Hi Peter, Are you in the French system ? I am Coeliac and registered/accepted (eventually !) here. The State give a good contribution each month and my Mutuelle picks up the balance so I get about Euros 70 of gluten free products per month via our local pharmacy. It tends to be Schar products but you can get various flours as well as breads, pasta, biscuits etc
Having two Celiacs in the house, we are forced to bake our own bread. Which is such a great thing to do and have, that I am certain we would bake fresh regular bread as well if we could. Nothing better than a house that smells of fresh baked goods
Goodness I got the wrong end of the stick re bread - sorry!
As for being ripped off I am French and I haven't yet been ripped off* & have never ever had customer service problems (probably because acc to my pupils I have scary laser eyes & also being French and eloquent helps) so I didn't go into that issue.
*Last attempt to rip me off was in Egypt in 1984!
hi Veronique ,
you may have misunderstood my point - it was not buying fresh bread that i view as pathetic , i do it myself regularly and by the way do not own a bread machine.
perhaps i should clarify its the general difficuilty faced by anyone who tries to do something a different way for whatever reason , my reason is to save money and not pay inflated prices for things.
i like many Brits living in France find all these ridiculous rules & regulations dictated in such a rigid way extremely old fashioned , eg the government decides what price books should be !
yeah right fortunately the rest of the world doesnt do this so i can use Amazon etc
i dont care a lot for white airbread even if it has a nice crust so its become a bit of a hobby making home made - except the price & availability of flours is expensive & limited , i wonder why ?
lack of competition / price control / protectionism to name a few.
sorry if i offended you - didnt intend to , my point is about prices and consumer choice.
i find it bewildering that you try to defend the daily bread issue but havent commented on why the French are being ripped off in the shops ?
Why is buying bread from the baker's a totally pathetic attitude entrenched in the past? I like fresh bread so I buy it every day sometimes more than once on my way back from work etc. like most French people. We shop around too and are willing to go further to a good baker's - supermarket bread, for instance, is definitely second best. I'd say it depends on the sort of bread you want - I don't have the steam-injected ovens at home that my baker has so I couldn't make baguettes like his even if I wanted to. I used to make bread in the UK when I lived there (very therapeutic, all that kneading) so I don't have anything against home-made bread (unless it comes out of one of those machines and I don't count the leaden lumps those produce as home-made anyway).
exactly, more fool them
no surprise really as France has a big thing about fresh bread / baking baguettes etc 3 x a day - and the notion of people making their own would not sit comfortably .
its a totally pathetic attitude entrenched in the past , things like this annoy me so much that i will keep digging and find what i want at the price i want.
eg earlier this year i bought a pass for the village tennis courts so my gite customers can have free tennis - then noticed the rackets were tatty, popped out to see about some new ones and they were starting at 30 euro for something at the lower end of the range - i thought it was a bit cher so went online to sportsdirect.com and got 4 rackets plus the delivery for 27.00 euro - stuff em !
if the french were more open minded and bought stuff online in larger quantities from overseas i think the prices in the shops would have to drop to stay competitive , but as they dont / cant or are horrified at the thought of buying from a supplier who is not French then they pay throught the nose for everything.
Steve, I called the bio place just now - having meant to for over two years. Their flour is all bio and the equivalent of T55 bread flour is €42 for a 25kg sack to non-trade, they only sell larger sacks to bakeries. Looks like a non-starter, since I also got the feeling they sounded a bit iffy about the 25kg sacks, preferring to sell smaller at higher prices.
I agree. I don't eat white bread as it is, so mainly concentrate on buckwheat, rye and sometimes maize and rice to mix in. Occasionally we use a 'complet', however the prices are cut throat and after 30 odd years of making my own in the UK or Germany particularly, I sometimes despair. The white flour we do use is Italian 00 for pasta, but finding that here is needle in haystack stuff and when we do, the price is staggering. So white bread flour, T55 at least, which is ubiquitous where bread is made should be easy to find and relatively cheap but I see what you are saying and perhaps will stick with the small bags and kid ourselves it is cheaper!
re pricing - plain flour and bread flour are very different in gluten content and thats why there is a big difference in cost , Bread flour is marked T55 or sometimes T65 whilst plain flour is simply the farine de ble - and the bread it produces is ok but a bit cakey .
quick internet searches reveal per kg wholesale prices as low as 55 cents , but i would have to be a professional baker with a shop , get the rep around for a chat , fill in the forms to for trade supply , probably jump thru some other hoops on fire etc - just to buy a few sacks of flour !
its just another example of price controls / cartels / lack of genuine competition in the marketplace
€1 a kilo is actually not that cheap. We occasionally buy 10kg sacks from a health food shop for €8 something, just ordinary plain flour but supposedly bio.
would be interesting to know and compare prices - the distance can be a factor tho, the supplier i mentioned is at Penne d'agenais which isnt that far for me, so iwouldnt incur extra fuel /time cost.
the other baker would sell his flour in 40 kg sacks for €40 but its big old bag to try and fit in the kitchen cupboards.
I know Villeneuve is a bit of a haul, but near us on the edge of Molières near Lalinde there is an organic miller. We have thought about buying large sacks ourselves because I make bread and also have a Rayburn that burns from October to end April, so oven always ready too, but have no idea of the prices yet. They have a variety of different flours too.
just to update , i made some enquiries at the local boulangeries and one of them had small packs of bread flour on sale for the same price as the big shops but said this supplier would do it in 25 kg sacks.So i telephoned them and they were easy to deal with and the cost of a sack of T55 bread flour is €20 with other types available as well.
Which is quite economical , and i have one of thse old wood stove range things which we keep running most days anyway so will not have to create any extra heat to cook the bread !
ok will try and find a moulin or failing that an early morning ram raid on my local bakery !
Steve
I get flour from my local boulanger, I'm sure if you asked nicely yours would sell you some also, good luck to you!
When we first got our bread machine we found a local mill that was happy to sell us 25Kg sacks, made the greatest bread ever as it was so fresh. When they shut down, we negotiated a price with a local baker to buy flour from him
Hi Steve, Welcome to the food group!
I don't know about this.... but looks like other members have an idea. Good luck. There must be a way.
Mary
Near to us we have a couple of working mills who are more than pleased to sell flour in large sacks, and it is lovely, much more flavour. Why not search around any moulins nearby?