As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve bought a batch of stoneground, organic flours from Shipton Mill, and I did so before realising that storage would be a problem, as I would have far more flour than I’d usually have.
Storing flour for any length of time means finding somewhere cool and free from vermin. The coolest place is my bedroom, on the floor (I keep my mobility scooter in there, so no carpet). There is, though, a slight problem with silverfish (pretty harmless, easy to kill, but very hard to totally eradicate). I don’t know if they can
chew their way into a flour bag, but I wasn’t about to find out the hard way. The other problem was the fact that the white four came in 2.5kg bags, not the easiest things to handle (this blog is aimed at people with ME/CFS as much as anyone else), or the easiest things to reseal once opened. On 1 and 1.5 kg bags, I use clips made for the purpose, but the 2.5kg bags are too big.
So I bought the following from the Emporium:-
3 Addis White 5 Litre Square Food Saver
1 Lock & Lock Plastic 5 Litre Flip Top Kitchen Caddy
The problem, I found, with things like this, is you get a capacity, but not dimensions, which is seriously unhelpful. In the event, I was able to squeeze – literally – 4 1-kilo bags of flour into the Addis boxes, and one bag, already opened, can live where I normally keep my flour, in a tallboy in the living room.
The kitchen caddy was more problematic – a part of that should have been obvious but, some days, my brain just doesn’t function too well – flour needs protecting from light, and this thing is transparent.
Click to see full size, Back to return.
The only spare cupboard space I have is too close to the oven to keep food in it. I suppose I could keep it in the fridge, but then I’d lose the convenience of having it on the worktop (bread flour is very good for thickening stews, it can be stirred in without it going lumpy). I could paint it black, but it might melt the plastic, and the smell would linger even if it didn’t, so the best solution, if rather less elegant, is to cover it with parcel tape. It’ll probably look horrible, but as long as it works, I don’t care – it’s only me that has to look at it.
Having thought about it, the best solution is a compromise – it can live in the fridge, and I’ll keep a small jar of the stuff in the kitchen. And that’s what I’ve done. Luckily, a short while ago, I bought a fridge-freezer with a really vast fridge. Now all I have to do is remember to take it out the night before I’m baking, for it to come up to room temperature.
The other problem couldn’t have been foreseen, as it’s a bit of deeply crap design. The access port has a decently-sized lid (to which the blue label is stuck in the pic), but the opening itself is absurdly small – child-sized, in fact. If I stuck my hand in to grab a handful of flour, I couldn’t get it out again clenched, and I have fairly small hands. Interestingly, the image on the label that was inside the caddy show a far bigger opening, so what the hell’s going on?
It does, however, just hold the contents of a 2.5kg bag of white flour (the whole top unclips), as long as you take care filling it, as you can see from the mess. And what they don’t tell you is that the top can be replaced only one way – front edge first.
For some reason, Wednesday afternoon seems to have become my time for baking, and a couple of days ago, I thought I’d try some of my new flour in a new recipe:-
500g Organic, unbleached, strong white flour (Doves Farm – I still have some to use up)
50g Organic light rye flour (Shipton Mill)
50g Organic medium oatmeal (Ditto)
2 teaspoons fine sea salt
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon Meridian organic barley malt extract
1 teaspoon Fermipan yeast (plus about an eighth of a teaspoon sprinkled in the flour – it does make a difference)
360ml lukewarm water (60% hydration, but see note below)
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