Trader Joe's Gluten Free Pretzel Twists

This is Day 11 (!) of an extended New and Seasonal Products Week--and the last. Tomorrow we can finally get back to our regular programming. 


I'm using two photographs of this product because, for the first time ever, I honestly can't tell which is the front of the package and which is the back.

This is a brand-new product at Trader Joe's, not yet announced on the company's web site.

I found it in the store Monday morning, and that evening I took it to a friend's home poker game so that I could get an assortment of opinions about it. Ten of us sampled them. I seemed to like the pretzels more than most people did. I kept munching on them, while most others took one or two and then quit. Nobody admitted to having any sensitivity or aversion to gluten.

They need a little more salt, but they're not too bland. My first impression of the taste was that they're a lot like Crispix cereal, which is like a blend of Rice Chex and Corn Chex. This shouldn't be surprising, since to avoid gluten they're made of rice, corn, and potatoes. They are surprisingly crunchy--more so than most regular pretzels--yet not brittle, and that quality makes up much of the pleasure of eating them.

We had two outlier opinions. At the good end, one guy liked them enough that he said he would fork over money to buy a package on his next trip to the store. At the bad end, one guy said that he would buy them only "if they were the last pretzels on earth."

But by far the majority opinion--held by eight out of ten of us (including me), if I counted correctly--was that they're not as good as regular pretzels, but good enough that we'd be happy they were available if we had an issue with gluten that precluded eating the traditional variety.

It's difficult to make good gluten-free substitutes of products that are primarily based on wheat flour. That Trader Joe's could get 80% of an arbitrary sample of taste-testers to give these pretzels even that modest level of endorsement is, I think, a pretty good accomplishment.

Will I buy it again? 

No. But if you have gluten sensitivity and you've regretted not having pretzels to munch on, I think you may have something to rejoice about today.