Enter Sami’s Bakery. This small bakery, located in Tampa, FL, offers a huge selection of wheat-free bread options. Most are vegan as well! The husband has chosen his forever and ever lunch and it centers around a Sami’s Bakery Millet & Flax Bagel. Every morning, I defrost a bagel in the oven, toast it, and smear it with homemade hummus (thanks Vitamix!), topped with black olives, artichoke hearts, and spinach. The bagel toasts up perfectly, has all of the texture and little nooks that wheaty bagels include, and has a great nutty flavor thanks to the millet and flax. I keep a stock of them in the freezer so I never run out. When you purchase them, they come fresh, not frozen though, and keep for a good while. Here in Gainesville, FL, we can get these at the local health food stores (Ward’s, Mother Earth) for about $5.50 for 6 bagels. We choose to order them online in bulk so that we can have a large quantity at once, and they’re $4.75 for 6. We usually order 4 six packs, plus a couple of packages of millet and flax buns and bread, and the shipping usually runs about $7.00 for overnight from Tampa, totaling a little over $40 for the whole box. I have friends who order this bread to Colorado and Wisconsin and they think the shipping is quite reasonable as well. 

All of the products are light and fluffy like gluten-y bread and have fooled many gluten-eaters. I’ve tried lots of different GF breads but they are usually dense and require a LOT of liquid to chew and swallow. This bread is perfect in pretty much every way, and behaves exactly like wheat bread. My only real complaint is that it’s not labeled as gluten free, since it’s not made in a dedicated bakery. That said, I have never had any issues with digesting it, nor has the husband or any other GF peep I’ve fed it to. Our local pizza place, Satchel’s Pizza,  also carries their Millet and Flax pizza crust to be topped with their fantastic pizza deliciousness and they also report no issues with their GF customers. The husband thinks that sometimes the bagel is a tiny bit dry (but nowhere near the arid desert of all other GF breads we’ve tried), and he wishes there were other varieties. He’d specifically like a sesame seed option.  The only other variety available currently is a cinnamon/raisin, which we have not tried.  Other products we’ve tried and really enjoyed include The Millet & Flax Bread, hamburger buns, millet sourdough bread, lavash, and pizza crust.

So each day, the husband treks off to work with his tiffin packed with his Sami’s bagel sandwich, dried pineapple, and random raw veggies tucked in. He’ll likely eat this for the rest of eternity or until Sami’s goes out of business, whichever comes first. If they keep making this delicious wheat-free bread, I have a feeling it will be time that is the limiting factor for my mono-diet happy husband.

Ingredients:  Organic Millet Flour, Brown Rice Flour, Water, Aluminum Free Baking Powder, Sea Salt, Organic Ground Flax Seed, Brown Sugar, Cultured Brown Rice Flour, Ascorbic Acid.

• Light and fluffy just like gluten-y bread.
• Great flavor, a little nutty from the millet and flax.
• Has actual pieces of millet and flax visible, which add a little extra texture.
• Looks just like “regular” bread, with all of the nooks for spreading deliciousness on the bagel and getting it to sink in.
• Worthy of eating every day.

• Not produced in a dedicated gluten-free bakery.
• Sometimes a little bit dry if over-toasted (true of wheat-y bread too though!).
• Limited varieties.