[grendel]

you also have to be aware that a lot of flour available if you look on the label says it is 'fortified' which means added flour 'improvers' and other ingredients to help it make a good loaf. if you want just flour you may be better off finding a local mill and buying direct, but then the cost rises proportionally, if you want good ingredients be prepared to pay more, elsewise read the ingredients carefully.
Grendel

[Aunt Sally]

I use a flour improver, which is brilliant

Lakeland flour improver It is basically vitamin C and the enzyme (amylase) that starts breaking starch into sugar for the yeast to utilise until it wakes up enough to produce the enzyme itself.  It greatly improves the rise of the dough.

[mumofstig]

Perhaps it's just my aging taste buds, but my bread doesn't seem to have much flavour, despite buying good quality bread flour.

Do the other types of flour, oats, barley, spelt, corn etc add more flavour? Any help plese, I don't really want to be adding herbs to everyday bread.

[Aunt Sally]

I use this flour (not expensive, from W**se) and it tastes delicious.

[Mrs Bee]

I use Snasbury's whole meal bread flour or Doves Farm wholemeal granary and sometimes chick in a tablespoon of sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds.

I prefer the taste of the Snasbury's wholemeal to most of the other supermarkets.

Sometimes add a tablespoon of malt extract too.

[tosca100]

Perhaps it's just my aging taste buds, but my bread doesn't seem to have much flavour, despite buying good quality bread flour.

Do the other types of flour, oats, barley, spelt, corn etc add more flavour? Any help plese, I don't really want to be adding herbs to everyday bread.

Just a thought MOS, have you cut down on salt at all? Salt is a flavour enhancer and also retartds the rise a little and slower rise means more flavour.

[Aunt Sally]

Malt (the diastasic type) contains the enzyme diastase which is the one which converts starch into sugar for the yeast to use.  I don't like the flavour of malt so use the flour improver.

[mumofstig]

I've been using the DF Organic white bread flour, with a third w/m it rises/cooks well and it's good bread to look at but it's just leaving me underwhelmed taste-wise atm

Not cut down on salt no, although there's none in the biga, it gets added in at the kneading stage.

I'll get some malt to try, though 

[compostqueen]

I like black treacle in a wholemeal one. Good flavour adders are butter  , golden syrup, salt (I use sea salt as you need less as it's tastier (I think so any way)   I love malt in bread and I love adding a good beer - a bottle conditioned one.   Bread is like a sponge after all    There are lots of good things you can add to make your bread more interesting. No need for bread to be middle of the road.  One of my faves is wholemeal spelt with walnuts and orange

[beesrus]

How much salt in the loaf is always a problem this time of year, as my stash, no matter how hard I try, always gets damp and expands considerably, hence rendering normal ratios a bit hit and miss. Bread is one of the few foods though, that I like a nice bit of salt in. I sometimes think I don't get enough.

Mos..I have tried the spelt variety in various recipes after trying some up at the Devon County show one year. Sadly I haven't noticed a continuing taste difference worth the bother. Nice to support an old variety though.

Aunty... Your Waitrose stoneground is indeed a tasty flour, no doubt about that, one of the best. The improver would be fine in one way, but it's too expensive and sold in far too large a container for our bread consumption. I wouldn't use 25% of it before it went out of date.

Aunty .. I hadn't intended to discuss on this thread at all the pros and cons of glyphosphate, as that's a huge subject that people tend to side on one way or the other due to tribe, much like the global warming thing. Your link to Mr Savage brings up that whole debate, as he makes fun of virtually every known brave research that goes against the likes of Monsanto. Suffice to say, he is a well known ex employee and fan of  Du Pont (they of the well known Teflon scandal and their outrageous hiding of scientific fact for which they were fined.)
Mr Savage has ongoing work with several large Agricultural chemical companies, and yet he refuses to say which ones. I think it quite clear who butters his bread, but then that's how science has become these days, and hence a pointless argument on forums like this. I just wanted people to know how glyphosphate is undoubtedly used on the wheat we use for our bread. It's a herbicide soaking process just before harvest, that has been banned with beer malt harvesting, as well as lentils. That doesn't sound good to me.

[Mrs Bee]

I like black treacle in a wholemeal one. Good flavour adders are butter  , golden syrup, salt (I use sea salt as you need less as it's tastier (I think so any way)   I love malt in bread and I love adding a good beer - a bottle conditioned one.   Bread is like a sponge after all    There are lots of good things you can add to make your bread more interesting. No need for bread to be middle of the road.  One of my faves is wholemeal spelt with walnuts and orange

Oh yes black treacle and wholemeal is lovely, and beer and grain mustard is gorgeous with cheese.

[Aunt Sally]

There's a whole lot of rubbish posted on the internet, beesrus.  The links both you and I posted are in that category.

Don't believe all you read as most of it is not information from solid scientific studies.Trend statistics are certainly not scientific.

[Aunt Sally]

A pot of flour improver lasts me a year or so. So not a huge expense

[beesrus]

There's a whole lot of rubbish posted on the internet, beesrus.  The links both you and I posted are in that category.

I think we have an accord there, Aunty.
The physics teacher talks of empirical enquiry, the history teacher, the view of the tribe. I could never square where the two met in truth... still can't.
To be honest, I no longer believe in "solid scientific " anything. It changes every five minutes depending on who is paying the bills.
On balance though, I prefer the grass roots Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britanica, as it tends to best represent my natural vantage point. As to the useful cult of science, I prefer the inductive inference gleaned out in the real world, rather than the test tube, with it's necessary narrow parameters. We have to pick and choose.

Bread-wise, thanks for your comments re the improver and how long it can last. I will be getting myself a tin now, as it is just what I need. As I speak, I have a wholewheat/buckwheat loaf in the machine. To get it to rise enough with the inclusion of buckwheat, I need to add 30% white flour. Hopefully the flour improver will give me a 100% wholewheat/buckwheat loaf in the future. I shall report back.

I'm actually trialing some buckwheat as a grain on my plot this year, rather than just a green manure. Interesting stuff.

[Kate and her Ducks]

For those interested in how statistics and pseudoscience can be used to mislead both deliberately and in genuine error, Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is a superb book. I think it is very well written and accessible to pretty much everyone but I do have a science background.