To wonder why you need palm oil in bread?

[Meggymoodle]

I can't believe it - we've been trying to avoid palm oil in goods for a while now and I've never looked at the ingredients in shop-bought bread. DH checked yesterday for some reason - palm oil in all the bread products (other than rye bread) in our house. I mean why???

Where can I get non-palm oil bread? I'll have to make myself, won't I?

Spartans - you own a peanut butter company?? Wowzers - I know of no-one else who owns a peanut butter company - sounds fun!

Thanks all, I think homemade is probably the way forward on most things. My only issue is, and this is probably a whole other link, I can usually only make good white bread rather than wholemeal and we definitely need wholemeal for DD who is very prone to constipation. Any suggestions on flour? It can't have "bits" in either (sorry, very fussy 4 year old).

Fun yet messy!

Soda bread is great if you don't get on with making your own yeast bread. It's super fast - half an hour from thinking it to bread on the table - and very reliable and tasty.

All you need is plain flour, bicarbonate of soda, a bit of salt and some buttermilk. You can sub yoghurt thinned with milk, or even milk spiked with lemon juice, for the buttermilk.

No kneading, no proving. Mix enough to get the dry stuff wet, pat into a rough shape on a tray, bake. Job done.

How about 1/2 and 1/2?

This is the recipe I use: 2 1/4 cups of wholemeal, 1 1/4 cups of white flour, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tbs sugar, 1 1/2 tbs veg/sunflower oil all in the tin (liquid first). Make a little well and put 1 tsp easy action yeast (or whatever it's called). I use Lidl strong bread flour.

This is the small loaf recipe for a Russell Hobbs breadmaker and the programme is 3 hours 10mins. The loaf isn't actually that small though, and I don't like making the larger ones because they just turn our taller!

Shop bread is increasing horrible. At the risk of sounding like a right arsehole, I only eat my own sourdough. It is literally flour and water (and salt to stop it tasting like Jeremy corbyn's vest). There is no need to add fat to bread unless you want to.

I'm making my own stone ground nut and seed butters today! I do it outside as its very messy.

No oil is needed at all.

I've found the secret to a softer wholemeal is more water than the recipe calls for, and only give it one rise before baking, ie kneed it then put in straight into the tin to rise, don't knock it back. A bit of spelt flour also gives a lighter texture. I don't know how this relates to a bread maker as mine died years ago.

I used to make peanut butter, with the coffee grinder thing that comes with the bender

Meggy - if you're struggling with pure wholemeal, you can add a small proportion of white flour to improve the texture. Alternatively, Sainsbury's do an own brand "brown" bread flour which isn't as whole as wholemeal but gives very good results on either a white or wholemeal bread cycle

time I used to buy Meridian in great big buckets until our local health food shop closed down. Sometimes I get it from Amazon or if I am passing another health food shop.

Thanks for all the advice - much appreciated. I will experiment with more water and perhaps a bit of white flour in to improve texture.

camping the thought of Jeremy Corbyn's vest as a food stuff is not an appetizing one.

Suzanne sadly its not very spreadable if its jUST ground. I grind it and then put in my stone grinder for many hours. It takes a lot of time but is quite interesting when it comes out liquid. I've made 2kg of raw tahani today. Took all day and was messy. Should last me a good few months!

worked for me in the coffee grinder, the oil comes out of the nuts and it gets to a spreadable texture...comparable to meridian peanut butter

Argh I hate palm oil, so many elephants and orangutans have died because of it. I won't even buy sustainably sourced palm oil either.

I buy sunpat peanut butter although it does have added sugar.

Nutella used to make it without palm oil and now every single chocolate spread Inc Nutella had it in. We make our own now and it's bloody amazing. So easy and quick to. Will post recipe if anyone's interested.

It's in French fancies as well

Hate hate hate French Fancies so that is not a big loss for me!

I want the homemade nutella recipe! I tried one once and it was awful. :(

I'm mildly allergic to palm oil and between it and soya lethicin (also allergic to soya) buying produced goods, especially of the baked type, has become almost impossible.

Only bread I can buy is ciabatta, most pittas, bagels. The only loaf I'm aware of with no crap in it is Cranks but I find it dry and unappealing.

I've resorted to using a bread maker for all my bread. Easy and fairly convenient.

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Already cooked and peeled hazelnuts doesn't matter if they're chopped or not. Put them in the oven for 10 mins on 180' to release the oils.

Then blend them up, I use my hand blender and it works perfect add either cocoa powder or Melted chocolate to the mix and carry on blending till its mixed in. With cocoa powder you need to add honey or syrup to sweeten it and a splash of milk. Obviously if you use milk it won't last as long.

I add vanilla and almond oil to. It's seriously amazing can't stress that enough.

Hello, actually, No, you don't need any fat at all to make bread. I'm French and a bread lover and I can assure that the only ingredients in Bread should be: Flour/Water/Salt/Baker's yeast. That's it. Unfortunately, most breads in the UK are made industrially and contain preservatives, oils, corn syrup and even soya among other horrible things! This is why bread is having such a bad press in Anglo Saxon countries and that there is all this nonsense about Carb less /bread less diets .. There wouldn't be a need for these if bread was made properly. Then if one wants proper bread, as it should be made in the first place, they need to go to a specialist baker who is going to charge 3 times the price. It's all a money-making scam really, at the expense of people’s health... I mean even UK and US butters are made with much less butter milk than in continental Europe (Even the New York Times wrote about it!). This is because UK /US manufacturers want to make it on the cheap. This means their butter doesn’t taste as creamy and good as French butter for instance (French butter bought in France, not in the UK. There IS a difference) so, UK/US manufacturers add a lot of salt to it to make it less bland. And salt is not good for you especially if you top up your sandwich with things like smoked salmon, salted beef or bacon that are already super salty! Then people wonder why they are ill, developing food intolerances and getting fat... Long live the processed food industry !! Not. :o(

Waitrose duchy organic bread is the only 'normal' bread I've been able to find without palm oil. Sainsbury's are shit, all their bread (including the TTD in-store bakery stuff) has palm oil in it. I was so upset around Easter as I couldn't find any hot cross buns without palm oil in them either! I obsessively check ingredients now and get quite het up about it. (I do understand I'm doing this for ethical reasons and not for health reasons, but still.) Flat bread and pita bread are okay, for now. Our Waitrose is closing next month too. Oh, and they also do a chocolate spread with no palm oil! I shall be stocking up. (It's no good for vegans as it contains cream though.)
Another thing is I can tell if something has palm oil in it now, I've found it has a particular feeling in the mouth that's different to other oils. (Actively avoiding it since the start of the year has helped.)

I loathe palm oil and its impact on the environment so do my best to boycott all products containing it. I found the attached informative but the list of products is by no means complete.

drpongo.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/productpalmoillist2012flexweek.pdf

I seem to spend half my time in supermarkets reading ingredient lists but never thought to check on the bread. Just checked on my M&S super seeded loaf and really disappointed to see that it does contain palm oil, so that's going in the bin and added to the boycott list

I live on my own and can't see how it makes sense for me to make bread every couple of days from which I'm only likely to eat two or three slices before it goes stale. Although I guess I could freeze it. But it's a big faff.

Thanks for the info re Waitrose Duchy organic - I will give it a try.