As Covid-19 cases increase exponentially and more people are forced to stay home, the shift of shortages has switched from paper products to flour. It’s as if all of the keto and paleo enthusiasts have said, “If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die eating real cake and cookies, dammit!”
We noticed the lack of flour at Central Market two weeks ago. Last night Julian ordered groceries through Instacart – no flour. I checked the Costco, Bob’s Red Mill, and King Arthur websites this morning. All were out of wheat flour. Many of the non-gluten flours were also out of stock.
I’m okay for the moment. I have some bread flour and a little whole wheat flour. I even have a little gluten-free flour mix in the freezer. Things could get desperate if Julian gets a hankering for onion pockets or cobbler in the next few weeks.
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If you still need some flour or yeast, while not the least expensive, Grand Central Bakery his selling 4 lb. bags of small mill all purpose flour and whole wheat flour. A friend picked up an order fro me and for herself today, so it will be a bit before I test it. It’s a resource and I’m hoping a decent quality resource.
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I’ve got plenty of yeast in the freezer. We managed to score some King Arthur flour via amazon.com a couple of weeks ago, so I’m in okay shape for now.
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We got some King Arthur flour in our last Amazon order. I’d bought some yeast from Costco years ago and have a big stash of it in the freezer. Still works.
At our local grocery store, there is some wheat flour available (at least, there was yesterday). However, there was no yeast. I think a lot of people with time on their hands are experimenting with baking bread. 🙂
I also heard an interesting podcast segment yesterday about the toilet paper shortage. The gist of it was that there are two completely separate manufacturing-to-store supply chains for residential toilet paper and commercial toilet paper (commercial tends to be larger rolls, less soft, etc.). Most of us are now using residential toilets more and commercial toilets less, but we probably use about the same amount of toilet paper, so there is an actual shortage of residential-style toilet paper, and a surplus of commercial-style toilet paper. So it’s not really hoarding that is causing the shortage of toilet paper (or at least, not only hoarding).
The same (according to this podcast) applies to food items, whose packaging is much different for commercial vs. residential use. And even produce — for example, bananas to be distributed to food service are smaller and come in singles, whereas grocery store bananas are larger and come in bunches.
Here’s the podcast: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/why-toilet-paper-shortage-makes-more-sense-you-think-on-the-media