The cost of bread and milk

[mrsflibble]

I have to be honest and say I never look .they're essentials to us so they go in without question.
I'm terrible at making bread. Cakes and pastry are fine, but my bread is really bad.
we'll be having a soup this week to use up the last of the veg in the fridge too.

[ina]

Tried a bread maker? I personally prefer "hand made", but if you are having trouble with that, it might be worth it. There've even been a few on freecycle.

[MikeM]

if you want I'll put up my bread recipie. It's so simple even I can make it.

[mrsflibble]

yes please. the last bread I made was so hard i have a scar on my knuckle from trying to cut it and slicing a bit of my finger off when the knife slipped. that was around easter 2005. not tried since!!!

[MikeM]

oakidoakily, this makes a dense, smallish loaf.

Put 14 fl oz of water in a measuring jug. Put about 1/3 of this into the yeast starter (we use allinson dried active yeast, 2 t spoons of yeast and 1 of sugar).
Put the water and the yeast somewhere warm (we put the oven on it's lowest setting and leave the door ajar).
Meanwhile, put 1 lb of flour into a mising bowl (we tend to use 3/4 wholemeal and 1/4 white as otherwise this bread can be a bit stodgy if made with all w/meal) and mix in 1 t spoon of salt. Place somewhere warm.
When the yeast has roughly trebled in volume add it and the water to the flour. Mix together until all the flour is absorbed.
Place the flour in a greased 2lb bread tin (THERE IS NO NEED TO KNEAD OR KNOCK BACK THE DOUGH). Place the tin somewhere warm to rise.
When the dough has more or less reached doubled in size (until it has reached the top of the tin) place it in a pre heated oven (gas mark 6) for half an hour.
Tip out into a cooling grill and enjoy.

As I said, this makes a small, dense loaf. It's not brilliant as sandwiches (tho it's OK) but it's great with soups etc. As John Seymour says, it's the sort of bread that won Agincourt

[Cheezy]

I've been meaning to do a book review , good time to get round to it, but in brief if you like making bread then this book will change you life:

Dough: Simple Contempory Bread By Richard Bertinet.
It's £9.99 on amazon and this includes a 30min DVD of Richard showing you his technique.

Richard is a French master baker, now based in Bath. (very engaging)And he shows you how the French make bread, it's completely different to us! No kneeding, you stretch and fold to capture air. On basic bread he only uses yeast (fresh if possible),salt,water, flour. You add much more water into the dough than we are used to, and you fold the dough in certain ways to get a "backbone" structure, this means when you bake it it does't loose its shape.
The resultant bread is always a lot less heavy, very nice, and where my own bread would have to be toasted after the first day post baking cos it goes heavy, this bread stays great for days!.

Really I can't recommend it more. He has a second book out which is more advanced. The first book covers white bread, whole meal and rye breads and olive oil breads and pizza's.
Also I'm into his part baking then freezing thing it REALLY works (except for large loaves which I find you have to allow to defrost.)
But baggettes,rolls etc you basically bake for about 3/4 of the time as normal (I take a few out leave a few in), then you allow to go cold,rap in greaseproof paper , this into a plastic bag and freeze. When you want the bread you take out of the freezer place in a COLD oven on the wire shelves, turn the oven to 200'C, when it reaches this (usually 15mins) the bread is ready!.

[Millymollymandy]

I went to Lidl this morning where I usually buy a lot of staples and had a good look at the prices.

1 litre Longlife Semi Skimmed milk up from 59c to 63c (but I haven't looked at the price there for ages).

Butter - used to be less than 1 euro for 250g but today was around 1.32 but reduced to 1.13 special offer. In the next door supermarket the price was between 1.30 and 1.95. (Absinthe Fairy - I did TRY to find expensive butter but there wasn't any! )

Flour is pretty much the same as it's always been here - about 3-4 times more expensive than England except for plain white flour, although finally some of the supermarkets are starting to produce own label bread flours to break the monopoly the dastardly FRANCINE brand has in this country but no-one else yet produces a proper 'brown' wholemeal flour.

To make a cheap loaf other than with plain white non bread flour the only way is to buy Lidl bread mixes which are very cheap and make nice bread!

[ina]

When I lived in France we had two barrels of grain in the attic - one wheat, one rye - and an electric mill. Problem was, we got those little beasties in the grain - can't remember now what they are called... But if you are short of money, you just spend a while sorting out the beasties - probably missed half of them - and mill it with a bit of extra protein in!

I used the bread mixes from Lidls' a couple of times, and found they are astonishingly good... Much better than the commercial bread you can buy, anyway.

[hamster]

In Waitrose:

2 pints whole milk - 76p (this has not gone up since July)

1 pack Country Life butter - £1.05 (Waitrose own butter was £1.15, I'm sure it used to be under a pound)

Didn't check flour as we bought some recently, but the receipt must have been thrown away. Grr.

[mrsflibble]

I looked at the price of bread today.
decided to stuff asda and get our basics from the local shops instead. mainly 'cos the bread is nice and they assure me it doesn't have preservatives in. still seems to last well though.
£1.15 a loaf! holy crap!

[Millymollymandy]

When I lived in France we had two barrels of grain in the attic - one wheat, one rye - and an electric mill. Problem was, we got those little beasties in the grain - can't remember now what they are called... But if you are short of money, you just spend a while sorting out the beasties - probably missed half of them - and mill it with a bit of extra protein in!

Yeurk!

[oldfella]

Hi MillyMollyMandy, Have you tried Gamme Vert as they sell a very good flour from the Soozi club, a Belgium club that make everything for the home baker, we use their flour and find it very good and a lot cheaper.

[oldfella]

Tried a bread maker? I personally prefer "hand made", but if you are having trouble with that, it might be worth it. There've even been a few on freecycle.

We

We tried the machine but not impressed, so now use it to do the mixing and then finish by hand, and bake in in the oven. We use fresh yeast also as that seems to give a better taste.

[Millymollymandy]

Hi MillyMollyMandy, Have you tried Gamme Vert as they sell a very good flour from the Soozi club, a Belgium club that make everything for the home baker, we use their flour and find it very good and a lot cheaper.

We don't have a GV, only an Agrial, which is part of the chain but is a very small shop. Thanks anyway!

[mrsflibble]

where can i get fresh yeast?