I make my own bread. Why? I think it tastes better. I do cheat a bit – I have a bread maker. Anyway, I was in the local supermarket on Saturday, and one of the items on my shopping list was yeast.

The usual small 7g sachets were priced at £0.28 per pair. Now I usually buy the small packets of 6x7g sachets, but these weren’t in stock. Instead I saw that they now stocked small 125g tins of yeast. Costing £0.70. As is my custom when comparing items, I checked the price per kilogram.

The 7g sachets were priced at £20 per kg.

The tin?

£5.63 per kg.

WHAT?

So I read the small print on the tin. “Not recommended for use in Bread Makers.”

Hang on a minute. The sachet contains dried active yeast. The tin contains… er… dried active yeast. The only difference is that the sachets were called “Allinson Easy Bake Yeast” whereas the tin was simply “Allinson Dried Active Yeast”.

Further reading gave the instructions “Reactivate this yeast in water before you use it. It is only suitable for hand baking, so if you’re using a bread maker, try our Easy Bake Yeast instead”.

Now sourdough bread is still on my “things to make when I get around to it” list, so I did need to buy some yeast. I decided to buy the tin and give it a try.

The only concession I made was to sprinkle a teaspoon of the yeast onto the water in the breadmaker before adding the flour (normally I add the yeast last).

The result?

A perfect loaf.

So, a clever marketing ploy from Allinson’s there. They wanted me to buy the much more expensive sachets instead of the cheaper “bulk” stuff.

If I’d taken what they said on the label to be the gospel truth, the price per loaf would have been much higher.

Scepticism can be useful!