I can no longer eat gluten, and would like to make a bread – flat or otherwise – that doesn’t have to be toasted to make it palatable. I’m especially open to breads from around the world that have never relied on wheat, and for which gluten has never been an important element.
Amas, Portland, Oregon, US
Great question, Amas: it’s pretty tough to find gluten-free bread that doesn’t need the help of a bit of reheating or toasting before you eat it. There are so many great flatbreads and/or pancakes out there – made from everything from cornflour or masa harina (Arepas and tortillas) to rice flour (pancakes) or teff (injera) or chickpea/gram flour – but they always benefit from a quick warm-through in a hot pan before serving; other ingredients to look out for include buckwheat, sorghum and quinoa, all of which are gluten-free grains or seeds.

Bread-wise, it’s a good idea to home in on recipes that get much of their substance from root veg – beetroot or carrot, say, bulked out with seeds and gluten-free oats: some such recipes may well ask for flour, but if it’s only a relatively small amount, simply try substituting it with gluten-free flour and things will probably work out just fine.

And if you want something that stays good to eat once it’s baked, and that doesn’t require the faff of reheating, you could do a lot worse than gluten-free crackers made with chickpea flour and cornflour or Scandinavian seed crackers, which use a mixture of seeds, a cornflour slurry and can be flavoured with a hard cheese like parmesan or gluten-free miso. They’re much crisper than bread, of course, but they work really well with dips or simply to snack on just as they are.