Anyone know how to turn all purpose flour into self raising or can you get self raising now? I'm guessing baking powder but not sure of quantities and results. Any disasters anyone?

We mostly have home made bread. It's made with a mixture of something called "bread flour" and something else called "all purpose flour". I only know this much as I'm often given shopping lists including these items and then scolded for bringing the wrong thing.

Have asked for the recipe.

FWIW, here's is my correspondence with the person who bakes:

Me: "Have you a recipe for making bread: how do you do it?"

YAL: "Mix flour, water and yeast. Let sit. Mix in more flour, knead, let sit. Punch down and shape, let sit. Bake."

Me: "Er, thank you but the original question was about making bread without access to self-raising flour. Do you use APF?"

YAL: "Self-raising flour is from the devil. I use bread flour, which has more protein and is harder than All-purpose. All-purpose will certainly do, though."

If you would like more strongly worded and curiously uninformative opinions on foods in Canada do please ask, we eat frequently.

The full recipe is here:

http://bread.cooksillustrated.com/re...d_Version/1027

I haven't cut and pasted it because it's probably copyrighted.

You can buy self raising at places like the Bulk Barn.

Self raising was covered here before, Im sure.

self-rising flour: 1-1/2 tsp baking powder + 1/2 tsp salt per cup (source: Pillsbury flour bag).

We use All purpose flour but bake bread the easy way. Add ingredients to breadmaker in order specified in breadmaker user guide cum recipe book. Do this late at night preferably after a night out cos you fancy fresh bread in the morning to go with your hangover. Spill flour but don't worry about cleaning up til the morning. Set timer on breadmaker for 8:30am or whenever. Go to bed. Wake up in the wee small hours wondering what the hell that bloody noise is. Oh it's the breadmaker kneading the dough. Wake up in the morning to the smell of freshly baked bread. Open the breadmaker in anticipation to find a loaf about half the size and twice the weight that it should be. Mmm it's rather filling. Check date on yeast. Bugger it expired 2 months ago. Buy new yeast. Repeat as neccessary!

LOL

I understand the need for recent yeast as we home brew. Worst home brew screw up was when I was left at the controls. I fetched the corn syrup, two huge bottles because it was on sale, and diligently followed the usual recipe. I should have looked more closely at those bottles but I had no idea there was such a thing as flavoured corn syrup. It took a long time to use up eight gallons of "smoked maple" beer. We did so by mixing it with Lakeport.

I use 1 tspn baking powder to 1 cup flour.

Thanks Trish,and all who have replied I like to bake cakes so that's what I needed. You do need bread flour for bread as the gluten is more elastic in strong flour and you would need salt for flavour. I will be making more bread when I get there as your daily sliced wasn't too brill. Never mind, pass the smoked maple beer!

I also tip some baking powder into the bread machine too to get a lighter loaf - about 1 tspn.

If you're feeling lazy and want good bread; Ace brand breads are available frozen and revive quite well. Costco has them cheap though of course you have to buy them by the truck load.

While there is a thread on baking, I am struggling to find good old lard. You cant make good pastry with some lard and I have been so far unable to find. Tried making it using 100% butter instead of half and half but tasted yukky and was really crumbly.

Any suggestions?

We use "vegetable shortening"...The butter flavour Crisco seems to work fine.

Its probably healthier than lard too, which is an animal sourced (pork?) shortening.

If you can find a non hydrogenated shortening thats even better as its will be trans-fat free.

Lard is readily available here.