Business booming for gluten-free products

Some gluten-free foods still taste "like cardboard," but others are indistinguishable from those with wheat, Ehlers said.

Like many in the business, Linda Kramer, 44, opened her grocery store, Gluten-Free Trading Co., in Milwaukee with a personal motivation. She had spent years scouring health food and other stores for gluten-free products for her husband and never found a place that carried them consistently.

She first offered crackers, cookies, cereal, baking mixes and pasta. The enterprise became even more fitting after her own diagnosis of celiac disease in 2000. In 2005, she moved to quarters that could hold more items, including frozen pizzas, chicken nuggets and ice cream cones. One rack holds a half-dozen kinds of gluten-free beer, which is made with sorghum instead of wheat and barley.

Sacramento, Calif.-based Dowd and Rogers, soup maker Kettle Cuisine in Chelsea, Mass., and Mary's Gone Crackers in Gridley, Calif., are all run by celiac sufferers or their relatives.

More improvements in gluten-free cooking are under way, said Carol Fenster, the Denver-area author of "1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes."

Using Expandex, a modified tapioca starch introduced in the U.S. about two years ago, imparts a texture more like wheat's, makes baked goods rise higher and improves their shelf life, Fenster said. She has developed chocolate cake, brownie and other mixes for Bob's Red Mill in Milwaukie, Ore. New flour blends that include sorghum and sweet rice flour also make gluten-free baked goods more supple.

Fenster also suggests techniques like starting French bread in a cold oven. It rises as the oven warms and it dries on the outside, just a little, which provides the kind of crispy crust not usually possible without wheat.

"We miss crunchy, chewy things on a gluten-free diet," said Fenster, who is wheat-intolerant herself.

Grosse Pointe, Mich., resident Lindsay Calhoun, 31, remembers eating mashed potatoes "all day" when she was diagnosed with celiac disease five years ago.

"Year by year, it's gotten a bit better," she said.

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