Bread Flour

[iz22]

Recommendations please for a good quality, reasonably priced wholemeal bread flour. Have been using Aldi and Lidl, but finding poor results. Did a test bake using a packet mix to test that the fault is not with the bread machine. Following recipe carefully, fault must lie with flour. Help please......

Did the packet mix contain the yeast too? Might the problem lie with that rather than the flour? There might have been other ingredients in the packet mix to aid the rise too.

It is more normally the yeast that is the issue.

I buy 16kg bags if I can't get hold of Aldi/Lidl - Tesco etc works out more expensive. During lockdown, I had to use some expensive flour - couldn't tell the difference.

I use fresh yeast - free from Tesco - kept in fridge or shaped into blob shaped portions and frozen. Great loaves/rolls/pizza from breadmaker or made in mixer and baked in oven.

Maybe yeast not so good? Also, check the dough after. an hour - it should be a ball of sticky dough. If it's too wet/dry, it won't bake properly. You can't tell if you've got the right amount of liquid when you use a breadmaker unless you look. It's obvious when you mix in a bowl - different flours need different amounts of water.

Thanks, will look into trying a different yeast.

Fermipan yeast is the most popular within the baking industry. Make sure your salt and yeast aren't touching as the salt will kill off the yeast.

There are a lot of popular 16kg flours available online, the higher the protein content the better, but 16kg is a lot to store depending on how much you use! 😟

16kg is a lot of flour, but it's fine for us baking a large loaf or rolls most days. One sack fills five 5litre plastic buckets that stack nicely in our cellar..