-free items. Chapter nine is about some non-food items you wouldn’t think about, like medicines, toothpaste, lip gloss, and other bathroom items.

I don’t want to keep going chapter by chapter, but the rest of the book includes such topics as tips for traveling, dining out, cooking, children, social events, health and nutrition, and developing coping strategies to deal with cravings or disappointments.

Finally, there are two appendices. Appendix A has tips and substitution solutions for gluten-free cooking and baking. Appendix B is an extensive directory of gluten-free businesses.

That’s a lot of ground to cover. Suzanne Bowland’s writing is pleasing and easy to read. It is the sort of reference book you might find yourself reading just for entertainment. I’ll very often pick it up to get an answer to a specific question and then find myself reading the next section. But at its heart it really is a reference book. At the end of the book is a whopping twenty-six page index, so if an answer to your question is in the book, you should be able to find it without a problem.

My one complaint with the book is that sometimes the author spends too much time answering a question that to me seems simple. For example, a question like, “Is something that is wheat free also automatically gluten-free?” seems pretty straight-forward to me, but Bowland takes a page to answer it, and she also seems to complicate the matter by talking about oat contamination. This bothered me until I realized that the book is written so that each question is answered as fully as possible in its own section. That way, a person who wants to know about one thing can look it up and get a complete answer without having to read the whole book.

While I still think it may be that this book goes into too much detail about some questions, it is very thorough, and as I said, it is an interesting read. Bowland’s writing is easy to understand and compelling. There’s something for everyone, and all the information is organized and indexed in a fashion that makes it very easy to find an answer to any question you may have. I think it would make a great addition to anyone’s gluten-free library.

We want to know: Do you have a favorite book for the gluten-free diet? How about a favorite cookbook? Let us know!

Overall rating: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars
Price compared to “regular”: Same price! But it’s a book so… Yeah.

The Living Gluten-Free Answer Book – Suzanne Bowland – 2008
ISBN-10: 1402210590 – See this book on Amazon