Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi JudyK
As soon as I saw some, I bought two tins. Then I used up all the bread flour I had but last week there was stock, so I bought several bags!

We have the Allinson Flour mill in town, it switched to 24 hour shifts early on in lock down. On occasion between five and ten hgvs hauling grain, or empty curtain side trailers collecting flour, have been queueing up . It's in our one-way system with a narrow lane going back to almost the start of said one-way through the I'll buildings.

Our shops have been bereft of flour just the same as the rest of the country, but tonnes and tonnes of grain and flour are passing through town daily!

Peter, I was told that the shortage in the shops was due to a lack of 1.5kg bags. (personally I blame Mary Berry & Bake Off !)

My wife uses the sponge method of bread making and says it uses less yeast. She is also making our own cheese at the moment (kit for Christmas) and the whey also helps rise the bread. Part way through the lockdown we lent a neighbour a bag of SR flour, she returned it today as a bag of bread flour bought yesterday at Lidl, didn't ask the price but it looks like sensibly priced flour is back.

Most flour and yeast is packaged for commercial (bakery) use, as they use the bulk of supplies- that is why no real bread shortage (just sparadic over-purchasing by consumers).

The (dometic) shortage was a perfect storm. Flour in smaller bags was selling at extremely high volumes (they package it well ahead of time- mostly large 25kg bags + for commercial use and and less of the tiny 1.5kg bags for domestic use). Shops could not get more smaller bags, although I did see Aldi selling 10kg bags and Morrisons was splitting up large bags in smaller lots into paper bags themselves.

Quick/instant yeast was the same...they have a predicted model for how much yeast to grow (which takes time), but people went a bit nuts for it. Packaging was also an issue as manufacturers/importers were not supplying stock.

Stock now seems to be starting to equalise- I have bought all types of flour and yeast without real issue (although I did do a little dance when I saw the yeast was back!). Sometimes thay don't have exactly what I want, but the next time they do...

Now if I could find chocolate chips....