Bread too dry..

We buy Warburtons bread we have done for a long time. The one in the blue package. Noticed recently it been dry and not very nice for sarnies. What brand of bread do you use for sarnies?

I use Aldi's multi seeded loaf,it's very tasty.

Where do you buy it from, I have the small Warburton loaf, lovely and soft from Asda, always dry if I have to get it from Morrisons.

We rarely use slice bread so we get a loaf and freeze it. If I want a sandwich to take to work for lunch I'll make it up in the morning using the frozen bread slices then put in the fridge at work. By lunchtime the bread is perfectly moist.

Like Taxman, I also don't use a lot of sliced bread, but it's always handy to have a sliced loaf in the freezer - for making toast, or making sarnies for a packed lunch.

I also make my sandwiches in the morning on frozen slices of bread and they are fully thawed and taste nicely fresh and moist by lunchtime. I usually buy wholemeal, or granary, or multigrain brown bread, but some things just have to be on white bread - like a bacon and fried egg sarnie - or a fish-finger sarnie - so, for these, my favourite white sliced bread is Warburtons "Toastie". It's called a "toastie" because the slices are square and fit perfectly in most toasters, but it works equally well for sarnies. It's nice and thick and soft, freezes well - and lasts for several days, even if you don't freeze it.

We rarely buy supermarket sliced bread any more, it became very bland, and seemed to go stale after 2/3 days.

Now we prefer to Buy the large uncut loafs from Staniforths on Chapel Walk, £ for £ it is a far better deal, it seems to go a lot further and it lasts far longer than the supermarket stuff, it also freezes perfectly.

I usually buy 6 of the large uncut and freeze them, once defrosted they taste just as good as they day they were made, whereas the supermarket stuff tends to end up a little soggy and tasteless.

Hubby or I make most of our bread. I used to make it by hand but hubby bought me a Kenwood chef about twenty odd years ago. When bread makers came out we got a bread maker. We are on our second bread maker and its great. Some of the cheaper machines aren't so good, we have compared others.

At the moment my husband is making sourdough bread by hand. You can make two large loaves with one bag of flour. We freeze one loaf as its as easy to make two at once. Its nice to decide how much white or brown flour you use or add in grains etc.

If we occasionally buy supermarket bread it has to be the crusty, uncut bread.

Interesting to hear that your husband is making sourdough bread by hand Chez2. I think blokes are generally better at making bread by hand than women are, because they have bigger hands and more strength to knead and pummel the dough. I only ever tried making my own bread by hand once - and it was a bit of a disaster.

The end result tasted alright...well, sort of... but my bread dough didn't rise much at all during the "proving" stage - and when I cooked it, my breadcakes were like curling stones and my loaves were the weight and consistency of house-bricks! I reckon this happened because I had neither the patience nor the physical strength to knead the dough vigorously enough... or for long enough!

You don't have to be strong to make bread, I made it as a kid in school cookery classes. I must have been somewhere between eleven to thirteen years of age as I didn't take cookery after we chose our subjects for the last two years.

Poor bread isn't just down to lack of kneading. It could also be down to the choice of flour, strong flour is better, poor quality yeast or not leaving to prove enough. I know you don't add extra yeast to sour dough but you do culture the yeast and flour mixture that you use.

A tray of water on the shelf under the bread helps it to rise too. We tend to do this with sourdough. I never did it with other breads I made.