Tesco Value Self Raising Flour > Reviews (2)

I will begin by saying that I do most of my shopping at Tesco’s and, as I am sure that most of you already know, they make a lot of their products in various different levels of quality – Tesco Finest, the standard Tesco range and Tesco Value. The prices obviously reflect the different ranges too. The way I see it each of these ranges has their place in my shopping basket. If I want something special I may well look at the Finest range but if it is something that won’t actually make any difference I go for Tesco Value wherever possible.

The product in question today is Tesco Value Self Raising Flour sold in bags containing 1.5kg of flour. The self raising flours available in Tesco at the moment are as follows:

Mc Dougalls 1.5kg for £1.25
Homepride 1kg for £1.19
Carrs 1kg for 98p
Tesco standard range 1.5kg for 75p

Then there is Tesco Value Self Raising Flour at 43p for 1.5kg now this seems like a no brainer to me! I mean flour is flour isn’t it? Once you have chosen the type you need – self raising, plain, wholemeal etc. – the cheapest option has to be the one to buy. You are only going to be using it in cooking after all!

The only real problem with this product is if you are a value snob. The flour comes in a plain white packet with the familiar Tesco Value red and blue logo on the top left hand corner. Other than that the writing on the packet just tells you that this is Tesco Value Self Raising Flour and that it is ideal for making cakes, scones and biscuits. It also has the V logo to show that it is suitable for vegetarians. Obviously being ordinary flour it does contain wheat and gluten.

Coming back to the snob comment in the last paragraph – what I meant was that I know people who will not buy Tesco Value purely because they don’t want others to see that they are buying the ‘cheap stuff’! Personally I don’t care who knows that I am careful about what I buy and that I don’t spend extra money just to get a different name on the packaging when the contents are only as good as the cheaper version.

So is this one really as good as the more expensive ones?

Yes, without a doubt it is! I have been using the value flours for years now, ever since they were first marketed in fact, and they are just as good as any of the more expensive ones. Using the self raising variety I have made pastry, sponges, small cakes and biscuits and have never had any problems at all. When I make scones, muffins or Madeira cake I use the Tesco Value Plain Flour.

I don’t even bother to sieve my flour when I am baking and this is great to use either for beating or rubbing in. When the cakes are cooked I would defy anyone to tell me by the taste whether the flour that I had used was cheap or expensive.

The way I see it is this – if you can’t tell the difference when you use the flour and you can’t tell the difference when you eat the cakes why pay over £1 for something which you could buy for 43p?

The nutritional information per 100g for those of you who are interested in such things is as follows:

Calories 325
Protein 9.8g
Carbohydrate 68.7g
Of which sugars 1.3g
Fat 1.2g
Of which saturates 0.2g
Fibre 3.1g
Salt 0.9g

Incidentally I have just found this information on the Tesco website and have been quite surprised. I didn’t realise that flour had quite so many calories or protein so this has been informative for me to write too!

So it just remains for me to say that this is the only self raising flour I would consider using and you can’t get a better endorsement than that can you?