There are few pleasures greater than waking up in the morning to fresh bread, all delicious and ready in the bread machine.

But in order to make the delicious fresh bread, you need ingredients to make it with. The main ingredient required for this is flour, and in normal recipes, it asks for "strong" flour as opposed to ordinary flour, probably so that the dough can be easily kneaded and put together into a beautiful loaf of bread. Unfortunately, strong bread flour is usually better quality than just regular flour, so that it tends to cost more. If your flour is bad quality, your bread will most likely be bad quality as well. So buying the right kind of bread flour is a Big Deal if you want tasty bread made by your bread maker; however, especially if you are a university student like me trying to save a little money here and there, you have to have the right balance between value for money and good quality.

So I would recommend to you Allinson Strong White Bread Flour.

I am a very regular customer of Allinson's baking products, because it is a classic example of quality and value combined. You can buy a regular sized bag of strong white bread flour for around £2 from your local supermarkets, but I have seen a few supermarkets put these bags of flour on special offers, sometimes at the low price of £1 a bag! This may not seem such a great deal, but this is bearing in mind that this is good quality flour, from quite a good reputable company. When these generous £1 deals pop up, I am sure to stock up, dragging many bags of flour over to the check out!

Obviously, I do buy the wholemeal variety sometimes, as it is with no doubt the healthiest option, but it is less commonly on such good special promotions. Also, I have grown rather accustomed to the taste of white bread- though this is probably not a good thing! In the future, I will probably invest more towards wholemeal flour.

The bread made by this flour is delicious and good quality- the bread is soft and versatile, especially when it is warm, straight out of the bread tin. The tiny grains of flour are just slightly darker than the artificially white flour you normally get. It can also make strong, dough for making rolls. I even attempted to make bagels by making the dough in the bread machine and then doing the rest by hand- the outcome was surprisingly delicious!

A bag of flour lasts for an average of 2 to 3 one kilogram loaves, so you have to keep constantly stocking up on flour, especially if you are like me and want a big steaming loaf every two days. However, I would not exactly say that it is an expensive habit as:

a) It is so much healthier than shop bought bread with all their colourings and preservatives. Also, you are presented with the option of controlling the amount of salt, sugar and butter you put in, so you can ensure that you are not putting too much junk into your delicious bread.

and b) A good loaf of bread can be usually found in the supermarket from the £1 mark upwards, so depending on what other ingredients you use (e.g. yeast, butter, etc.) you may actually find yourself SAVING money.

However, this review is only for if you are baking using a bread machine, as, even though it gives you a recipe on how to make hand made bread, I doubt that I am going to have the time and patience to attempt it. The bread from the bread machine, I can tell you, is delightful, so I see no reason as to why hand made bread using the same flour and pretty much the same ingredients should not.

I would highly recommend this bread flour, it is the best I have come across so far. You receive good quality flour from a good quality brand for quite low prices for what the product is. It is perfect for making delicious fresh bread, and I would give it 4 out of 5 dooyoo stars.