Gluten Free Review: Udi's Gluten-Free Bagels

I've been gluten-free since January 5th of this year, and one thing that I've been struggling with is breakfast. I'm just not an oatmeal in the morning type of girl. I don't have a problem with oatmeal, and I do have it for breakfast occasionally. Since going gluten-free, I'll have a bowl of oat bran with fruit some mornings, leftovers from dinner on others. One morning I totally, no lie, made myself some risotto. I was having greek yogurt with gf granola, but I've been having issues with dairy, so I'm staying away from it as much as possible. Really, I'm more of a bagel with cream cheese person. When gluten went bye-bye, so did my preferred breakfast.

I'd heard such terrible things about gluten-free breads: they taste like death, they have no taste at all, they have a metallic aftertaste, they are very expensive, they go bad very quickly, etc. I wasn't planning on every buying any pre-made gluten-free breads, especially after discovering the Bob Red Mill's Homemade Wonderful Gluten-Free Bread Mix was, in fact, rather wonderful. Plus, I never ate very much bread anyway, even when I ate gluten. But when shopping yesterday, I spied these gluten-free bagels from Udi's. They were expensive, $6 for 4 bagels, but I'm already used to gluten-free items costing more. They looked like real bagels! So we brought them home.

They look like stale bread when you split them open, and I must confess I didn't have high hopes when I put one in the toaster. When it popped up and smelled like, well, bread, I was happy. I slathered it with low-fat cream cheese flavored with sun-dried tomatoes (I make my own using tomatoes dried from my mom's garden!). It was good! Great, even! Hurray! The texture is very similar to a "real" bagel, and they toasted up very nicely.

At $6 for 4, I won't be having these daily for breakfast, but I'll definitely be having them occasionally as a treat. I bet these would be great for sandwiches, too, so I'm sure Nick will be happy about that... if I don't eat 'em all before he has a chance to find out! If you are interested in trying them yourself, you can get a $1-off coupon by visiting the Udi's website.

I was inspired to search for gluten-free bagel recipes, figuring I could probably make these myself, so I will be experimenting with bagel-making in the near future. I'll post the results here, once I've tried. Do you have a favorite gluten-free product?