MEAL TICKET. Saying it with flour

A toasty baguette, a flaky croissant, a pillowy éclair: France is a vast map of baked goods. Bread has as many iterations and flavours as anyone could imagine, none of which is industrial air and imitation brown colouring. The country consumes 320 baguettes every second and bread is so much a staple that when I went on a low-carb, no-bread diet, a horrified friend said, “But you weel die!”. If ever there was a place that might be described as aggressively gluten-tolerant, it would be France. For people with wheat allergies, gluten intolerance or coeliac disease, the country might seem like a relentless onslaught of glorious things they can’t ingest or be around. But it’s easier than you might think.

When a friend who doesn’t eat gluten came to visit four years ago, I had to rack my brains. It’s not that all food in France is bready, but all the things tourists like to eat and instagram usually are designer raspberry-and-apricot éclairs, croissants, madeleines, local craft beers, and rows and rows of viennoiserie (pastries). But meals turned out to be surprisingly easy, if one could forgo dessert and the bread basket. To name a few, steak-frites, bouillabaisse, boeuf bourguignon, blanquette de veau , and raclette are gluten-free dishes (though sauces may be thickened with flour). Other French specialities such as oysters, snails, pâté, foie gras, mussels, cheese and ham are safe too. Perhaps the simplest option is savoury crêpes, or galettes, which are made with buckwheat (labelled sarrasin or ble noir ). As a bonus, macarons and meringues are also gluten-free (though it’s worth checking that they haven’t been bulked up with wheat flour). And we discovered a small but determined crop of gluten-free bakeries and cafés even in this gluten-ous city: Helmut Newcake, Chambelland and Noglu.

Since then, in just a few years, the tag ‘sans gluten’ has moved from dedicated bakeries and natural food shops to just about everywhere: Restaurant menus, delivery websites, supermarket shelves. Though avoiding gluten if you’re not allergic or a coeliac sufferer is unnecessary (in the eyes of the French, absurd and masochistic), well-made, gluten-free products are pretty delicious and oblige chefs to bring out the flavours of unusual ingredients. Parisian bakers have risen to the challenge by highlighting what they already had on offer — almond tart bases, chestnut-flour cookies, egg custard tarts — as well as presenting new inventions such as rice-flour banana bread, gluten-free vegan crumbles and bean-paste cookies. It’s partly a shift in the way people, especially the young, want to eat and partly the result of the growing popularity of other cuisines. With cornmeal arepas, rice bibimbaps, sushi burritos and kale crisps around, skipping wheat doesn’t seem like a privation.

Skipping wheat doesn’t have to mean skipping the bread, though. Parisian bakers are working to provide non-wheat breads, relying on traditional flours like rye, buckwheat or chestnut. These are a far cry from that heavy, crumbly supermarket stuff full of gummy preservatives and dough enhancers, even though they can’t manage to mimic the texture of ordinary wheat bread.

Many outlets of the Eric Kayser chain of bakeries (there are 21 locations), for instance, sell gluten-free breads. Though not everything is gluten-free, Kayser doesn’t mess around with cross-contamination: Allergens are labelled, and the sans gluten breads are baked in a different lab and wrapped in two bags to be safe. Chambelland boulangerie, in the 11th arrondissement, is gluten free; they use their own mill to grind organic flours made from rice, buckwheat, sorghum and millet in the south of France. Since these flours don’t allow for a good shape or rise, Chambelland bakes breads in thin, long moulds. The rice-and-buckwheat sourdough is delicious, even if the five-seed iteration (poppy, sesame, two kinds of linseed and sunflower) makes you feel like a bird. The orange-blossom-scented sweet loaf is another winner.

Flourless: In Foucade, the ingredients are gluten and dairy-free, and vegetables such as beetroot and sweet potato is used in their products

For more delicate patisserie I liked to go to Helmut Newcake, run by chef Marie Tagliaferro. Customers atop macaron-shaped bar stools tuck into choux pastry domes, éclairs, tartelettes, and rhubarb and lemon meringue tarts, burnished with gold leaf or brushed with lemon glazes. Newer bakeries like Clémentine Oliver, Sitron and Gâté (hat tip to the sponge cake with cactus compote) also sell gluten-free bread, patisserie, soup, salad and quiches. At Mon Éclair on the rue des Acacias, you can customise your rice or corn flour éclair with a base filling (caramelised apples, praline or mango), a cream (cheesecake, caramel ganache, lemon curd), and a topping of caramelised almonds or lime meringue.

Meanwhile at Foucade, the ingredients are not only gluten-free, many are dairy-free, and, as a bonus, the chef uses vegetables (beetroot and sweet potato, for example) in many of the flavourings. Bears and Raccoons (to run with the animal theme, get the Grumpy Bear pastrami and pickle sandwich) serves gluten-free sandwiches, brownies, muffins and even beer. Even in smaller neighbourhoods, non-specialist bakeries such as Pain Pain in Montmartre and Panifica in the 9th arrondissement are hawking “low gluten” breads. And Noglu, a restaurant so on-trend it’s even got a branch in New York, will make a birthday cake and deliver wheat-free picnic boxes in case any gluten-allergics get hungry during a walk in the park. Coeliac sufferers needn’t worry: everyone gets a piece of the pie in Paris.

Naintara Maya Oberoi

Naintara Maya Oberoi is a food writer based in New Delhi @naintaramaya

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