Food inflation
3 May 2020 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI resorted to buying an emergency kilogram of bread flour from our local family-run bakery, which cost £4 (a 1·5kg bag from the supermarket is usually around £1·20).
That means this batch of small white rolls cost 17p each. No idea where the bakery gets its flour from, but I suppose this makes the end product into artisanal handmade sourdough bread :-p
(I suppose when you put it that way it's not that bad, since a couple of rolls can make a meal, and I tend not to eat bread-based meals all that often -- which is why I've taken to making individual rolls and freezing them, rather than making loaves and freezing half a loaf at a time. But it's an emergency source of flour I shan't be relying on routinely.)
Apparently the UK flour industry is only geared up to provide one bag of flour per week to 15% of households: http://www.nabim.org.uk/news/article/1918/retail-flour-shortages
And of course most of that isn't bread flour -- I've seen recent attempts at 'bagging down' self-raising flour in plastic bags at the supermarket in response to the ongoing demand, and was lucky enough to obtain a bag of plain flour as a one-off recently, but that's not much good for yeast cookery. So the only 'solution' to the shortages is for the majority of the population to go back to eating out :-p
(As for yeast, that's completely unobtainable, so it's just as well I have an longstanding sourdough culture; I used up the last of my rather elderly tin of yeast making cinnamon buns a couple of weeks ago. I can probably make sourdough pizza base and Russian pies, but I doubt it makes very good desserts.)
That means this batch of small white rolls cost 17p each. No idea where the bakery gets its flour from, but I suppose this makes the end product into artisanal handmade sourdough bread :-p
(I suppose when you put it that way it's not that bad, since a couple of rolls can make a meal, and I tend not to eat bread-based meals all that often -- which is why I've taken to making individual rolls and freezing them, rather than making loaves and freezing half a loaf at a time. But it's an emergency source of flour I shan't be relying on routinely.)
Apparently the UK flour industry is only geared up to provide one bag of flour per week to 15% of households: http://www.nabim.org.uk/news/article/1918/retail-flour-shortages
And of course most of that isn't bread flour -- I've seen recent attempts at 'bagging down' self-raising flour in plastic bags at the supermarket in response to the ongoing demand, and was lucky enough to obtain a bag of plain flour as a one-off recently, but that's not much good for yeast cookery. So the only 'solution' to the shortages is for the majority of the population to go back to eating out :-p
(As for yeast, that's completely unobtainable, so it's just as well I have an longstanding sourdough culture; I used up the last of my rather elderly tin of yeast making cinnamon buns a couple of weeks ago. I can probably make sourdough pizza base and Russian pies, but I doubt it makes very good desserts.)
