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I enjoy cooking!  I've always enjoyed cooking and especially making bread.  I love the smell of freshly ground wheat and hand kneading dough has always had a soothing effect on me (yeah I know I'm strange).   Since Caleb has had to go gluten free, breadmaking has become more of a challenge.  Did you know that you can't knead gluten free bread?  No really, you can't!   Gluten free bread "dough" is more like a cake batter.   For the past year I've been grinding rice and beans to mix with other flours to make a decent sandwich bread for Caleb.  (Oh, by the way,  freshly ground beans DO NOT smell anything like freshly ground wheat, just in case you were wondering :)   In the past I've always done my bread making from scratch.  No mixes and no bread machine for me.  No sir!  It just wasn't the same.  Well, I've learned that there is definitely a time and place for bread mixes and to get a really good (taste and texture) sandwich bread we've started using Gluten Free Pantry's Favorite Sandwich Bread Mix.  It really is good.  Even my "non-gluten free" family members like it, which is saying a lot.  (Because of the expense involved most of our gluten free bread is for Caleb only, but we all have to taste anything new :)  Since Caleb has been gluten free we really haven't been eating a lot of bread.  I worry about cross contaminating if I try to make whole wheat for the rest of the family and it is a real issue, because Caleb is extremely sensitive to cross contamination.  He will be sick for days with just the slightest amount of gluten.  Since I've discovered the Gluten Free Pantry's Favorite Sandwich Bread Mix I have been making about a loaf a week or sometimes every other week for Caleb.  I usually make it and let it cool on the rack, then I go ahead and slice it up into sandwich size slices and freeze it.  That way he can take out what he needs and we don't have much waste.   This bread mix is not as expensive as some of the others we've tried and it definitely has simplified things for me.  I do still grind and make my own gluten free flour mixes to use, but I keep some of this bread mix on hand for those times when I just can't seem to get everything done.  

The thing that really helps with the cost of purchasing gluten free, ready made items is the Subscribe & Save option at Amazon.com.  With Subscribe & Save you get 15% percent off of your product and also free shipping.  When I combine this feature with my Swagbucks gift cards I quite often get my shipment for under $5.  We are signed up with Subscribe & Save on several gluten free items and have them delivered at different times.  Some things come every three months and some things come every six months.  You can set up delivery any way you want, for us this spacing works better financially.  I have plenty of time between shipments to accumulate enough Swagbucks to make a real difference in total cost.   If you buy many gluten free items (flours, mixes or ready made snacks) you may want to check into this option.  For us it works.