Matthews Cotswold Crunch Flour - 16kg (Single Sack)

UPDATE: I just had the delivery of my first subscription order. I ordered April 2nd 2018 and the flour is BBE Jan 24, 2019. Since the flour will only last me 1-2 months (more like 1 month really), that's plenty good enough shelf life for me. I've made a few loaves with this flour now (bought locally) so I've now ordered a subscription on Amazon to have it delivered regularly. The loaves you can make with this are delicious. This is a great flour for bread making and you can get a really nice crust with it. The caramelised flavour of the crust is just delicious. I use the flour in a breadmaker on the dough/knead program and then cook in the oven. Haven't tried it baked in the breadmaker yet, but I do prefer the ability to shape it how I want when finishing in the oven. For us we can get about 4-6 loaves out of one 1.5kg pack. Each loaf does for two of us for usually two days. Of course if you eat a lot more bread than we do your mileage will vary!. I add a scoop of porridge oats (Asda's own) to give a little more flavour and crunch and it works well. I've also tried it with adde cheese and that's also delicious. All in all this is likely to be our regular bread flour from now on and at this price the loaves cost very little - something like 20-25 pence for the flour, plus whatever your yeast and oil costs (not much!) As you can see from the attached photo, I may not be able to shape loaves all that well, but boy they taste delicious!

I always use this flour to make my bread. It’s tasty and comes out the bread maker crisp and aromatic and it’s really tempting to eat it there and then (not a good idea unless you want stomach ache and/or a burnt mouth!). I use my own recipe for my bread as I can control the exact ingredients that go into it. This flour does everything I need. I ALWAYS have good bread when I’m using this flour. Plus, buying in a 16Kg bag makes it really cost effective but you have to have somewhere cool to store it. It comes in a box with the bag inside which is handy because the bag doesn’t fall over if you knock it. Hahaha Try a smaller size of this flour and then come back and buy this one. You won’t regret it.

On recommendation from a Panasonic breadmaker group, I took a punt and ordered 5 bags of this flour. First attempt at loaf - brilliant. Very good flour and when I have worked through my stock, I will be ordering some more.

The bread I make with this flower has a wonderful flavour and texture

We use this to make sourdough. Since swapping to Matthews flour the quality of my bread has really increased. I feed my "mother" and the yeasts also grow noticeably better than the supermarket flour we used before. It's nice to know that the flour is grown and milled by the same family and has a limited amount of additives in it. You can taste, smell and see the difference. Lovely flour, reliable quality with a nice amount of bits in it. I will buy it again again as my quality of bakes has improved with their flours-I got one (spelt), went back for 4 other types, all equally good. It's great to know with one order it's unlikely you'll run out any time soon. As a side note one of their labels is now forming part of a school display about "farm to fork" to do with food traceability. My child was the only one in their class that was able to say that they knew who made their food and where their food product came from. "This man's family grew it on their farm in the Cotswolds, ground it up at their house and sells it to mummy to make pancakes and bread with".

I really like this flour for the texture and flavour of bread it can produce. BUT it does have a downside and I found that if I follow the usual bread machine instructions there will be difficulty in getting it to rise, or it might even collapse. My usual recipe is to use 300g of the flour 100g of white two heaped teaspoons of yeast and two tablespoons of glutton. Pity I have had to learn from failure but bread making is a bit like that. The recipe on the packet does give some clues as to what you might need to do.

Beautiful flour, makes wonderful bread and rises well (although does rise slower than white flour because of all the good bits in it and I do put some lemon juice in it to stop it collapsing as my whole meal loaves do t work without it!! !) makes a very nutty, quite dense but surprisingly soft loaf with 100% crunch flour, 50/50 crunch and white is less dense and soft too!! My little boy doesn’t usually like bread that isn’t white or has bits in it but he has eaten lots and lots of this (it looks like a whole meal loaf with bits in when you cut it) and I am so pleased that I have it on my subscription list. Excellent product at an excellent price!! Thank you!!!!

Have used this flour for about a year, good quality flour which adds another dimension to a loaf. I usually use two thirds white flour and one third Cotswold crunch which gives a plain white loaf a nice texture. It will change the water content when using it.