A supermarket chain here in Britain has finally brought us bread machines at
sensible prices (69.99 UK pounds, about half price) so I bought one and have
been making bread like crazy for the past week. However, like most things in
this country, strong bread flour is expensive - about 79 pence for 1.5 kgs
against just 12 pence for supermarket's own low price brands of all purpose
plain white flour. Unfortunately the supermarkets do not sell an equally
cheap strong bread flour.
However, I have been looking at a few bread web sites and in a couple of
them it is suggested that if you take all purpose plain white flour and add
a small quantity of wheat gluten you end up with a flour suitable for making
bread. So my idea is to buy the cheap white flour, turn it into bread flour
and save money.
But when I ask all the local health food stores if they stock wheat gluten
they look at me as if I am speaking a foreign language - they seem to have
no idea what I am talking about.
Can anyone kindly advise me (a) just what wheat gluten is and what it looks
like, (b) whether just adding wheat gluten in fact will produce an
acceptable bread flour and (c) if any British readers know of any UK source
for wheat gluten and what it might cost.
Thanks for any advice on this subject - copying to my e-mail address would
be appreciated.
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John Lee (UK)
e-mail jlee@cccp.net
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