LIDL Bread making flour price hike:

Mehal

As someone who has been baking my own bread for almost four years, I long ago opted to use the LIDL Belbake brand, for two reasons, first having used all manner of other more expensive brands I could tell no difference in quality or taste of the finsihed loaf, and secondly the cost of LIDL Belbake was far lower that of the other brands, including supermarkets own brands. However having paid on average about 59p per 1.5kg bag of strong white breadmaking flour, a year ago LIDL began to slowly hike the price to a situation where the other day they were selling it at £1.19 per bag, strangely this price hike is not reflected in its plain and self raising flour prices. And I just feel that there is a little bit of exploitation at play here too as they seem to have reduced the amount of white bread making flour that is available in store on the shelves, in three local branches last week none was available. As an aside ASDA and SAINSBURY'S own make strong white bread flour are now both £1.30 per bag!

sarah1972

Mehal said:

As someone who has been baking my own bread for almost four years, I long ago opted to use the LIDL Belbake brand, for two reasons, first having used all manner of other more expensive brands I could tell no difference in quality or taste of the finsihed loaf, and secondly the cost of LIDL Belbake was far lower that of the other brands, including supermarkets own brands. However having paid on average about 59p per 1.5kg bag of strong white breadmaking flour, a year ago LIDL began to slowly hike the price to a situation where the other day they were selling it at £1.19 per bag, strangely this price hike is not reflected in its plain and self raising flour prices. And I just feel that there is a little bit of exploitation at play here too as they seem to have reduced the amount of white bread making flour that is available in store on the shelves, in three local branches last week none was available. As an aside ASDA and SAINSBURY'S own make strong white bread flour are now both £1.30 per bag!

Bread making flour started going up when hoards of people started making bread during the pandemic. I am different to you though as I only buy Shipton Mill flour direct from their website as I have always found big differences in my bakes when cheap flour is used. 

I pay £1.80 a kilo for my bread flour and it’s worth every penny because the loaves taste amazing and it’s still cheaper than buying bakers loaves. 

thriftytracey

The artisan baker in my nearby town has put his prices up as he said flour has gone up £8 a bag.  So my weekly treat of a cruffin now gone up from £2.75 to £3.  

p00hsticks

sarah1972 said:

Mehal said:

As someone who has been baking my own bread for almost four years, I long ago opted to use the LIDL Belbake brand, for two reasons, first having used all manner of other more expensive brands I could tell no difference in quality or taste of the finsihed loaf, and secondly the cost of LIDL Belbake was far lower that of the other brands, including supermarkets own brands. However having paid on average about 59p per 1.5kg bag of strong white breadmaking flour, a year ago LIDL began to slowly hike the price to a situation where the other day they were selling it at £1.19 per bag, strangely this price hike is not reflected in its plain and self raising flour prices. And I just feel that there is a little bit of exploitation at play here too as they seem to have reduced the amount of white bread making flour that is available in store on the shelves, in three local branches last week none was available. As an aside ASDA and SAINSBURY'S own make strong white bread flour are now both £1.30 per bag!

Bread making flour started going up when hoards of people started making bread during the pandemic.

Over the last year, I suspect another factor is that Ukraine is one of the biggest wheat producing countries in Europe, and that Russia is also a large producer.

sarah1972

p00hsticks said:

sarah1972 said:

Mehal said:

As someone who has been baking my own bread for almost four years, I long ago opted to use the LIDL Belbake brand, for two reasons, first having used all manner of other more expensive brands I could tell no difference in quality or taste of the finsihed loaf, and secondly the cost of LIDL Belbake was far lower that of the other brands, including supermarkets own brands. However having paid on average about 59p per 1.5kg bag of strong white breadmaking flour, a year ago LIDL began to slowly hike the price to a situation where the other day they were selling it at £1.19 per bag, strangely this price hike is not reflected in its plain and self raising flour prices. And I just feel that there is a little bit of exploitation at play here too as they seem to have reduced the amount of white bread making flour that is available in store on the shelves, in three local branches last week none was available. As an aside ASDA and SAINSBURY'S own make strong white bread flour are now both £1.30 per bag!

Bread making flour started going up when hoards of people started making bread during the pandemic.

Over the last year, I suspect another factor is that Ukraine is one of the biggest wheat producing countries in Europe, and that Russia is also a large producer.

I did think that but the OP is saying only bread flour and I would of thought that the war would of affected all flours 🤷🏻‍♀️ x 

maisie_cat

Lidl probably had a fixed term supply contract that has now renewed. If the flour is still cheaper than elsewhere it's still a good deal. I buy flour 16kg a time and it's now £1.76/kg but worth it. 

tastyhog

p00hsticks said:

sarah1972 said:

Mehal said:

As someone who has been baking my own bread for almost four years, I long ago opted to use the LIDL Belbake brand, for two reasons, first having used all manner of other more expensive brands I could tell no difference in quality or taste of the finsihed loaf, and secondly the cost of LIDL Belbake was far lower that of the other brands, including supermarkets own brands. However having paid on average about 59p per 1.5kg bag of strong white breadmaking flour, a year ago LIDL began to slowly hike the price to a situation where the other day they were selling it at £1.19 per bag, strangely this price hike is not reflected in its plain and self raising flour prices. And I just feel that there is a little bit of exploitation at play here too as they seem to have reduced the amount of white bread making flour that is available in store on the shelves, in three local branches last week none was available. As an aside ASDA and SAINSBURY'S own make strong white bread flour are now both £1.30 per bag!

Bread making flour started going up when hoards of people started making bread during the pandemic.

Over the last year, I suspect another factor is that Ukraine is one of the biggest wheat producing countries in Europe, and that Russia is also a large producer.

UK is mostly self sufficient in flour and other grains

Cost increases are mostly down to fertiliser costs and diesel costs

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021-theme-2-uk-food-supply-sources#:~:text=The UK is largely self,and over 90% of wheat.

Mnoee

I use vital wheat gluten mixed with plain flour to make bread flour. There's a calculator here: https://foodgeek.dk/en/vital-wheat-gluten-calculator/ that can help you figure out how much you need to add. I use Holland and Barrett VWG (75% protein) and googling the protein content of the lidl flour (10.6), it'd mean adding 5g of that per 95g of lidl flour to make a 14% bread flour - the same as the one they sell. 

The vital wheat gluten is £2.49 for 500g, so making 1.5kg of bread flour costs just under £1 - 37p for the gluten, and 58p for the plain flour (plus 75g of plain flour left over for dusting). 

I use the wheat gluten for making seitan too, but overall just prefer having plain flour and adding gluten/baking powder to make different flours to having three very similar kinds of white wheat flour on hand - the price difference is pretty negligible, but it frees up space for rice flour to make tiger bread! 

pumpkin89

tastyhog said:

UK is mostly self sufficient in flour and other grains

Self sufficiency ensures we don't get shortages but it doesn't insulate us from price rises - if the price in other countries is higher than UK farmers will export rather than sell locally.

Andy_L

sarah1972 said:

p00hsticks said:

sarah1972 said:

Mehal said:

As someone who has been baking my own bread for almost four years, I long ago opted to use the LIDL Belbake brand, for two reasons, first having used all manner of other more expensive brands I could tell no difference in quality or taste of the finsihed loaf, and secondly the cost of LIDL Belbake was far lower that of the other brands, including supermarkets own brands. However having paid on average about 59p per 1.5kg bag of strong white breadmaking flour, a year ago LIDL began to slowly hike the price to a situation where the other day they were selling it at £1.19 per bag, strangely this price hike is not reflected in its plain and self raising flour prices. And I just feel that there is a little bit of exploitation at play here too as they seem to have reduced the amount of white bread making flour that is available in store on the shelves, in three local branches last week none was available. As an aside ASDA and SAINSBURY'S own make strong white bread flour are now both £1.30 per bag!

Bread making flour started going up when hoards of people started making bread during the pandemic.

Over the last year, I suspect another factor is that Ukraine is one of the biggest wheat producing countries in Europe, and that Russia is also a large producer.

I did think that but the OP is saying only bread flour and I would of thought that the war would of affected all flours 🤷🏻‍♀️ x 

AIUI the environmental conditions for growing Strong flour (with its higher gluten content) are not distributed evenly around the world so a failure in one geographic area can disproportionately influence its price alone. In addition a specific area can have a poor yield due to that years weather and end up producing lower gluten flour than normal which can't be sold as Strong flour

VoucherMan

I found this thread thanks to Google, while having similar thoughts to those the OP posted. I was shocked when I paid 99p for flour a few weeks ago. Today in Aldi it's up to £1.19

Mehal said:

And I just feel that there is a little bit of exploitation at play here too

I've suspected that for a while. All the bread flour I buy is labelled as British, and while I agree that factors such as those mentioned by tastyhog have played a part in the price increase, I can't help feeling that someone is making a lot of money because of 'global market prices', and sadly, I doubt it will be the farmers.