A Bag of Flour 25 October 2022 at 6:14AM in Old style MoneySaving 15 replies 3.6K views

Barneysmom

Hi I've got a 1.5kg bag of white flour to use up this week, what shall I do with it?
I thought about making some sort bread but my dilemma is that I don't know which is cheaper to run, the breadmaker or the oven - or even the slow cooker if I can find a recipe.
 Or should I do a pile of plain biscuits or scones, but would they be okay to freeze or am I wasting money?
I've got cooking oil but only one egg left till tomorrow. 

maryb

Is there a real need to use it up this week?  White flour is usually fine well past the date on the packet.  Wholemeal is a different matter, the oils in the wheatgerm make it go rancid.  But if you are worried and don’t actually need anything I’d stick the flour itself in the freezer.  (Lots of people freeze their flour to make sure there are no mites in it)

The bread maker is almost certainly cheaper to run than the oven  It runs for a long time but most of that is only warm until the final bake.  Stirring doesn’t use much power, only heat, and you are heating up the smallest possible space as efficiently as possible.  

YoungBlueEyes

You can freeze scones and biscuits etc. You can also freeze the dough. And you can freeze flour.

Why must it be used up this week....?

joedenise

You can make slow cooker bread - loads of recipes online including BBC Food website.  Will certainly be the cheapest way of cooking anything.

I don't understand why you think it must be used up this week!  Flour will keep beyond it's BB date so no real need to use it up immediately.  I suspect my flour is more like BB 2020 as I use very little.

QrizB

joedenise said:

I don't understand why you think it must be used up this week!  Flour will keep beyond it's BB date so no real need to use it up immediately.  I suspect my flour is more like BB 2020 as I use very little.

I found a bag of Hovis granary bread flour at the back of my cupboard with a BBE date of 2015. Used it half-and-half with newer flour for a loaf in my breadmaker at the weekend and the results were fine.

I'm going to continue using it half-and-half until it's all gone.

Barneysmom

Thank you, I'll do that - if I bag it into little 500g parcels and freeze it it'll be safe till I really need it. 

Pollycat

Barneysmom said:

Thank you, I'll do that - if I bag it into little 500g parcels and freeze it it'll be safe till I really need it. 

I'd just leave it sat in the cupboard and use it up as and when you need it.
Flour has a 'best before' date, not a 'use by' date.

Sky_

A breadmaker is estimated to use 0.35-0.4 Kwh to make a basic loaf, whereas an electric oven uses around 0.9 Kwh per hour, so if you include pre-heating, probably uses twice as much energy as making a single loaf in a breadmaker.  

If you make several loaves at once, then the oven probably costs about the same £ per loaf as the breadmaker.

However I agree with everyone else that there is no rush to use up flour, regardless of best before dates.  Do discard the flour if it has mites in though (and thoroughly clean your food cupboard), as their 'secretions' can make us very ill and once you have them they live in the nooks ad crannies of cupboards and larders, ready to invade new bags of flour!

freyasmum

I wouldn't rush to use the flour either.

But for reference, I'd use the oven and make more than one loaf at a time - I'd actually likely rather make rolls as they take less than half the time to cook. My oven also literally takes a minute to heat up.

Don't forget to fill up your oven with a tray of biscuits (or pies, if you're making loaves) to use up the space as well. 

shortwire

Having had a couple of run ins with flour weevils, I now put new bags of flour in the freezer for 2-3 days, let it defrost completely on the worktop and store it in those lock-tight containers. There’s one that’s almost perfectly the same size as a bag of flour, if you give it a good shove to get the whole bag in there.

I don’t worry about best before dates, use it when you use it, but an easy recipe with plain flour is Jamie Oliver’s flatbreads.

Mix equal weights of natural or Greek yoghurt and plain flour, and a tsp of baking powder per 350g of flour (350g makes half a dozen). Bring everything together in a bowl, then form into thin pita bread shapes and fry in a hot dry pan for a couple of minutes on each side. They’re great for dipping or Jamie douses them in garlic butter.

greent

Flat breads - water, salt, flour and a tiny bit of yeast (fresh yeast is free from Tesc0 bakery counters) - dry fry them in a pan. Super quick and easy and can be frozen.