Where's the flour?
 

Ventured out to a popular store to get a few essentials the other day. I cook and bake quite a bit using basic ingredients and was very surprised to find there was no flour, just an empty space where it should have been. To me that indicates more are baking and doing some real cooking. I think that is a good thing to have come out of a bad thing.

More baking is both good and bad. I’ve been baking way more, but that’s a lot of goodies for just the 2 of us. It’s been fun though! Even the King Arthur site doesn’t have any regular flour. Luckily I stocked up before the hoarding started.

I haven't been out to the stores at all in going on 6 weeks now. So I have missed all the shortages on the shelves other than what I have been told or seen on TV. My sister told me yeast and flour were gone weeks ago. You are right that people are baking and generally just cooking more than ever. Things will normalize again someday and I hope, like many others, sooner than not. I am still just so surprised at all the hoarding. Especially toilet paper! I understand to some extent food items. Preparedness is important. I have not had to change the way I cook or bake since I do these things anyway. It is the folks that have had to change everything that I feel for. So hopefully you will find flour soon so you can bake! -:)

It makes me sooo mad. There would be no shortages if people wouldn't hoard. A lot of stores here are limiting how many of an item you can purchase.

Walmart here has flour. I bought King Arthur Tuesday, several different brands on the shelf. Also plenty of corn meal and sugar. Walmart has so many truck delivering from the distribution warehouses the stores get stocked pretty fast. I went to Kroger and the employee said their trucks aren't coming as often and there were lots of empty shelves there. You will have a better chance of finding the hard to find items by being there when the store opens. Remember the employees have family and friends that want to know when an item is stocked for the next day. Be early. Also the first couple days of each month, everything will be gone from shelves fast.

I guess the flour is out there somewhere with the yeast!! I check in my grocery store every time I am in there for yeast and there is an empty hole where it "should" be. I am glad everyone out there is baking and cooking.

Check eBay...... Nothing but pure greed.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...r&_sacat=14308

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...+purpose+flour

The empty shelves and shortages have been common here in the Seattle area for weeks now. I've been trying to encourage people not yet on lockdown to make sure they have everything they need for as long as they can afford, trying for a month. Some people need to go out weekly, others have more supplies at home.

It's not so easy for those of us used to a fresh food/low carb lifestyle, it was really easy to have pantry goods for months/weeks at a time when I could eat high carb without sending my blood sugar into the 400 range. It is simply not an option for me to eat grains and such, no pasta or flour or corn meal or potatoes or just about anything else I can store on a shelf...

But think of everything -- dish sink/dish washer soap, bleach, I have a specialty contact lens solution, pet food, my coffee consumption is way up!

Last time I went to my local markets they were all out of flour but still had yeast. My friend in Arizona who has been baking with her bread machine for years has asked that I mail her some next time I go out.

Our Washington State Attorney General is not amused at the price gouging in addition to false cures.
https://www.atg.wa.gov/report-covid-...-price-gouging

Iceblossom ~ I'm sympathetic with your friend! My pet peeve ... people stocking up on items they won't actually use for some time (and maybe never did use before), and that I need now! Looking for whole wheat flour. We've been baking our own bread since several months before the COVID-19 outbreak (when my favorite store-bought bread was discontinued), and now that I need more flour, there's none to be found. I won't need to bake bread for about a week, but just not sure what I'll do then if I still haven't replenished my supply.

I've done some Google searches on the internet and the companies providing the flour say there is no shortage of the raw materials, but the sales are going so fast they are not able to keep up.

Craziness!

TFL!

Flour in my area has been available if your in the right place at the right time. Both the local grocery stores the baking isles are pretty baren, no flour and no sugar every time I've been in the stores. I got some at our local natural grocery/garden/grain/gift store, they purchase from Associated grocers, and are apart of a co-op They have plenty of flour and yeast. Just an FYI for those who plant a garden, I have always purchased my garden seeds during the winter months to be ready for spring. When I purchased them a few weeks ago at the above mentioned store, I commented, "I figure I better get these now to tuck away for spring before they too are gone, just like everything else right now." The owner told me, they are selling seeds as fast as toilet paper, they have had to place three orders for seeds, and they are still selling like crazy, he explained, he has never ordered so many seeds in March for spring planting in all his years in business, so if you plant a garden, plan on getting your seeds now and store them. It's looking to me like this virus is going to make us all into homesteaders, home baking and gardening atleast.

When we had kids growing up, our local grocery ran a canned goods sale in the Fall so then I bought a flat of each vegetable plus chili beans, flour, sugar, soup, some paper products. The shelves in the basement were like a mini store. It did save some money but more importantly it was convenience.

Check your bakeries for flour, sugary,yeast., shortening and the such. They aren't using as much now and would be glad to .
make the money/

I went to Walmart today, parking lot was full but easy to stay a good distance from everyone inside. Flour was stocked and I saw jars of yeast, not the three small packs as normal. One shopper told her DH that she couldn't use that yeast because it said for Bread Machines. LOL. I started to tell her it was the same yeast just marketed differently but decided she probably wouldn't believe me. Besides there was plenty of frozen yeast rolls available and the bakery had lots of bread.

I think that what people are forgetting when they go to the store is that the hundreds and hundreds of people that would normally be eating out every day are now shopping for groceries at your local stores so the demand is much greater. If you recall driving past any restaurant at mealtimes, the parking lots are always full and now most of those people are shopping for groceries. The same holds true for people with children. Many of their kids were eating breakfast and lunch at school and now they are eating at home every day.

We have the same problem with flour, sugar, cold cereal, eggs, canned goods, even pasta. Our Walmart has a sign up to be considerate but doesn't state "Limit" so folks so think that means them. Luckily I always keep an extra with what I use the most so when I pull out my "extra" I can go looking to replace it then. This will give me hopefully a couple weeks or more to find it. Plus my garden produced quite a bit last year and what I couldn't give away I chopped up and froze for soups. I even tried my hand at making my own tomato soup using carrots, onions, red peppers, celery and of course tomatoes, then pureed it a little. Came out pretty good......made 52 pints and 1 quart in total. Have given some to my neighbors and friends.

I have kept six months of staples in my pantry for years. Learned this during the lean dollar times of my life. DH and I were fine when the isolated hit and still are as far as food goes. I go once every two weeks to replace what we use. Still have six months of food stuff. Been giving some to my kids but they learned from me, they had a fully stocked pantry to begin with. This keeps us from rushing to buy what others need to buy. I hope everyone keeps a good supply of basics when this settles. No rushing or doing without when another emergency occurs.

No more flour around here. The other day, I went through my pantry and pulled out all of the grains I have in stock s/a quinoa, bulgar, rye berries, oatmeal, etc. I put them in the blender and made my own, multi-grain flour for my bread making. It was fast and easy. The bread turned out a little dense, but delicious!

I did the same for nut butter. The peanut butter is now gone from the shelves too. I have a big stash of almonds, so I made almond butter in my food processor. (I have done this a few time before.) It's super loud when I first start grinding and it does take awhile before it changes into butter, but it's a fraction of the cost, it's available and my DH is forever grateful.

We really are blessed to have so much food available to us, even in these times.

~ C

This last time I went to Costco there was lots of yeast but very few bags of flour (like 8??) with a "limit 1" on the flour.

I bought a 2 lb yeast for my friend in Arizona who has flour but no yeast and sent it to her as a Seattle Care Package. I used a medium flat rate box and included 2 rolls of "the good stuff" Charmin toilet paper as packing material, a small box of tea (she's an ice tea drinker), two packages of her favorite snack cake, and a small rock from my yard.

I wrote on the bag I put the rock in: Yes -- it's a rock. Why? Because it's a flat rate box and I think I'm funny.

Fortunately, she thinks I'm funny too. Even if sometimes it requires explanation and it's still defies explanation...

I don't understand why people are hoarding either. It is very annoying and stressful in an already stressful circumstance. I find that now I have to shop more often and go to more stores to get essentials when I'm suppose to stay home. At least some stores are putting limits on how many you can buy of certain items which has helped some. We eat fresh food, nothing canned. So the local stores seem to have lots of fruits and veggies and are well stocked with meat. But flour and paper goods are scarce.

I found flour at the natural food store today - white wheat instead of all purpose, but at least it's organic flour. I had to buy 10 pounds which is a little generous, but better too much than too little. They had a decent amount of whole wheat, but I bought the only bag of white. I also found sugar, so it was a good trip, though the fresh vegetables were non existent. My big outing - the only store I'm 'allowed' to go to. Two weeks ago, I was the only customer in the store. Today there were quite a few younger people and they were definitely not 'social distancing'. I just avoided the aisles they were in and washed my hands and face when I got home.
I have a little yeast, but will put more on my list for my daughter to look for. I bake the communion bread for church the first Sunday of the month, but I doubt if communion will be served even if our state opens up enough so we can attend church.

Several of our local bakeries are now offering to sell flour and other groceries through their suppliers. You might call a local shop to see if they'll do it for you. I'm almost out of AP flour so may just get some that way this week. The hoarding seems to be slowing somewhat, too, since I actually found TP, paper towels, and whole wheat flour in our supermarket last week. Or maybe I just got there are the right time?

The problem with many staples is (or maybe by this time, was), that they were being packaged for wholesale, mostly. Once it became that the products needed to go to the grocery stores instead, they had to re-configure the lines in the factories and re-order retail packaging to account for the new orders and then re-package the product and ship it. It's not that there isn't enough, it's just that it had to be re-packaged.

My husband works in the food industry and it's been a real challenge.

Watson

as I have just about every risk factor there is, I have been relying on friends and family, and am now starting to try online ordering and pick up. oh my, I currently should have been paying more attention to all that "ap" and online ordering stuff. I did manage to order some food from target yesterday, but around here, you can not get fresh, frozen, or refrigerated foods that way....anyway, I got some odd things like chocolate chips ( the good ones as they were out of the usual brands I get), a box of muffin mix ( out of the small packs I usually get) gravy mix, honey, canned pumpkin, and giant paper lunch bags (don't know how big they are, I will be surprised). they were out of my usual hand soap, laundry soap, and dish soap....I did order another kind of dish soap as I seem to be doing dishes way more than I usually do....This actually was a trial to see if I could manage to do the ordering....took me a couple of hours to figure out my "ap"....sigh.....I remember that old days when I was a kid....we had a fruit celler in which were a couple 50 pound bags of potatoes, rutabagas', onions, a big crock full of carrots from the garden, and rows of canned green and wax beans, wild canned blueberries, raspberries, apple butter, apple sauce, canned peaches and pears, raspberry, strawberry, and blueberry jam, apple jelly, rhubarb sauce, and a couple bushels of winter apples....in the kitchen were a 50 pound bin of flour and a 50 pound bin of sugar....sigh....silly me....I had those bins removed to make room for the dishwasher....and the "fruit room" is now full of spiders and empty canning jars.