asda essentials range bread

[Jim Stewart ...]

been buying that asda 38p white bread regardless of the yellow packaging marking me out ....I admit ot I'm cheap and dont care about such things.....bread is very good

[Andrew]

I get decent 'sourdough' bread reduced for quick sale in my local Sainsburys.

[Jim Stewart ...]

just bought another three this morning....what a bargain...makes great toast

[Nick Odell]

Dragging this onto a DIY theme, I did a DIY energy and materials audit concerning DIY home-made bread and with the rising cost of both energy and materials, discovered that each 800g DIY loaf cost me over 70p to bake. (Probably even more now.)

So I set 70p as the benchmark and can generally find reduced, nicely-baked supermarket bread for far less. The other week for instance, I came away with a 400g bloomer (10p) a 400g batch brown (10p) and a specialty 400g "sourdough" (29p). Not bad. I tend these days to only bake my own bread for special occasions.

This week however, I did my usual midnight trip to the 24hr Asda to find.. ...no reduced bread left. In fact hardly any bread left on the shelf other than a solitary Asda Essentials white for 39p (yes, 39p here in northern England). To be honest, I had left it too long and needed bread sooner than I could bake it myself and I had banked on buying something that night and so, dear reader, I purchased it.

I'm not terribly impressed. Maybe I should try toasting it as you did, Jim? And have you looked at the list of ingredients? It just goes on and on like Ariston. When I bake bread the ingredients can be as simple as flour, salt, water and yeast.

Nick

[Jim Stewart ...]

try a yellow asda ome

[zall]

You normall need some fat of some kind, marg, butter or cooking oil.

You sure you didnt mean breadmix rather than flour ?

[RJH]

Could you break that down?

I make it about 0.5/unit electricity (14p), 500g flour (30p) and 10p for other bits and pieces - about 50p?

Admittdly, that's Lidl flour. 500g of branded is more likely closer to your

70p.

[Nick Odell]

Neither Lidl nor Aldi have had any bread flour on their shelves for ages. Asda and Sainsburys don't seem to have their own brand available in my shops but will offer Allinson or Doves Farm at around £2-ish per bag average. Tesco, when they have it is around £1.20 so I'm taking an average of those flours I have bought by choice and necessity as 50p per 500g for a recipe. For a basic "sourdough" (in inverted commas because I fake it) or French style there's only the salt and the yeast at about 5p. For other recipes 10p in olive oil or butter and a few pence for milk and sugar - all these prices are going up all the time and will soon be worth quantifying. Then there's the electricity. My oven is rated at 2Kw and if I assume it cycles at 50% (which it doesn't: the first ten minutes are constantly on) then 26p for an hour of electricity. I'm not convinced that if I run the whole programme in the bread making machine I'm saving that much money: it's only rated at 660w and although the cooking cycle is only about 40mts, it's gently heating the ingredients for about three hours before it cooks them.

So that's 50p flour, 26p energy plus somewhere between 5p and 20p for the sundries. Gosh, my 70p estimate is getting well left behind.

Nick

[Tim+]

Since the beginning of lockdown my wife has been using large supermarket sacks of chapati flour which is much cheaper. (10kg for £5.50)

Tim

[S Viemeister]

That's when I discovered that flour. Produces an excellent loaf, and tastes good.

[Brian Gaff]

Must be better than in that there song. Gasoline Alley Bread!

Brian

[Nick Odell]

Thank you, Tim, for an excellent suggestion which changes the cost dynamics entirely.

Thank you, "S", for endorsing the flavour!

Nick