Have you taken advantage of the flour deals that have been going on since Thanksgiving? I bought a few packages around Turkey Day for about $1.50, but this week Wegmans was offering their store brand flour for 99 cents for the 5 lb bag and the unbleached was included. I thought that was a fantastic deal so I picked up my customer limit of 2 and my mom gave me her limit of two. I now have 4 bags of flour and my Tupperware flour container is full.
I’m not sure how long it will take for me to use all of that flour and the date on the flour is about a year away. I have never stockpiled this much flour, but I am having a love affair with my book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking and I am going through the flour much quicker than usual.
I read online that you should freeze the flour for about 2 days to kill off any bugs and then store in an air-tight container. Bugs in the pantry are not a good thing. I had an infestation one summer and I had to get rid of every single dry good item in my pantry that wasn’t in an air-tight container. So the flour bags are at risk. So here’s my predicament, I need to find some type of air-tight container large enough to store the flour in so that it stays fresh longer and I don’t get any bugs.
I love my Tupperware containers. I’m not sure what era they are from, but I find them at yard sales or thrift stores. I have more in other cupboards. I store everything from popcorn and snacks to all of my baking supplies like sugars and flours. But I need to come up with a bigger container or storage idea for the 4 bags of flour that I have right now.
So I am on a quest for a large, inexpensive, air-tight, food-grade container. Do you have any suggestions? If so, please let us know in the comments.
Do you stock-pile flour or other dry goods? How do you store them?
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You can ask at a bakery of most grocery stores for free food grade buckets (usually had icing in them). They will usually give to you free! Clean them well. Then, you can either use the lid they provide, or, even better, you can buy a gamma lid that will screw on and off. Those are better air tight protection. You could throw in an oxygen absorber, too. Along with the freezing, that should keep your flour safe from bugs! Just don’t store the bucket on concrete. FYI – the buckets at places like Home Depot will not be food grade. Gamma lids can sometimes be found at Walmart or online – try emergency essentials or similar. Hope this helps.
I use 5 gallon buckets (make sure they are food-grade plastic, and not used for things like soaps or something before), with gamma-seal lids. They’re not too expensive, and they work great for all kinds of bulk grains or whatever. You can get them from someplace like beprepared.com.
I use large ziplock bags, keep the flour in its paper sack and store the sack in a plastic bag. As long as I have room I keep them stored in my deep freezer in the basement.
I buy bread flour from Costco, and found a large bin that was intended to store pet food. I like the rectangle shape, and it has two different lid openings.