Making Bread where to buy flour and ingredients

viv0147

Hi could someone please advise me the best place to buy strong plain flour, at the best price self raising flour,Whole meal plain flour, Bread improver, Brown sugar, Demerara sugar,yeast, and skimmed milk powder.I have been making bread for a while with my bread-maker, but I have been using the ready made bags. I now want to make the bread from scratch, because I believe that is the cheapest way. So where would you advise me to buy these ingredients. What shops?and what are the best flours etc. Thanks to whoever replies. Viv

esmf73

I use things from the local supermarket and it's OK.

Trinny

Hi There

You need to look at my supermarket.com - which compares the prices. IMHO the best deal is going to change week on week, so any advice is probably only good for the next few days.

For flour etc - Lidl and Aldi are fine, as is any of the budget range supermarket items.

I doubt anyone is going to be able to give you a definative answer to your question

Trin

downshifter

Your breadmaker will probably have a basic bread recipe in its leaflet, try that first. You don't need all those ingredients, just a spoonful of sugar/honey and salt, yeast and either white or wholemeal flour, or a mix of both. Once you've tried the basic recipe you can start adapting it, adding seeds and nuts and whatever you like. Then try doing the same but by hand - lots of recipes on the internet and I seem to remember several breadmaking threads on here. I often make the dough by machine if I'm lazy, then the shaping and so on by hand so I can have rolls, cottage loaf, pizza base etc as the machine only makes straightforward loaves.

As usual google will find lots of help for you. Oh yes, and flour, yeast etc can be obtained from any old supermarket, include it in your usual general shop checking out any offers as you would with anything else.. There are sometimes bogofs as with any other product.

thriftlady_2

I agree with downshifter except I don't even bother with the sugar, there's enough in the flour for the yeast to work.

All you need is flour, salt, yeast and water. Any supermarket will have them.

What on earth is bread improver?

Pink.

Hi viv,

I buy all my breadmaking ingredients in with my normal weekly shop which is usually a combination of tesco, asda and lidl and find them much of a muchness week on week pricewise.

As your thread has dropped down the Old Style board I've moved it over to the grocery shopping board to see if anyone has spotted any special offers that might help you.

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere(please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]!!!!!![/EMAIL].


Pink

geordie_joe

thriftlady wrote: »

What on earth is bread improver?

I think it's mostly;

# Ascorbic acid - used to strengthen the gluten
# Hydrochloride - gluten softening and clearing
# Sodium metabisulfate - gluten softening and clearing
# Ammonium chloride - food for yeast
# Phosphates - food for yeast
# Amylase - enzyme used to break down starch into simple sugars, thereby letting yeast ferment quickly
# Protease - enzyme used to improve extensibility of the dough

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_improver

katholicos

Supermarkets sell all these sorts of flour at very competitive prices. I bake my own bread and make it by hand, i bake cakes and cookies, scones, staffs oatcakes etc and i use supermarket flours for all of these and have great results with them.

milliemonster

Bread improver is normally only used if you are making a wholemeal loaf, you can use vitamin c tablets instead which is just ascorbic acid and just as good and probably cheaper.

Clowance

milliemonster wrote: »

Bread improver is normally only used if you are making a wholemeal loaf, you can use vitamin c tablets instead which is just ascorbic acid and just as good and probably cheaper.

especially as you can get value vitamin c tablets - try boots - very cheaply and you only need one. Also a pill crusher from a chemist or put pill between 2 spoons and press hard to crumble them.

oldsam

For bread flour try to find a local miller they are about , all pure grain without the additives in the flour , You could try the on-line site for Marriage's they are in Chelmsford, Essex. been in milling for over 100 years at least. Plus you should be able to produce a better loaf .