Flour - Go big or go home

For weeks, the flour sections in supermarkets have been empty. Here in Westchester, I usually pay $4.99 - $7.99 for a 5 lb bag of King Arthur Flour. Organic Flour runs me $8.99 - 10.99 when I can find it.

I went to Restaurant Depot and they had several pallets of 50lb bags of flour - AP, High Gluten, Gluten Free, “OO” - all for UNDER $20 for the whole bag. While 50 lbs is daunting, I split it with a friend. A Gallon Ziplock Freezer bag holds 5 lbs of flour perfectly.

I ended up buying a 50lb bag of King Arthur Special Pantent Flour for $14.98!!! At Baldor (a high-end wholesaler on the East Coast) the Organic Artisan Flour is $64 for 50 lbs. Even this is a screaming good deal!

I’m never buying it in a regular grocery store again!
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The more you buy the more you save! :slight_smile:

George

How long can you store flour before it goes bad? I know I have used expired flour and not really noticed it,

Crazy cheap

If it’s in a cool place, you can store it a while, like over a few months. You’ll be able to tell by the smell when it starts going stale.

And if it has wheat germ in it, the oil might start going rancid. White flours last longer, which is one reason they were made in the first place.

The way flour is made today, it’s broken into its component parts and then reassembled depending on what you want. Including “whole wheat” flour. If you can find real whole grain flour that’s simply milled from the entire grain and never separated, that may go bad more quickly. We have a local miller a couple miles from my house and now I can get all the flour I need so I’m not buying big quantities.

Nice find though Christine!

till moths come flying out.

That’s a great deal - and I’m not letting Allison anywhere near this thread, otherwise we’ll have multiple 50-pound sacks of baking supplies displacing wine in the wine cellar.

From a Kenji article in NYT https://www.nytimes.com/article/expiration-dates-coronavirus.html

White flour is almost certainly fine to use, no matter its age. Whole-wheat and other whole-grain flours can acquire a metallic or soapy odor within a few months. This whiter-equals-longer rule of thumb is true for nonground grains as well. Refined white rice, for example, will last for years, while brown rice will last only for months.

Wouldn’t that be a positive if you’re looking for higher protein? newhere

This is certainly true in my experience. The 00 flour we like best for pizza dough only comes in 25kg bags (or at least it used to, I heard they recently changed) - so huge - and that has traditionally lasted a couple of years. We wrap the bags in heavy duty cling wrap, like they do with suitcases in the airport, to lessen air transfer and discourage any critters.

We use Caputo 00 flour and it comes in a 12 lb bag at the Italian market. Between pizza and pasta, never have a problem going through it. Love the 25 kg bag, that is aggressive!

How do you buy from Restaurant Depot without a re-seller’s license?

Locally in our area they have opened it to the public.

Hey, FlourHunter.

You can portion into eco-friendly paper bags, and then freeze indefinitely.

You’ll buy so much you’ll go broke saving so much!

I keep a lot of flour anyway so i have plenty for my needs, but i did check out Sam’s yesterday. 50 lbs of bleached AP was $6.96, bread flour was $7.86. I prefer unbleached, but in a pinch… Considering unbleached KA is $3.80/5lb at Walmart and $4.99 at whole paycheck.

They’ve opened to everyone nationally during the pandemic


I’ve been buying one pound bags of 00 for years here

Christine;
I don’t mean to pee on your parade but modern flour is so genetically modified from the heritage wheat flour of 100 years ago that many oncologists simply recommend it be avoided.
I would not have mentioned it but this weekend I hosted an oncologist I had never met in person who wanted to listen to my stereo. He had seen photos and posts on an audio board and reached out to me.
He arrived with food and a bottle of wine and before we listened to some vinyl records, we sat in the kitchen and ate, drank, and talked.
He mentioned that he and his wife-an MD internist-both avoided white flower, processed foods, and red meat due to the occupational hazard of seeing too many victims of bad nutrition combined with what they know about the research-the research that is published and the often more informative research that for various reasons is not.
Years ago when I was still racing bikes, I cut out all white flour and ate food made with spelt flour instead.
I confess I now eat some food including bread containing modern white flour. But I am old, worry less, and try to exercise moderation of “bad ingredients”.

Send the doctor our steak pr0n thread.

or worms start wriggling…