Sensibly Priced Bread Flour - Where Has It All Gone ?

Bacman

Casilio plain on Asda says it is "00" which means it is very fine flour, "00" flour is good for making pasta, etc however not sure how glutenous it is to make as bread flour; probably not enough, if you add 5% weight of Vital Wheat Gluten to your plain flour it will make it glutenous enough and therefore convert it into bread flour. Quality of the bread it makes is a different matter, some cheap flour can stick in the top of your mouth when you eat the bread it makes, personal choice though. Still, a cheap way to get bread flour!

Best to avoid getting self-raising flour from anywhere as you can never be sure if it has a good rise and also as the date gets closer to BBE date the rising agents will be less effective. It is easy to convert flour to self-raising yourself; to each 150g plain white flour add 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda; mix well - that is it.

Pollycat

Be_Happy said:

Asda is selling Casilio plain or self-raising flour at 20p for 1 kg bag.   Tesco also has it on clubcard price offer of 49p.   Note you can freeze flour in plastic bag and it doesn't go hard, so can be used in small quantities as needed.

Well, that just goes to show that you can teach this old dog a new trick.

Not sure if I'd ever want to freeze flour but...

tastyhog

Bacman said:

Casilio plain on Asda says it is "00" which means it is very fine flour, "00" flour is good for making pasta, etc however not sure how glutenous it is to make as bread flour; probably not enough, if you add 5% weight of Vital Wheat Gluten to your plain flour it will make it glutenous enough and therefore convert it into bread flour. Quality of the bread it makes is a different matter, some cheap flour can stick in the top of your mouth when you eat the bread it makes, personal choice though. Still, a cheap way to get bread flour!

Best to avoid getting self-raising flour from anywhere as you can never be sure if it has a good rise and also as the date gets closer to BBE date the rising agents will be less effective. It is easy to convert flour to self-raising yourself; to each 150g plain white flour add 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda; mix well - that is it.

Protein is 11% on the amazon app, so a bit better than other plain flours that tend to be around 10%, asda own is 9.9%, not as good as 'bread' flours but all fine for breads, although lower gluten you tend to knead more or go for a no knead long prove

But as you say 00 is better for pasta and things like pizza bases, focaccia and other stuff that doesn't need the same strong structure as a big loaf

But at 11% it's worth a try for a loaf if you can get any, 

Be_Happy

Pollycat said:

Be_Happy said:

Asda is selling Casilio plain or self-raising flour at 20p for 1 kg bag.   Tesco also has it on clubcard price offer of 49p.   Note you can freeze flour in plastic bag and it doesn't go hard, so can be used in small quantities as needed.

Well, that just goes to show that you can teach this old dog a new trick.

Not sure if I'd ever want to freeze flour but...

This will be very useful for me.  I don't bake often and find that flour I have goes out of date.  Hint was given to me by someone who used to live in Africa and did a lot of baking.  Bought flour in bulk and took from freezer as required.  I've found the same with freezing crumble topping.  Made too much one day and bagged extra in freezer.  Found that it didn't freeze solid.