Yes! A ploughman’s lunch. That’s the sort of bread I’m looking for. Thanks for the recipe. I can’t bake it right now but it’s one more clue in my pursuit of excellence.
Good luck! If you lived closer, I’d bake you a few loaves myself. 
Awww. thanks!
Not going to be very similar at all, in spite of having several ingredients in common because the B & M brown bread is not a yeast bread at all, it is a quick bread that uses baking soda and buttermilk for leavening. It is also not kneaded so the texture would be very different as well.
I love B & M brown bread, ate it all the time as a child because my mother grew up in Maine and her mother worked for decades at B &M (they also made the best baked beans ever, the ones in the brown glass jar that looked like a New England bean pot). I refuse to pay Amazon bougie prices for it though, so it’s been 20 years since I had any.
That sounds a lot like Oroweat Roman Meal™
What kind of texture are we looking for here? Is it a soft bread, something firmer and hearty, crusty or not? Might help in finding a similar bakery option.
The bread I’m thinking of is a hearty but soft-ish bread, not Wonder Bread soft but about the same texture as American decent whole wheat store bread. I should leave that question for the Britishers, though, as they have access to these sandwiches all day every day! (Lucky sods!)
Trader Joe’s organic 5-seed multigrain bread seems similar to granary-style bread, in that it has a coarse texture with cracked wheat, rye flakes, rolled oats, and different types of seeds, but is about as soft as regular whole wheat bread. It has the advantage of having no added sweeteners. The nutrition facts label says it has 0 grams of sugar per 43 gram slice.
If you can’t get the exact right thing, then I think just a nice wholewheat loaf will get you to within 90% of the experience; granary is wholewheat, plus some whole malted grains.
Whenever I hear “cheese & onion”, I think of ice cream flavours.
I didn’t know that. I thought it was on a similar bread to the Marks & Spencer-type cheese & onions sandwich.
Also, I’m surprised no one has referred to The Rutles song yet.
Your linked recipe intrigues me, but I too would like a to buy a smaller quantity of the specialty ingredients even if they’d likely be worse on a price per volume basis. Let me know if you find a good source for a trial sized batch.
I’ll probably go looking for myself eventually but too many things to do of course.
If I find somewhere, I’ll let you know.
Personally, I’d try local health food stores first and call around. I think the malt powder will be comparatively easy to source. Malted wheat flakes… not so much.
Again, you can buy the actual Hovis Granary Bread Flour on Amazon. If you just want to make a couple of loaves, ordering that seems like the simplest way to acquire some.
I was thinking of checking various homebrewer supply stores, but still worried that the quantities will be on the high side, so health food is also a great idea.
As an amateur bread maker I have been unable to find or replicate granary bread. You can buy the authentic flour, but they oddly usually won’t deliver to Canada for reasons?
Cracked wheat, in most Canadian stores, is the closest thing, but not really. That said, for many sandwiches it may not matter much.
I’m not disregarding your helpful link, just concerned that you’d be paying quite a premium for the premixed flour blend. The hardest part to get, the malted wheat flakes being only 19.99 for two pounds, compared to paying 16.39 for the mix with nearly the same mass. Especially when I already have a lot of bread flour in stock at home. But it’s a fine option and thanks for sharing it.
You’re correct that it’s very expensive. I checked the Tesco website and it appears that you could buy the same thing in a Tesco store for the equivalent of about two dollars for a kilo (or £1.65), or about one-eighth of what this would cost.
Though if it helps, the ingredients for that Hovis flour are given as “Wheat Flour (with added Calcium, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Wholemeal Wheat Flour, Malted Wheat Flakes (17%), Wheat Protein, Malted Barley Flour.”
Some bread baking places suggest buying malt at a local brewery. Having failed to import granary flour into Canada with Amazon, I simply started adding Horlicks to the dough, which adds a pleasant flavour but is not the same as malted flakes.