How to store flour at home

Flour is a strategic product that is in every home and in every family. In the villages, the mistresses said that if there is butter, flour and sugar in the house, you can survive any hunger. And indeed - flour is used by a good housewife almost every day - it will please home-made pies, or bake buns. That is why the flour ends quite quickly. In such cases, experienced women decide to buy flour for future use. Firstly, flour is cheaper in the season, and secondly, you don’t need to carry it every time, and it’s somehow calmer when the flour is always at hand. However, another question arises here - how to store this flour?

What to store flour

Flour can be stored in canvas or paper bags, glass or plastic containers. If you bought flour in a small package, you can put it in the refrigerator, but only before it is opened. Then it should be poured into a sealed container.

If you plan to remove the purchased flour for long-term storage, it must first be dried. To do this, pour flour on a sheet of parchment or a clean tablecloth and smooth it with a thin layer. After a few days, the flour can be stored. If you store a few pounds of flour, sprinkle it in a cloth bag or glass jar. If you prefer to have a large supply of flour, then you need to buy bulk plastic containers with a tight-fitting lid. In hardware stores a wide selection of such dishes.

You can store flour in ordinary plastic bottles from under mineral water. They are tightly closed by a lid and convenient to move. If you don’t like narrow necks, often bake and ease of access to flour is important to you, you can pour the product into a plastic bucket with a lid. You can also leave a convenient plastic bucket or a scoop and sieve there.

Where to store flour

Store flour in a kitchen drawer, pantry, closet, on the mezzanine. Do not forget to make sure that there are no products and products with a pungent odor. The fact is that flour is very sensitive to extraneous odors, so it can not be stored next to household chemicals, spices and medicines. If you store flour near detergents, future baking will somehow have a slight smell of soap. By the way, if you store flour in the kitchen, it is better to place the container at floor level, on the lower shelf. At the top of the room, the air is much warmer.

How to protect flour from insects

Flour needs to be checked from time to time for dampness and insects getting into it. If the flour has become wet, it must be poured onto a flat surface and allowed to dry at room temperature. From time to time taste the flour so that it does not become bitter. So that insects are not wound up in flour, you can use some folk remedies.

1. The canvas bag in which the flour will be stored is pre-soaked in saline. It is well known that salt is an excellent preservative; it will not allow bugs to get inside the bag. Just dissolve three tablespoons of salt in a liter of water, lower the bag there and dry without rinsing.
2. You can drop a metal object in a bag with flour - a coin or knife.This will scare away the pests and they will not eat such flour. The main thing is that the coin does not get into baking!
3. Cats and other insects do not like the smell of calendula and avoid it in every possible way. Dry a couple of branches of this plant, put in a canvas bag or just wrap in a handkerchief. Then lower the calendula directly into the flour.
4. You can scare bugs with garlic. In the middle of the container with the flour, lower a few cloves of garlic and no pests are afraid of you.
5. In a bag of flour, you can drop a few bay leaves. This will scare away insects, but will not give the flour a foreign smell.
6. There are modern ways to deal with pests. Put a couple of open peppermint chewing gums in the top layer of flour. No insect will stick into such flour.

If the insects still managed to get into the flour, do not rush to throw the product away. It is enough just to sift the flour through a fine sieve, dry and pour into a new container. If you use the same container, you must first rinse it, rinse with salt composition, dry and only then pour the sifted flour.

How much flour to store

Among the tips for storing flour, the following can be noted. Before you pour flour into a plastic container or plastic bottle, make a “salty pillow” on the bottom. To do this, sew a bag from several layers of gauze, pour coarse salt into it and place on the bottom of the container. Salt absorbs moisture well and protects flour from moisture.

In ancient times, flour was stored in the following way. A large canvas bag with flour was lowered into the water for several seconds, and then quickly removed. A dense layer of dough formed around the bag, which cannot be overcome by either rodents or insects. Thus, flour could be stored for years.

If you do not like pastries and rarely bake, there is no point in buying flour for the future. However, if you have a large family, if children and you like to mess with the dough, buying flour is a very rational and right decision. Store the flour correctly to spoil your homemade crispy pastries more often.

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