To be annoyed that Sainsbury’s have sent an email suggesting baking bread!!

[Dishwashersaurous]

Like lots of people I spend lots of time trying and failing to get supermarket food delivery slots.

So Sainsbury’s, my regular pre covid slot, have just emailed with a bake bread email.

I actually regularly bake bread and have been trying for five weeks to get yeast so I can do so.

No supermarket or shop has any yeast.

This is of course lighthearted but aibu to be cross with Sainsbury’s marketing department

“What to cook when you can only get a celeriac, two ageing bananas, and a packet of jammy dodgers”

I'm mentally trying to come up with something viable and failing!

I’ve just ordered 16kg of plain flour for £14.99 from Amazon and also some baking powder. Free delivery so not a bad price.
Yes, I will use it and buoyed up by my order I’m off to bake with my previously purchased bag of flour.

Couldn't get upset about it but it's a way of trying to take pressure off supply chain .
Can remember my nan make bread in the 70"s for some reason think it was due to power blackouts and factories not running to capacity.

No flour in the supermarkets around here (West Midlands)

I agree- everything needed to make bread or biscuits is not available in our local Sainsburys - I thought the same- why encourage bread making now! I used to buy fresh yeast from their instore bakery - but as I’ve run out of bread flour ( and the local museum mill is closed) I have not even asked if Sainsburys have yeast for sale still.

Try bakeries. I know around my area they are selling yeast

My sister works in a farm shop and deli which sells fresh yeast. She said a woman came in the other day asking for 500g. 500g! I think you only need about 30g for a normal loaf so either she is running a small bakery or she misread the recipe and added a zero on by accident. I don't suppose it is something you can stockpile either as it only lasts a few days

YADNBU - I don’t bake and wouldn’t even attempt to in a time when all the home baking shelves are completely bare. It annoys me to think that people who don’t usually bake are stockpiling flour.

I made porridge bread the other day, it was lovely. I wanted to make regular bread but, like everyone else, I couldn't get yeast.

And there are breads that don't require yeast like soda bread and others and some that don't need wheat flour...we've all been brainwashed into thinking wheat=bread!

“What to cook when you can only get a celeriac, two ageing bananas, and a packet of jammy dodgers”

Sweet and sour stir fry?

Thanks for the inspiration on this thread as I had given up looking for strong bread flour in stores. Bought some on Amazon (16KG) and the yeast @mawbags mentioned, thank you. Have a bit of yeast left but no flour for ages. Will share out with my parents and sister so makes sense to buy big. Love backing bread so happy it will arrive in weeks.

I feel your pain OP. We have managed to secure just the one bag of flour in six weeks or so. We have plenty of yeast though!

And DS decided to use two cups full of it to coat five or six chicken legs to fry! The rest was wasted. GRRRRR.

Have you got any cornmeal? Could you use semolina as a substitute (I actually have a big bag of that sitting not doing anything in the cupboard)?

I agree that people must be stockpiling it and not using it. I am not convinced there are that many home-bakers around.

T'other day I fancied making cauliflower cheese but couldn't as there was no flour (this was before we managed to get hold of one bag) in the house!

DD had a run on making pancakes just before lockdown which didn't help our cause. We usually have at least a bag and a half in reserve because we do 99% of our home cooking from scratch.

I just posted this in another thread:

Doves Farm is doing a flour selection box with yeast. It comes into stock in the morning and is live until that day's allotment sells out: www.dovesfarm.co.uk/products/organic-flour-box

I got one Thursday around 9:45 AM and it's being delivered today by DPD.

I thought that there was not a shortage of flour but a shortage of the packaging. I cannot find bread and yeast in the supermarkets. There are some other places selling it though. Check with local pizza places, check your local bakery or bakery chain. My local bakery chain sells flour in 500g bags and you can buy up to 5 bags and then yeast in the store. I am also making a sourdough starter for later use.

I'm worried for bread companies as all this is highlighting how crap our mass produced bread is. Once you learn how to make a loaf of bread yourself and taste it, you won't want to go back. Also, one of my local bakeries is being really obstinate so I won't be buying their over priced bread any more (£3.50 for a sourdough!)

@bettybattenburg Sweet and sour stir fry?

That is excellent! I was leaning towards some sort of strange semi-vegan cheese cake......

Remove jammy centre's and break up the biscuits as a base. Boil the celeriac then mash. Add to biscuit base. Top with mashed banana and finally jam centres. Put in freezer. Close freezer door.

Then pretend it never happened.

You could then bury it as a time capsule in a special box to confuse social archaelogists in the future about what we ate.

You can find both bread flour and yeast at catering wholesale companies, who are now either selling direct to the public or in many areas, local pubs are re-selling the groceries.

I have just picked up 2 x 1Kg brown paper bags of flour (1 White, 1 wholemeal) with some other groceries from a local pub.

The wholesaler can supply 25Kg bags - not too much if you're feeding a family. They also have yeast in 100-200g packs; this isn't instant yeast and has to be dissolved in water with some sugar before use like we did before sachets of instant yeast existed.

(I have made sourdough bread for years so don't need the yeast).

Oh, it's making me so cross. There's people suggesting home baking all over the place - none of whom have clearly been to a shop lately. Flour is the most difficult thing to find, but the bread and cake aisles are full. No one needs to be encouraging people to take up baking as a hobby at the moment!!!

My daughter heard about a farm shop selling yeast. she said it was like buying drugs on the street, a little bag passed surreptitiously.

Couldn't get upset about it but it's a way of trying to take pressure off supply chain.

It's not, though!

There's no problem in the supply chain for baked goods. There IS a problem in the supply chain for home baking products.

500g of fresh yeast!? 10gms is all you need for a 2lb loaf, though it does freeze.

The following might help those with flour but little yeast.

"A good tip I got if you want to reduce or eek out yeast is to start the mix the night before. You pop about half the yeast you'd normally use, all of the water, 1 tsp of sugar and 100g of the flour in a bowl, give it a quick mix, cover then leave overnight on the counter then continue with your recipe the next day. I found the end result came out the same so worth considering if you are short on yeast."

So this is helpful: Boris suggests we all do home baking.

Normally is you ask the bakery they will gladly provide some yeast.

No bread flour here for over 2 weeks (and then I got one of the lady bags on the shelf) in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose or local shops.

Yesterday one of our independent bakers said they would sell bags of flour: gone in an hour.

I have yeast. But am perplexed by all the advice to use a sourdough starter. The recipes I have seen use 700g of flour to bring the starter to maturity, and it takes days.

Fab bread but unless you already have your starter, hardly a quick fix in a flour / yeast shortage.

‘Last’ bags on the shelf.