This was yet another happy accident. My local grocery has been remodeling quite a lot over the past year or so, so I've been having to re-learn where everything is now being kept. Anyway, I discovered that the store now has a whole section of gluten-free wares. As luck would have it, some of these were made in other countries. I picked up a twin bar crispy wafer from The Netherlands, some honeygrams from Germany, and some vanilla wafers from Italy. But, surprise, they were all the same brand--Schar. Hence the generalized, vague-ish location name for this post's title.
The origin of this brand dates back a century. Dr. Anton Schar (who one website claimed was Austrian) was a general practitioner, but was quite concerned about nutrition, especially for children. In 1922 he teamed up with brother in law, Gottfried Untertrifaler, to start selling healthier foods. Among these were gluten-free edibles, for his customers/patients afflicted with celiac disease or gluten allergies. All of this took place in Meran, South Tyrol, which has changed hands several times over the centuries, but is now part of Italy. The company, dubbed Dr. Schar AG/SPA, flourished. Then, decades later, in 1979, Ulrich Ladurner took over the company. By 1981 the business switched to only selling gluten-free baked goods. Among these are all sorts of bread (sliced, in roll form, in loaf form, sweet, and crumbs), pastas, pizza and other kinds of dough, crackers, cookies (biscuits), and cakes. Schar began exporting to the U.S. in 2007, and along with absorbing some American gluten-free brands such as Glutatin and Trufree, it began manufacturing in the U.S. in 2012. Schar has become huge--it employs over 1400 people, has bakeries in 11 countries, and its products are available in over 100 nations around the world. Their savoiardi biscuits are probably their flagship product. Furthermore, I'm becoming very used to companies indicating how many "objectionable" substances that they don't use in their products, but Schar may be the new champ. They had the "circle with a slash through it" symbol bragging how they avoid fragrance, alcohol, silicone, sls and sles, mineral oil, GMOs, sulfates, sodium, phosphate, aluminum, pesticides, paraben, phthalate, dyes, MSG, aspartame, preservatives, and additives. (I had to look up what several of these things are!)
I've mentioned many gluten-free versions of products that usually have gluten in them in previous posts. To name a few, the Hippeas snacks (February 5, 2022), health grain bars (August 28, 2021), gluten-free cookies (November 21, 2021) are just some recent examples. If you want more information on celiac disease itself, my post way back on December 11, 2012 contains much more about it, as well as rating a couple of gluten-free beers.
Schar twin bar (crispy wafer covered in chocolate): These looked like KitKats, and were about 3.25 inches long (about 8.5 cm.) by 1.25 inches wide (about 3 cm.). Or four rectangles joined together, covered in brown chocolate. They were pretty good. Crunchy and chocolate-ly, rather like a KitKat. There was something "off," though--I guess it was the missing gluten. But, if I was unable to eat gluten I think I'd treasure these, as they were a decent approximation of a chocolate wafer.
Schar vanilla wafer: These were thin rectangles, about 3 inches by 7/8 of an inch (about 8 cm. by 2 cm.), an off white color, with the typical cross hatched wafer design embossed on them. Nicely crunchy and had a good vanilla flavor. Started off a little bland, but finished well. So, as with the twin bars, this was a good take on a classic cookie.
Schar honeygrams: These were squares, about 5.5 cm. (about 2.25 inches) to a side, with a light brown hue, and tiny holes drilled in them. They were dry, and crunchy. Like a graham cracker, obviously, and only slightly sweet. They were rather bland, though. Overall I thought these were the weakest of the bunch, but they weren't terrible or anything, just kind of mediocre or boring.
So, in conclusion, I definitely would recommend Schar cookies to those who can't, or won't eat gluten--they were decent to good replicas of classic cookies with gluten. I've definitely had gluten-free products that were bad, so I can appreciate how difficult it is to make something palatable without gluten. I would try other Schar products, too. And even if you do eat gluten, these might be a decent change of pace for you, if you want to try something different.
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