WHAT IS GLUTEN?

As I sad before, I owned and run a Brazilian restaurant in Woodland Hills, CA where I cooked delicious recipes inspired from the vibrant culture of Brazil.

Of course we had to serve the pao-de-queijo in our restaurant. The relatioship Brazilians have with it borders on obsessive. I didn't know how to make them thou. For some reason I always thought that was too much time consuming and hard to make them. My mom used to make them all the time and serve with coffee. She was native of the beautiful state of Minas Gerais place where the pao-de-queijo was originated. There was nobody in the world better than my mom to give me the recipe and teach me how to make it.

Very soon, our cheese bread rolls (pao-de-queijo) was a complete success in our restaurant! It was great and a rewarding feeling to see our American customers popping them in their mouth one after another. There is something special about this little breads. They are very different from the majority of cheese breads. You have to try them to understand what I'm talking about.

One of our customers asked me: Is this cheese bread gluten-free? Well, I had no clue what gluten was. I never heard that word before. The lady didn't tell me much about gluten. She just told me that she was celiac and she couldn't eat anything with wheat, barley or rye.
Since "pao-de-queijo" is made entirely with tapioca starch, they are naturally and completely gluten-free.

At the end of the day, as soon as I got home from the restaurant I run to the computer to research and learn more about gluten. Here is what I found:

Gluten, in its most simplest definition, is a kind of protein that tends to exist in wheat, oat, rye and barley. Eating foods containing gluten causes damage to the small intestine in people primarily suffering from celiac or gluten intolerance. However, the diet can also help those with:

Autism
ADHD
Fibromyalgia
Dermatitis Herpetiformis

This is how I started my jorney on producing delicious GF products.

I hope my blog helpes answer the question - "What is Gluten" - and explain why some people need to avoid it.