I've been to the supermarket this morning, this is my usual weekly visit. Once again I've been unable to buy flour, there's no plain, SR or bread flour to be had in Tesco, Asda etc. So I looked on Amazon; hugely inflated exploitive prices remeniscent of the Black Market during WW2! Rant over!
My neighbours ordered strong flour for me from Tesco and I got it. The resulting loaf turned out delicious, so I must have done something right. I have found a mail-order source of dried yeast.
I have been able to get all types of flour from our little village post office shop. It isn't all there all the time but when I go in I see if they have what I'm looking for. Nobody stockpiles, we just buy what we need (knead!). I am making bread rolls each week as we have them each day for lunch and mine are actually nicer than bought ones so I think I will be continuing. I am so thankful to live in a village.
I think all the Mums are making cupcakes with their little ones.I have now used up all my flour and it never arrives with my deliveries ( not going into supermarkets just yet.) I mainly bake for my DGS with a cake or scones for ourselves now and again.I can’t even get Dove flour, which usually is freely available.Hope it’s all back soon.
I got both SR and bread flour in Lidl a few weeks ago.
Could part of the shortage be due to clued up mums making play dough for their little ones? When my children were young we lived on a small island where everything had to be home made so I frequently had to use flour for that purpose.
Aldi had plenty of SR flour when we went yesterday evening. I thought all my birthdays had come at once! When it didn’t look like we were going to get any recently, I suggested to DD that I might buy a sixteen kilo bag from a mill and we could split it. She said I had seriously underestimated the amount of baking she did, but if I wanted to start a pop up bakery, she was happy to do the washing up! Blinko?
I’ve realised how little I bake. We haven’t used any flour since lockdown started, apart from the odd spoonful to thicken a sauce. I make all the family birthday cakes normally and do enjoy baking with the DGC or when we have visitors. No chance of that anytime soon so I’ve just given my flour stocks to a neighbour who can’t get it. I suppose we’d have needed it if Aunt Bessie didn’t make better Yorkshire puddings than us.
On the other hand, I have been trying to get hold of gram (chickpea) flour for a Nadiya recipe I want to try. Sainsburys keep taunting me by showing it as available then substituting with a tin of chickpeas on the day.
bikergran I mentioned that I have a packet of coconut flour (bought when DD visited, never opened) on another thread and was advised by another poster to look online for a recipe specifically for coconut flour. I haven't as yet but hope this helps.
I managed to pick up 1kg, plain flour when I was in Marks a couple of weeks ago. The only on line deliveries I have been able to secure have been Tescos, they list flour occasionally and then it comes up as "this product is no longer available" that's happened to me a couple of times and amending my list today for next delivery, I see that the brown sugar I had on my order has also been withdrawn.
Don’t rely on supermarkets. We get our flour and yeast from the little bread/bakers shop. It might not be the same where you are but round here they are happy to sell you a kg or two of any kind of flour because they buy in bulk.
All the supermarkets near to me - we're lucky to have Sainsbury's, Lidl, Asda and Aldi within a mile - are out of stock of all flour. I called into the corner shop, and they've got loads! All in brown paper bags.
Husband bought some wholemeal bread flour online - 5kg. It came with a small pot of dried yeast. I need some white bf too as I find 100% wholemeal is too heavy. I use 70% wholemeal/ 30% white.