March 31, 2018 - 2:54pm
Refrigerated Flour?
Got all these new and fabulous flours for my first sourdough bread after my starter has matured and just want to know if storing those flours in the fridge (even for a longer time) will diminish or alter the flavor or effectiveness of the flour. Advise appreciated for sure.
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I've been baking two loaves of whole wheat sourdough bread every 10 days for the last 12 years (not to mention sourdough pancakes, waffles, biscuits, et.al. in the interim). I freeze my flour for 24 hours before storing it in the refrigerator. At any given moment, I store about 20 pounds of both white and whole wheat flour. All grains have weevil larvae which will eventually mature and thrive. The only way to ensure that they don't mature is to freeze grains for at least 24 hours to kill the larvae permanently. Of course if you use the flour within a few weeks, you're probably okay. but in any event, refrigeration will not affect the flavor at all.
Thanks, Ambimom. Didn't know that and I'm headed to the freezer with it.
in the trunk of my car until I can get hubby to haul the 10 kg bags in! I hadn’t thought of freezing flour to kill little beasties. Works great in the winter time!
There's (unintended, though fortunate) method to your madness, and, thanks to your kind husband's procrastination, a bit of happy insurance.
as I am quite capable of carrying the things in. ? I just choose not to. Ha ha!
Rather than letting an extreme view pass unchallenged, may I offer here an alternative take on care and storage of store-bought flours.
The sweeping claim that "all grains have weevil larvae" is difficult to accept without unbiased, peer-reviewed research to support it. Indeed, it is a classically "undisprovable hypothesis" because it's impossible to assay "all grains" for larval titers. White (very low extraction) flours are extremely shelf-stable would therefore seem to be, for all practical purposes, fairly insect- (but hardly microbe-) free.
The conventional justification for refrigerating flours is to retard the spoilage (development of rancidity) of wholegrain or predominantly wholegrain products due to their stored oils being sensitive to oxidation at room temperature. Completely avoiding this is one of the great benefits of grinding your own grain. Intact cereal kernels do not go rancid. Presumably between the seed coat and oil storage vesicle structure, seed oils are effectively protected from oxidation in situ. That would make good evolutionary sense.
That said, the rate of rancidity development in stored wholegrain flours would have to be dependent upon storage conditions: ambient temperature and humidity, both of which would be dependent not only on the local climate but also on the integrity and seals of the container(s) in which the flours are stored. If you are buying wholegrain flours very infrequently, then refrigerating them to avoid spoilage is certainly recommended. If you're going through them fairly quickly, and your source (store) turns over its stock regularly, I wouldn't rush to refrigerate, much less freeze, your flours.
I keep a working stock of wheat grains in the freezer because otherwise the flour coming out of my Fidibus XL mill is so hot that it convectively billows up from the catch bowl. I did once deep freeze (-80˚C) some beans – to kill any hitchhiking bugs – that were destined for camera-support bean bags we made before going on a photo safari (plop them on the roof of the Land Rover). Must have been effective because now, 33 years later, I'm still using the same bean bags to support my camera (to photograph breads!) and no bugs have crawled out of them. Other than those reasons, I've never seen or heard of a need to freeze grain.
YMMV.
Happy Baking,
Tom