As a starting point, let’s assume no one in their right mind would choose a gluten-free diet if they didn’t have to. Why would anyone go out of their way to avoid lovely pasta and opt instead for high sugar, high wanker-factor, carb-loaded, sawdust-filled products for seven times the price?

No one wants to see the servers eyes roll back in their head or make the Subway guy go and defrost a special brick just for you while exchanging knowing looks with his staff. No one would choose a flip-flop over a real pizza base.

Unless you can order something that is stealth gluten-free the only thing to do is to cook at home.

We are told we can do wonders with a cauliflower pizza crust but basically if you take anything, cardboard for instance, and dice it with cheese and garlic and roast it with olive oil you will have a passable crust.

The truth is, even when you make a cauliflower look a lot like a pizza the sheer stubborn essence and cloying cauliflowerness makes its brooding presence known by scattering tiny gratings into every kitchen crevice, hanging in the kitchen like a sulfurous cloud and generally going on to taste exactly like cauliflower.

But this isn’t 2010 and it has already been discovered that if you don’t mind paying over the odds from boutique grocery stores you can have flour that almost acts like real flour.

But there comes a time in every celiac/gf household when all the rice flour and one-for-one brands have run dry and you are left with the helpful bulk barn purchases of your father-in-law.

Rather than go and buy one-for-one I had a run at making pancakes and waffles with the various dregs in bags around the house. Here are the results:

Tapioca flour

Almond flour

Coconut flour

Soy flour