<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>
 
> Your comment about enriched flour is interesting - it could also be that
> British plain flour has muc less protein than American plain flour.  You might
> as an experiment try making a gluten contain dish using _cake_ flour, which
> has less protein and is therefore more like British soft flours.
>
> I'd really be interested as well if anyone else can comment on this.
 
I'm not sure about the differences between hard and soft wheats (The US and UK
differ in which they grow most of), but I seem to recall from many years back
that the typical American diet had about a third of the gluten intake compared
with a UK diet. This was some time ago so dietry habits may have changed since.
I read it in the context of US incidence of coeliac disease being much lower
than UK / Ireland (even in Irish Americans) and that less gluten in the diet
might avoid an environmental trigger.
 
I understand that there is anecdotal evidence that a reaction to gluten may be
delayed by up to two weeks and also that someone's sensitivity can vary from
week to week - this might explain the original poster's experiences. I have
no personal knowledge of this since I don't cheat on my diet.
 
   Tim