Pamela’s Products cookies for children and adults with Celiac Disease
By Mayer Fertig
Issue of May 15, 2009 / 14 Iyar 5769
It’s a double-whammy for children and adults with the common autoimmune 
disorder called Celiac disease or gluten intolerance. There’s a vastly curtailed menu of gluten-free items to contend with — that is, products free of wheat, semolina, durum, rye, barley, spelt and other ingredients — and many of the available substitutes only come in the taste-free variety. It’s a bland but real concern.
We didn’t set out to do an exhaustive look at decent kosher substitutes for products with glutens — there is more than one — but one brand crossed our line of sight and we decided to tell you about it.
Pamela’s Products in Ukiah, CA (about two hours north of San Francisco) makes a delicious line of packaged cookies that are OU-Dairy that anyone can enjoy. The company sent a boxful that we intended to offer to people with Celiac Disease for taste testing but just never got around to it. Instead, over the course of two months leading up to Pesach, every time we experienced a snack shortage in the office, we opened another box of cookies. Most of the 
varieties were excellent – more on that in a moment – and visitors who helped themselves also loved them. You really don’t notice that you’re eating something that has no wheat flour in it.
CEO Pamela Giusto-Sorrells is a third generation baker of healthy cookies, but she made a break of sorts with her family tradition to produce her line of great-tasting gluten-free products.
Beginning back in the 1940’s her grandparents had a health food store in California with a bakery in the back, “and they made cookies and they tasted terrible,” she said. Later her father and uncle took over the store, continuing to offer the cookies, “and they were still terrible — it was a generational thing.” “Who actually eats these things?” she would ask her father, which lead to his explanation of the dietary limitations of Celiac sufferers.
As she grew older and went to work in the family business, Pamela says, she wondered, “If you could make something with natural foods that actually tasted good wouldn’t everybody eat it? And you could say the same thing about gluten free — if it tasted good why would anybody care what was in it?”
She experimented and sold her first batch in 1988. Today she still does all the product development herself.
“A variety of different ingredients go into the product to help mimic the texture of wheat and the response that you get when you cook with it,” she explained. “Tapioca starch, sorghum flours … I use a variety of different kinds of rice flours.”
Pamela’s favorite from her line of cookies?
“I have to say that probably my favorite is the Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip. I’m a peanut butter girl from way back; I love the combination.”
So did we. The Pecan Shortbread cookies were also excellent, and we enjoyed the Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chunk and the Chunky Chocolate Chip varieties. The gingerbread variety was popular with a regular visitor to our office. Old Fashioned Raisin Walnut Cookies tasted good but were unpleasantly damp to the touch.
For more information email info [at] pamelasproducts.com.
