I am a super sensitive celiac.
That means I react to trace amounts of gluten that the average celiac doesn't react to.
It used to be worse.
Much worse.
Back before hubby and I started Glutamine therapy to heal my leaky gut and his indigestion, I couldn't even be in the same room with someone who was eating something with gluten.
I was just that sensitive.
Today, it's not that bad, so I'm really, really grateful that I can handle a few certified gluten-free products, such as Barilla's gluten-free lasagne noodles.
The Problem with Gluten-Free Products
The problem with gluten-free products isn't always gluten.
Sometimes, the problem is fiber.
No matter what the media says about gluten-free food being totally lacking in fiber, vitamins, and minerals, that just isn't true.
Most gluten-free products are loaded with fiber, especially gluten-free pasta.
What they lack is fortification.
For ordinary bread products, manufacturers return a few vitamins and minerals to some of their products that were stripped during processing, but since gluten-free products are not fortified, the media likes to give manufacturers a hard time.
If you check out the ingredients on a variety of gluten-free products, you're going to discover that most of them are not made with white-rice flour. Most of them are made with:
- brown rice flour
- sorghum flour
- millet flour
- quinoa flour
- flaxseed meal
- and even psyllium husks
That's bad news for someone like me:
I violently react to whole grains. I can't handle the fiber, so it makes my diet even more limited.
What are Barilla's Gluten-Free Lasagne Noodles Ingredients?
We tried some of the more popular brands, brands that people swear by, but they were horrible, as well as rough on the digestion.
We absolutely do not like brown rice pastas.
And the corn-and-quinoa variety isn't any better.
Corn and quinoa doesn't cook up very soft and falls apart when you try to cook it longer than the directions tell you to. Plus, it gives me a stomach ache.
For awhile, we were getting by with DeBoles rice-flour lasagne noodles made with brown-rice extract. They were thick and a bit gummy, and got super-soft each time we tried to reheat them, but were okay when craving lasagne.
However, a few years ago, DeBoles changed their recipe and started using brown-rice flour, which I don't do well with. Even though rice is the cleanest gluten-free grain, I have to stick with white rice over brown.
This meant I had to give up our beloved lasagne or figure out how to make a homemade gluten-free lasagne noodle myself using white-rice flour and tapioca.
Luckily, I don't have to!
A couple of weeks ago, I ran into a post online that was discussing Barilla's Gluten-Free Lasagne Noodles, so I was thrilled to discover that Barilla recently came out with an oven-ready gluten-free lasagne noodle that's made with GMO-free corn flour and white-rice flour.
There's also some mono and diglycerides in there, but that's it.
NO WHOLE GRAINS! NO GMO CORN!
Which means that, not only are they a perfect replica of the semolina pasta that we grew up on, but they won't force me to live in the bathroom for a couple of days or drive my ears crazy just to satisfy my cravings for lasagne.
But How Does Barilla Gluten-Free Lasagne Noodles Taste?
Okay. So the pasta is made with safe ingredients, at least for me, but how do these gluten-free lasagne noodles taste?
Does the lasagne, once made up, taste like real lasagne?
Or is it just, "good for gluten free?"
First off --
I don't do: "Good for gluten free."
So, you're never going to hear that one from me. Yes, I settled for DeBoles brown-rice extract pasta at one time, but totally side stepped the brown rice variety.
I expect our gluten-free food to taste as good as it can be.
In addition:
Not everything is going to replicate well or exactly as what you used to eat before because manufacturers can't replace the flavor of wheat yet, but they can come pretty darn close -- and these gluten-free lasagna noodles do exactly that!
They are absolutely divine!
Hubby couldn't stop talking about just how good the lasagne made with these noodles was.
It even reheated well without going overly soft!
Better reheated in the oven, instead of the microwave, but still . . .
These are literally the best gluten-free lasagne noodles that we have ever had.
They make you feel normal.
How Expensive are They?
Most gluten-free pastas are pretty expensive, making it difficult to feed your entire family gluten free. However, Barilla has formed their lasagna noodles into thin, flat sheets, and packed them into 10-ounce boxes, the perfect size for filling up a 9x13 pan.
You can feed your family with just a single box of gluten-free pasta.
We paid a little more than $2 for that box at Walmart. I've also seen them at Target. In addition, you can also pick up these gluten-free lasagna noodles online at Amazon.
Since there's just two of us, I never make a 9x13 pan. I have a Lasagna pan that took only 9 of the 15 pasta sheets.
These cost only slightly more than traditional lasagna noodles, making them move from the "treat" category I had lasagna in and into the everyday category.
I can afford to make lasagna all I want now, as I'm no longer paying $5 for a small box of gluten-free pasta.
You can feed your family with just a single box of gluten-free pasta.
We paid a little more than $2 for that box at Walmart. I've also seen them at Target. In addition, you can also pick up these gluten-free lasagna noodles online at Amazon.
Since there's just two of us, I never make a 9x13 pan. I have a Lasagna pan that took only 9 of the 15 pasta sheets.
These cost only slightly more than traditional lasagna noodles, making them move from the "treat" category I had lasagna in and into the everyday category.
I can afford to make lasagna all I want now, as I'm no longer paying $5 for a small box of gluten-free pasta.
Gluten-Free Classification?
The pasta is certified to contain up to 10 ppm of gluten. The certification means that the pasta is guaranteed to contain 10 ppm, or LESS. The pasta is made in a "dedicated gluten-free plant," so it probably contains much less than 10 ppm of gluten.
This is different from Barilla's Gluten-Free Pasta line, which is said to be processed on a dedicated line, but not in a dedicated facility.
What You Need to Know Before You Cook These Gluten-Free Lasagne Noodles
Some reviews have talked about the noodles not cooking up very soft, or not cooking consistently, so I'm going to talk about what I did to avoid these issues.
Keep in mind that these are OVEN-READY lasagna noodles. Like the oven-ready wheat variety, they cook in the oven by coming in contact with a liquid.
You can't just toss them into your pan and expect them to magically cook up that way.
The directions tell you that you need to make sure that sauce comes in contact with both sides of the noodles. However, the recipe on the back of the box doesn't go to that extreme, and just called for 2 jars of marinara sauce for a 9x13 pan.
I cooked them exactly like I used to make the oven-ready semolina, and they came out just fine.
I put a hefty amount of sauce on the bottom of the pan before I put in my first layer of noodles. The recipe calls for 1 cup, but I used about that much for a smaller pan. I have always made oven-ready lasagne noodles that way.
The sauce needs to be thinner than a traditional thick lasagne sauce because the water in the sauce is going to cook the noodles. Hence, the recipe on the back of the noodle box calls for marinara sauce.
However, you don't want the sauce super thin either. About the thickness that you'll find in a good-quality jarred sauce.
I made my sauce from scratch. I didn't add extra water to the tomato sauce (I used two 16 ounce cans) and I only cooked the sauce for about 30 minutes instead of an hour.
Instead of using ricotta cheese, like the recipe recommended, I used a layer of full-fat cottage cheese, due to the extra liquid in there, and used a little more than I normally use, so I could spread it out better.
Low-fat cottage cheese contains less cream.
I used part-skim mozzarella cheese in between each layer. I didn't have sauce touching the underside of the middle or top layer of noodles. Only on the bottom of the pan.
I layered sauce, cottage cheese, mozzarella and used more sauce than I ordinarily would have -- my whole recipe for the lasagna-sized pan. The lasagna noodles soaked up the sauce, without being drippy, so this was the perfect amount to use.
Instead of baking it at 350 degrees for just an hour, I baked it for an extra 15 minutes, (75 minutes total), and then let it sit in the oven for another half an hour waiting for hubby to get home from work.
I'm thinking that those who complained about the noodles being crunchy just didn't cook the lasagna long enough and might not have put enough sauce on the bottom of the pan.
The extra sturdiness of the noodles helps the noodles hold their shape when you cut the lasagna and lift it out of the pan.
It presented beautifully!
These noodles did not fall apart!
We live at sea level now, so keep your altitude in mind when cooking up the noodles.
You might need to add a little bit of water to the bottom of the casserole just before you pop the lasagna into the oven (for wheat pasta I used to add 2 to 4 tablespoons of water) if your sauce is thick or if you live at a higher altitude.
Since my diet is pretty limited, it's difficult to find products that I can recommend, but Barilla Gluten-Free Lasagne Noodles is a huge exception to that!
Certified up to 10 ppm and created in a dedicated gluten-free plant, these tasty life-like gluten-free noodles are economical enough to serve to your entire family, or even guests, making your gluten-free lifestyle just a little bit easier.
Keep in mind that these are OVEN-READY lasagna noodles. Like the oven-ready wheat variety, they cook in the oven by coming in contact with a liquid.
You can't just toss them into your pan and expect them to magically cook up that way.
The directions tell you that you need to make sure that sauce comes in contact with both sides of the noodles. However, the recipe on the back of the box doesn't go to that extreme, and just called for 2 jars of marinara sauce for a 9x13 pan.
I cooked them exactly like I used to make the oven-ready semolina, and they came out just fine.
I put a hefty amount of sauce on the bottom of the pan before I put in my first layer of noodles. The recipe calls for 1 cup, but I used about that much for a smaller pan. I have always made oven-ready lasagne noodles that way.
The sauce needs to be thinner than a traditional thick lasagne sauce because the water in the sauce is going to cook the noodles. Hence, the recipe on the back of the noodle box calls for marinara sauce.
However, you don't want the sauce super thin either. About the thickness that you'll find in a good-quality jarred sauce.
I made my sauce from scratch. I didn't add extra water to the tomato sauce (I used two 16 ounce cans) and I only cooked the sauce for about 30 minutes instead of an hour.
Instead of using ricotta cheese, like the recipe recommended, I used a layer of full-fat cottage cheese, due to the extra liquid in there, and used a little more than I normally use, so I could spread it out better.
Low-fat cottage cheese contains less cream.
I used part-skim mozzarella cheese in between each layer. I didn't have sauce touching the underside of the middle or top layer of noodles. Only on the bottom of the pan.
I layered sauce, cottage cheese, mozzarella and used more sauce than I ordinarily would have -- my whole recipe for the lasagna-sized pan. The lasagna noodles soaked up the sauce, without being drippy, so this was the perfect amount to use.
Instead of baking it at 350 degrees for just an hour, I baked it for an extra 15 minutes, (75 minutes total), and then let it sit in the oven for another half an hour waiting for hubby to get home from work.
I'm thinking that those who complained about the noodles being crunchy just didn't cook the lasagna long enough and might not have put enough sauce on the bottom of the pan.
The extra sturdiness of the noodles helps the noodles hold their shape when you cut the lasagna and lift it out of the pan.
It presented beautifully!
These noodles did not fall apart!
What if You Live at Higher Altitude?
We live at sea level now, so keep your altitude in mind when cooking up the noodles.
You might need to add a little bit of water to the bottom of the casserole just before you pop the lasagna into the oven (for wheat pasta I used to add 2 to 4 tablespoons of water) if your sauce is thick or if you live at a higher altitude.
Highly Recommend Barilla Gluten-Free Lasagne Noodles
Since my diet is pretty limited, it's difficult to find products that I can recommend, but Barilla Gluten-Free Lasagne Noodles is a huge exception to that!
Certified up to 10 ppm and created in a dedicated gluten-free plant, these tasty life-like gluten-free noodles are economical enough to serve to your entire family, or even guests, making your gluten-free lifestyle just a little bit easier.
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