Tag: bart’s bakery

Bart’s Bakery Gluten-Free Cookies and Gluten Free Watchdog – A Bit of Housekeeping

Barts
Bart’s Bakery Gluten-Free Cookies and Gluten Free Watchdog – a bit of housekeeping is required before we move ahead in full force for 2015. Our March 2014 review of Bart & Judy’s The Best gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World generated a concerned response from a member of the website Gluten Free Watchdog. In an effort to bring you the most reliable and accurate information possible, we reached out to both Bart’s Bakery and Gluten Free Watchdog.

We received the following response and lab report from Bart Greenhut of Bart’s Bakery:

Hi Cheri, this is in response to your email to my son Jordan. Sorry it’s taken so long, your email got lost in my “junk” folder for a while.

We bake the highest quality cookies in the world, literally.

I spent roughly 4 months developing our own gluten-free flour as none of the standard mill flours measured-up.

We only run gluten-free cookies once or twice monthly. We do have a shared facility however we very closely control the environment when we run gluten-free, even to the extent of allowing the air in the facility to settle for 10 hours after our wash down, prior to processing. 

After every run we send samples out for testing. Our latest typical test result is attached.

We maintain a proper “chain of custody”. If a test result were to be higher than 9ppm we would summarily scrap the batch.

Thank you for your interest, please advise if we can be of further service, Bart

Bart’s email was accompanied by this lab report:
Lab Report

From Gluten Free Watchdog, we received this response:

Hi Cheri,

Gluten Free Watchdog is a subscription-based food testing service. Results are available to subscribers only and can not be reprinted, republished, etc without written permission.

When Bart’s cookies were tested Gluten Free Watchdog released the following statement:

URGENT: Bart & Judy’s Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies
We have received numerous requests from subscribers to make publicly available general information about last week’s test results on Bart and Judy’s cookies. We have made the decision to release information because of the seriousness of the findings. If information like this is important to you, please consider subscribing to Gluten Free Watchdog. Information on gluten contamination levels of food labeled gluten-free would not exist without this service and we need the support of the gluten-free community to keep it going.

If you would like to share this information please use quotation marks and post the statement below in its entirety.

“Gluten Free Watchdog, LLC recently tested a box of Bart and Judy’s Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies for gluten contamination using the R5 ELISA Mendez method. The product tested well above 20 parts per million of gluten. Detailed test results are available only to subscribers of Gluten Free Watchdog. Test results provide a snapshot picture of the gluten content of this product at one point in time. There is no way of knowing without testing many more samples whether the results of the one sample tested are representative of the gluten content of this product as a whole. For more information about Gluten Free Watchdog see https://www.glutenfreewatchdog.org/…/bart–judys-gluten…/241. This statement was posted with permission of Gluten Free Watchdog, LLC.”

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Hope this helps. 

(Just as an FYI, Bart’s cookies are scheduled to be sent to the lab next week for follow-up testing)

Kind regards,

Tricia 

As you can see, the lab report provided by Bart indicates vastly different results than those indicated in the statement from Gluten Free Watchdog. Without access to both full reports along with the lot numbers of the cookies tested, it is impossible to draw any significant conclusion regarding this issue.

Rather than engage in a debate about the safety of any specific package of prepared food, I’d rather offer you a simple alternative. The best way to know what’s in your food is to make it yourself from ingredients about which you can gather the most definitive information. Buy fresh and local as much as possible, read all labels, avoid prepackaged and processed foods, and trust what your body tells you. A damaged gut can be sensitive to many substances that will no longer create problems once the gut has healed. If a food consistently makes you feel bad, avoid it – even if it’s naturally gluten-free.

I’m looking forward to a year of simple solutions! How about you?

http://www.cooking2thrive.com/blog/best-gluten-free-chocolate-chip-cookies-world/#comments

http://www.bartsbakery.com/

https://www.glutenfreewatchdog.org/

http://www.cooking2thrive.com/blog/?s=processed+food

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The BEST Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World?

Barts BoxThis box promised me “The best Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World!” – now that’s a big promise. Of course, the way I see it, it’s also a challenge. I will take that challenge and see if these cookies live up to the hype!

Bart & Judy Greenhut’s cookies stood out on the shelves because of the retro-rustic looking packaging. I was immediately drawn to the plain paperboard box with its retro graphics. Then there were the enticements listed on the box: Best in the World, Imported Belgian Chocolate, Little Bites of Happiness, No GMO’s – and that’s just the front of the box. The top contained a warning not to consume in an environment requiring my complete attention because it could lead to personal injury.

The back of the box had a personal anecdote from Bart, Judy, and their son, Jordan. It mentioned Steve Jobs. You think reading the cereal box in the morning is entertaining? You could spend weeks on this box. It has a side full of quotes, a side full of nutritional information, and an inside filled with poetry, Bart’s life observations, and a thank-you.

Before you even get to the oxygen-barrier foil bag or the folded insert, it is clear that Bart & Judy have a much larger mission than bringing you delicious cookies. While there’s a part of me that momentarily felt they were forcing the issue a little too hard, I was drawn back in by their obvious sense of humor and dedication to putting their money where my mouth is.

barts with insert

According to the box insert, Bart & Judy had the courage to sell their house to buy a 100′ oven to begin baking these cookies. Inspired on a trip to Paris, they embarked on a new career at the ages when many people retire.

Having passed the age at which I’m allowed to swim at the “senior center”, I am well aware that many of us begin to question what we’ve been doing and explore our options as we age, but I know few who decide what they want and go for it full speed ahead. For this reason alone, I’d buy these cookies at $5.49 per 4.2 oz box. I admire this kind of gutsy determination.

cookies and milk

So what do you get for $5.49 per box? 45 – 50 crunchy cookies about the size of a nickel or a quarter. They’re handmade so they all vary. The point is that they’re very small. A whole box is 480 calories. That’s 4 servings with 11 cookies per serving.

Total carbs per serving is 12.2 grams. That’s not bad for a dessert. The question is whether you can limit yourself to one serving. The cookies are delicious and not overly sweet. Of course, I followed the instructions to let them “breathe” for 10 minutes after opening the package. There’s no odd aftertaste and no weird texture, but if you like chewy cookies you will not be happy because they are CRUNCHY! I don’t know if they’re the best in the world, but they are hands-down the best packaged gluten-free cookies I’ve tried.

Celiacs are warned that while the ingredients are gluten-free, the cookies are prepared in a kitchen where other cookies containing wheat, milk, and tree nuts are also prepared. Ingredients and equipment are kept segregated, so consumption will come down to a judgment call. I tasted these two days ago and again yesterday and have suffered no ill effects.

And the content doesn’t stop with the cookies and the box. There are quotes contained in each foil bag. You can submit a quote to be included. Some inserts contain a holographic serial number that let’s you register online to receive “Fun and Thanks”. The rewards are secret other than an occasional give-away of a trip for two to Paris, but if I’m going to blindly jump on a roller coaster ride, Bart & Judy seem to be the kind of people I’d want to ride with so I have registered. We’ll see what happens.

You can check out the team, the quotes, the philosophy, and the products at www.bartsbakery.com.

Have you tried these cookies? If so, let us know what you think.

 

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”