I love that more and more Atlanta-area restaurants are adding gluten-free sandwich bread and hamburger/hot dog buns to their menus. I can’t tell you how hard it is to find these replacement breads and how rewarding it is to sink your teeth into a burger on a bun, or a BLT on toasted bread; however, it has come to my attention that not all restaurants know how to properly store or prepare it, so I feel compelled to offer my advice.
Having worked with numerous local restaurants, I am here to tell you that dealing with gluten-free breads is counterintuitive. Wheat-y bread can sit on the counter for days without molding or in the refrigerator without going stale. This is not the case with gluten-free bread for a couple of reasons – gluten-free bread does not contain the level of preservatives needed to keep it from molding, nor does it have the additives necessary to keep it from going stale.
The most important thing to know about gluten-free bread is to keep it in the freezer until it is needed. Yes, the freezer, not the counter, or the refrigerator. Gluten-free bread will start to mold after a few days on the counter. Storing it in the refrigerator is a bad idea because it leads to stale/hard bread that is hard to work with and doesn’t taste great. It is always best to go from freezer straight to the oven or cook top. Gluten-free bread is designed to go from the freezer to the oven and be ready to go in under five minutes.
So, how do you heat it so you can work with it? Well, there are a couple of ways to go. Heat it on the grill top on a piece of foil and use a clean utensil (fresh gloves too). Do not butter it with shared butter because gluten crumbs will transfer making it unsafe for those following a gluten-free diet. Another idea is to heat it in the oven wrapped in tin foil until soft. The bread should be soft and without any hard spots. If the bread/bun is still hard, continue to heat until it is ready.
I have had to send back hamburger buns twice because it wasn’t properly heated leaving it hard and unappetizing. If you try to heat stale gluten-free bread it tastes horrible, loses its texture and becomes crumbly, and it will get sent back.
Write up heating instructions and put them up in the kitchen for all to see and follow. Turnover is a growing problem in the restaurant industry, so make sure new employees are familiar with and trained on how to handle gluten-free products. The first line on the instruction should be – change gloves and wash hands before handling any gluten-free breads.
Do it right the first time and you win over a customer. Do it wrong and word may get around that your restaurant doesn’t know what it is doing.
