Bread flour vs ordinary plain flour?

Farway

Unless the price difference is very large TBH I cannot see why use plain flour instead of bread flour

Lidl bread flour is 58p for 1.5k at present, Tesco & Asda plain shows at 90p, so currently cheaper to use Lidl bread flour

sonastin

Tesco & Asda value-brand plain flour seems to be around 52p at the moment. Their strong white bread flours have been 60p for a while. For the sake of 8p, I don't think it is worth gambling but if things ever got that tight or I couldn't get out to buy bread flour and all I had in was plain, it would probably be worth having a go.

theblackrose

To be honest I just wanted to know if it would work because you never know when the bread flour might go way up and we'll end up having to use plain I'd rather that than go back to value bread I finally bought some Tesco & Lidl bread flour so will be trying that soon!

With plain flour it comes out ok but doesn't rise as much. Still edible and tastes great. As a family we've found that homemade bread is more filling than the value stuff we were buying. I'm just chuffed to bits with it & love how easy it is!

Made banana bread the other day & loved it!

jra123

Part of the lack of difference may be because we are not offered very good bread flour in the UK?
I have varied many different things in my bread, and it is never up to quite what you get in France. I suspect this is because a lot of what is sold as bread flour in the UK is borderline so.
As ever, it would be tempting for the shop/manufacturer to relabel something in a way that commands a higher price, when the difference may be not as great as one thinks.
Has anyone found a flour brand that can really achieve the continental texture / flavour?
Should we be more looking at the protein content than whether it says bread or just plain on the label?
My favourite is Lidl bread flour, and this has 12.5g/100g protein, which is as high as the bags (over?)sold as superspecialised, super strong flour by other better publicised brands charging up to 5 times the price. But surprisingly even the Lidl flour is grown in the UK, and therefore there may be better? I am going to give Bacheldre unbleached flour a go, as that is the only one I can find and obtain, with higher protein at 14.9g/100g.

ALIBOBSY

Just been checking out the bags of flour I have stored up. The Aldi strong bread flour gives 11.5gms of protein, so less than Lidl (I have used both and not seen much difference).

But I got some wholemeal plain flour cheap from approved foods a couple of months ago, its a good brand-Allinson and is actually higher than the Aldi at 11.9gms. So got a half and half dough on now to see how it turns out.

Ali x

billieboy_2

I've noticed that at £1.11 for 1.5kg, (Sainsburys, Tesco and Waitrose) plain flour is a lot more expensive than strong white bread flour which is 66p for 1.5kg. I'm tempted to use the bread flour in place of plain in recipes, eg pastry, cakes. Anyone have any experience of this, good or bad?

karren

so is the verdict its ok to make bread from normal flour???
Im useles at meaking bread and it always comes out like a brick!
so any advise useful ive a morphy richards breadmaker