9 ms·
So much flour will sit in people’s pantry and go bad, never opened.
by devmunchies 6y ago
So much flour will sit in people’s pantry and go bad, never opened.
- guerrilla 6y agoBased on...? It may do nothing but drive down future demand as people use up what they have.
- blihp 6y agoThe reality that many people buying it don't know how to cook, let alone bake. I'd bet that most of the people clearing out the baking aisles are doing so as an insurance policy (i.e. buy the raw materials now 'just in case' and learn how to use them later, if needed. Maybe, if they have kids they're baking some cookies.) The crisis will pass with the majority of the flour purchased just going bad. Regarding driving down future demand: not likely more than in the very short term... flour has a fairly short shelf life. Have you ever used/tasted rancid flour? While it's not the end of the world, it's not something most people are likely to want use in a recipe more than once given a choice.
- guerrilla 6y ago> The reality that many people buying it don't know how to cook, let alone bake. Based on? > not likely Again, based on what? Your intuition? You have some data correlating flour purchases with people unable to bake (and apparently unmotivated to use a search engine or read expiration dates)? Storing flour in a sealed container extends its lifespan. Freezing it even more so. Anyone can easily learn these facts if so motivated.
- blihp 6y agoBased on a lifetime of anecdotal evidence and the application of logic and common sense. Not everything in this world requires citing references and applying the scientific method.
- olyjohn 6y agoIs a pig's ass pork? Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear shit in the woods? Gonna need some data and studies to back that up...
- fock 6y agoI really think there's a lot of stuff easier to prepare and of much better nutritional value you can put in a freezer (which generally only works until power runs out). But hey, let's buy 100lbs of flour and put it in a freezer because we can do that....
- renewiltord 6y agoBaking is not some arcane skill. It's literally just instruction following. First time I baked it sucked. Second time it was great. The separation between the two was hours not weeks or months. Listen, I don't want to over-generalize but I've seen this on the Internet about the most mundane of skills: cooking, baking, doing your taxes. They're all just instruction-following. Sure the upper limit on the skill level is high but basic competence to get a usable product on all of them is like at the level a twelve-year-old could do it if they had the motor skills.
- fludlight 6y agoNecessity is forcing many people to learn how to cook, bake, garden, clean, cut hair, etc.
- Dylan16807 6y agoLet alone bake? If you have a recipe that lists weights, which is easy to get, then it's pretty difficult to screw up baking.
- devmunchies 6y agoOP here. based on me owning a cookie company that makes thousands of cookies a week and being plugged-in because it's my industry. I ask people. many haven't used flour they've bought yet. There are lots of people using flour who didn't before, but lots of it is going to go to waste.
- BenjiWiebe 6y agoIt can be stored in the freezer.
- vkou 6y agoIf I were hoarding food, flour would be just about the last thing that I would devote freezer space to...
- Scoundreller 6y agoOr any other cool dry place that is safe from insects. I’m keeping my freezer space for the stuff that actually goes bad.
- nomel 6y agoAnd moisture. Some of the molds that can grow on flour are carcinogenic and/or extremely toxic.
- Scoundreller 6y agoCool dry place ;) But ya, aflatoxins are nothing to mess around with.
- mceachen 6y agoTIL: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aflatoxin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aflatoxin
- nomel 6y agoOne of the most terrifying stories I've heard is about some friends of my grandparents. The mother would cook bread, every day, for the family. She did this for years. Eventually, the dad became ill and died of cancer, then the mother, then the rest of the family. It was traced to some of these molds in the flour some time before the last one passed. I also make bread, and you can be sure that I keep it in a dry place and make sure it smells fresh whenever I use it, even though I have no idea if moldy flour has a smell.
- Bang2Bay 6y agoThat is my worry as well. people who are used to eating out have now bought a lot of grains and flour. they would just sit in their pantries when they start eating out again. ironically, those who eat out would not be able to estimate what they need. the poor would be paying for the ensuing shortage unfortunately.
- jetrink 6y agoA lot of people I know are getting into baking their own bread right now. Sourdough seems to be particularly popular. I would guess that most people are buying the flour to use it, not to hoard it.
- el_benhameen 6y agoI thought this when I realized just how much flour was in the 25 lb bag I bought, but if you make a habit of baking even once a week, you end up going through it pretty quickly.
- vkou 6y agoMy wife and I have gone through more flour in the last two months than we have in the past five years. We've probably used 20 lbs of it, already. Edit: We, of course, could not find any at the groceries, as of a few weeks ago. So, instead of buying two ten-pound bags, since none were available, we went to a restaurant supply store, to buy a fifty-pound bag... There were no lines, no shortage of product on the shelves, and if they sold it in smaller portions, we would have happily bought less. On the bright side, we are now a strategic flour reserve for our friends and relatives.
- favorited 6y agoIf you're buying in industrial portions, you should consider freezing it in batches to kill any weevil eggs. The larger of a batch you have, the more likely there are eggs in there. Most bakers, pizzerias, etc. will use the flour fast enough that they won't hatch, but a home baker might not be so lucky... https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-store-flour-1389337 https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-store-flour-1389337
- kaybe 6y agoThat's the thing though, at least here there is no general shortage of flour, but there is a shortage of small 1-kg packages, while the demand for large bags has gone down. Some local bakeries made their own smaller batches for sale as a result.
- MereInterest 6y agoExactly. My usual weekly recipe uses about 850-900 grams of flour, so I go through a 25 pound bag every 3 months or so. This has been roughly consistent for the past 2 years.
- noughtme 6y agoAs someone who does bake bread every week, this has been super annoying. It is true that more people are taking up baking, but a lot of this is panic buying. My 30-40 year old friends have all admitted that they immediately purchased 2 bags of flour that remain unopened. Bakeries remain open and supermarket bread aisles are full. Most people with young kids have not suddenly started baking bread everyday.
- Theodores 6y agoI am like you - under normal circumstances flour is a staple, although I cheat by using a bread making machine. I don't have a car and flour plus a machine means I can have fresh bread, not stale bought stuff. Normally I buy 3kg at most in a week with a stockpile of less than that. So the current situation is annoying. However, think of the OCD crew that are normally the only ones buying hand sanitizer. Us flour buyers can improvise with store bread but the OCD people must have had it hard when their essentials of hand sanitizer and toilet paper vanished from the aisles.
- LyndsySimon 6y agoI’m not “one of the OCD crew”, but I have been making hand sanitizer for distribution locally. I bought a bunch of aloe gel online in late January, and picked up several gallons of Everclear (190 proof grain alcohol) locally.
- ghaff 6y agoYeah. At my local grocery stores, there's never been any material shortage of bread. There hasn't even really been a lack of choice from mass market stuff to what at least passes for artisanal by supermarket standards. I have been baking (more than usual) at home but there's no shortage of breadstuffs in the supermarket if you'd rather buy. (TBH, bread has been more consistently in-stock than a lot of product categories.)
- Mirioron 6y agoThe preparations are unnecessary until they suddenly aren't. If you wait until bakeries close and supermarket bread aisles are empty, then it's too late. This is like having backups and disaster recovery in IT. You spend resources on it, but get nothing in return. That one time things do go wrong though it can literally save your business and you'll be happy to have had backups and recovery in place. I think that people's fears of a lack of food in first world countries are overblown, but people are still afraid.
- rjsw 6y agoParticularly since it is really hard to find yeast for sale.
- phillc73 6y agoDrink Weissbier and harvest it yourself from the bottom of the bottles.
- vkou 6y agoYou can raise your own yeast + bacteria mix by following a recipe for making starter. As long as you wash your hands well before working with it, and are willing to wait a few weeks for it to establish, it's difficult to screw it up.
- aaronblohowiak 6y ago.. or just ask on Nextdoor or similar. since part of maintaining a starter is discarding some on the regular, people are frequently more than happy to leave their discard in a bag on the front stoop for you to pick up
- mikro2nd 6y agoWeeks? I've made starters from scratch in the space of 3 to 4 days. One way to speed it up is to stir in a teaspoon of (good quality) honey, since honey is naturally full of wild yeasts.
- vkou 6y agoIsn't honey pasteurized?
- Shivetya 6y agoI go the whole wheat route (hard red mostly) and that keeps in a sealed container nearly forever. I have had good luck with regular flour simply by keeping it in an old glass canister set. Honey of course keeps just fine when kept out of the light and also sealed. many people let the humidity in their homes get too high and don't transfer some baking products to more appropriate containers than the simple paper bags mass packaging uses.
- remmargorp64 6y agoI personally bought 200 lbs of flour from a mill (they only sold 50 lb bags, and I needed a couple of different types of flour to do the different baking projects I wanted to do). Each bag was around $30. With shipping and handling, the grand total came to around $200 total. I've already made 6 pizzas, 8 loaves of sourdough bread, 3 cakes, and 4 batches of cookies. I've been baking about two new loaves of sourdough every week. When you consider that a single pizza order for delivery typically costs around $30 after tip and your typical artisanal bread loaf at the store is around $5, my flour has already paid for itself, and I still have months of flour left (assuming I keep baking 2 loaves every week). I would agree with you, though. Many people probably aren't actually using their flour and baking goods they have been hoarding (beyond making a couple of things). For me, though, baking has essentially turned into my hobby. $200 to fund an entire hobby that will keep me entertained (and and my little family fed) for months? Not the worst $200 I have spent, that's for sure.
- tonyarkles 6y agoHeh, it's funny. I haven't baked nearly as much as you have during the lockdown, but it's been surprising! I admittedly panic bought a few things (e.g. rice and flour) but now that my wife and I have a bunch of time on our hands, we've been going through both of them at a pretty solid clip. What I thought was "excessive flour" is starting to run out, and we keep finding new stir fries and curries to cook together to eat with rice. Overall food bills have dropped significantly (it's easier to cook at home than to pick something up) and we're eating healthier too, and having fun together!
- TylerE 6y agoThe expensive bits of the pizza are the cheese and toppings, no?
- ido 6y agoOT but by "a single pizza order" do you mean 1 pizza or several in one order? Even good (i.e. not fast-food) pizzas cost maybe €10-12 around here, if it's for a single pizza $30 sounds like a lot of money to pay for it!
- zeristor 6y ago
- joshvm 6y agoUnopened I agree with, but bad? The quality of most people's homemade baked goods is dependent on skill and equipment, not the age of their flour. There is a risk of weevils over time perhaps, but that can ruin fresh flour too. I've baked cakes with two year old self raising flour (it's getting on for three now) and it's fine. On the foreseeable timescale of covid it's certainly not an issue. I used to buy 16kg bags from Shipton Mill which would last 3-4 months no problem.
- tim333 6y ago> sit in people’s pantry and go bad The stuff keeps for years if it doesn't get wet or bugs in it. Certainly my mums flour jar has some pretty old flour in.
- allannienhuis 6y agodifferent types of flours are less likely to have weevils. The more highly processed white flours are unlikely to have weevils. Less refined whole wheat flours can and do need different long-term storage. The usual recommendation is to freeze it in batches to kill the bugs, and then store in plastic or glass type containers (not paper).