The flour shortage

[JinglingHellsBells]

Can anyone shed any light on this?

I can't get my head round why it's flown off the shelves. (Someone did say parents making play dough or whatever but not convinced.)

Is everyone baking like mad out of boredom?

Or- and this was my first thought- did everyone panic, think what they would need if they were locked down with no food for weeks and all think..

Ta dah! We need flour to make bread - one of life's essential foods.

Given there is no shortage of bread, cakes or baked good in the supermarkets, I really don't understand. Even if people normally do a bit of baking each week, it doesn't explain the huge shortage.

It doesn't affect me much personally as I am gluten-free, and can use other flours, but it's just weird.

[Madcats]

Another thing that MIGHT help. Some of the suppliers to restaurants have started to do small order deliveries for Joe Public. I suppose they have lots of drivers and vans twiddling their fingers.

I am (hopefully) getting some 00 flour, charcuterie, decent cheese, and compost and geraniums from one tomorrow. They had some fab fancy stuff in catering packs.

I only found out because I follow a couple of local indie restaurants I. Twitter.

What I can't get is paintbrush cleaner and shed paint!

[NoWordForFluffy]

I didn't know we had a bag free shop here, but apparently we do! It's all organic, so out of my price range for now (furloughed).

[Spacie]

Morrisons have started bagging up and selling bread flour From their bakery

I saw this this morning.1kg of bread flour in the paper bags they normally use for the sausage rolls

[APurpleSquirrel]

Try your local (if you have one) bag-free store. We have one in our town & as they can take in the large sacks & then weigh it for you into smaller bags it's the only place locally selling it most days. DH managed to get some 00 flour as we'd run out - need it to make pizzas 🍕

[MadisonAvenue]

I’ve managed to get a bag of plain and of SR today, it’s eggs that I still can’t get from anywhere.

[NoWordForFluffy]

I now have 32kg of flour in the hallway. It's quite bulky! 😂 I won't run out of plain or white bread flour for a good while, which is the upside.

[HermioneWeasley]

Morrisons have started bagging up and selling bread flour From their bakery

[Tanith]

This online store is doing cake mixes and bread mixes for those who want to try their hand at baking, but don't have the basic ingredients:

www.cakecraftshop.co.uk

[FlamingoAndJohn]

My local vegan cafe and deli has changed to delivery of fresh fruit and veg as well as other food stuff (still all vegan.)

They posted this picture today!

[SistemaAddict]

I do make my own bread and have done for a few months now. I make a loaf every 2 days on average and use about 2kg bread flour a week. I bake once a week usually too and will make things like a crumble, or cookies, or cake. I did have about 3kg of self raising and plain and 6kg of bread flour but it's not last long. I started buying it last year before anyone complains.

[missmarplesapprentice]

The average household buys flour every 14 weeks with supermarket flour sales making up about 5% of the suppliers sales. That's the reason why there is plenty of cakes/mass produced bread etc.

There is no shortage of flour, it is a shortage of flour available to the general public.

Very few people mass purchased flour, but suddenly you have many families etc who preempted school closures or lockdowns purchased creating an abnormal peak in demand that couldn't be met.

[NaturalBornWoman]

If you are vulnerable you’re likely to be receiving help with shopping anyway: why decide that you’re going to start baking bread out of necessity if you’re able to buy the food you need? It’s not logical.

Well going by some threads on here re help with shopping, they’re probably considered cheeky fuckers if they specify anything other than ‘bread’ so if they want a nice crusty granary or a sourdough because that’s what they like there’s every chance they’d decide to bake their own rather than a bag of plastic white sliced.

[MonaLisaDoesntSmile]

@Iamthewombat As a sidenote, I know a lot of people who suddenly decided to start making bread. Because they have hours of free time and have time to figure it out, vulnerable or not. Homemade bread tastes heavenly, and often after trying you don't go back to buying in store. It's also very addictive. So it's not a necessity, but a choice of something good over something that pales in comparison.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

I am baking because I'm in a vulnerable category and so we aren't going to supermarkets. It's really really hard to get supermarket deliveries. I can't ask friends to keep going to the shops for me for bread, cake and stuff. Life's already shit, so I'm making us treats.

[VivaLeBeaver]

I have still,got a bag of plain so am good for pizzas and pancakes at the minute and saving it for that. The Doves box is no good for me because we wouldn’t eat the cereal and it’s a lot of money for flour and pasta....have plenty of pasta.

[SistemaAddict]

@VivaLeBeaver Waitrose have the doves farm flour but no regular flour. My local health shop has bread flour and gf flour. They also have yeast.

I had a good stash of all flours for brexit and yeast but didn't have enough to last more than about a month. I've limited storage space.

[FurForksSake]

It's not panic buying, people are just buying a bag each (or so...) and that soon throws the supply and demand out. Flour is usually a totally steady market with a slight rise (boom!) in Feb and Dec but otherwise totally predictable and flat. We have spent so long perfecting stock and just in time systems that things like this totally overwhelm the system.

As said being able to package for consumers is the issue, I bought 16kg and have divied it out for the family.

I've bought in bulk from a wholesaler as I am one of those people that enjoy baking. I made doughnuts yesterday, got to get my shits and giggles in.

[scaryreading]

On one show now

[waterjungle]

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/coronavirus-lockdown-flour-shops-shortages-explained-a9457351.html

I short a 94% increase in demand and only 4% of flour goes to domestic baking. The rest gets sold in big volume bags. Packing small quantities is a different type of production.

[Iamthewombat]

I don’t understand your point at all. Being vulnerable has no bearing at all on either flour demand or breadmaker ownership.

You are obviously on a crusade and looking for reasons to get upset on behalf of ‘vulnerable people’ everywhere. Do you stalk threads looking for reasons to take offence? I’ll spell it out again, shall I?

• somebody suggested that flour sales had gone up because, amongst other things, ‘vulnerable people’ had started to buy flour to make bread with.
  

• in response to which, I said that it would be pretty surprising if a large group of people who had never made bread before suddenly decided that now was the time to start making bread. Why would you bother, if you had never done it before and didn’t need to? It wouldn’t be out of necessity because bread is available in shops.
  

So although you can’t see it, and although you quoted the wrong poster, I hope you now understand that I am in full agreement with the principle that being vulnerable is not synonymous with an increased demand for bread flour.

[Bluebooby]

I wasn't able to get hold of plain or self raising flour for nearly two months. I eventually found a giant sack of it (5kg) in a small Turkish grocers near our town centre. We've had that in the house for about a week, but I'm scared to open it because it's so huge that I don't know how I'll store it. The sack is currently sitting on the kitchen table. Over a month of searching for flour and now I've got more than I know what to do with, and I'm worried about weevils!

In normal times we do get through a fair amount of flour. I make cakes, biscuits or brownies etc probably every other week, and we bake bread at least twice a week or more. I need to get over my fear of opening the giant sack and then I'll start baking again.

[Daftasabroom]

Another one here for the 16kg catering packs. We got ours from one of the local food service companies, minimum order of £50 so stocked up on other bits as well. At 500g per loaf 16kg only lasts a month.

[feesh]

We normally buy packaged bread, but have switched to making our own now so that we don’t have to go to the shops (ever). Can’t get bread flour for love nor money at the moment though (am not in the U.K. by the way).

[springsummer22]

How very strange to think that because we need to shield we should not start baking bread. We bought a new bread maker in Feb as part of our preparations in case of lockdown and have made bread every 2 days since early lockdown. Large family to feed and as we are only getting a weekly delivery we would otherwise have to eat long life sliced type bread. Prior to pandemic we would buy fresh bread daily at weekends and eat at school/work in the week. OP - I have no idea why you think it is just 90 year olds that cant go out for walk or run or to the park - there are thousands and thousands of young children and teens too that have to shield and every age of adult not just those in their 90s.

[Arrowfanatic]

I always bake the kids birthday cakes, have done for the last 11 years. My eldest birthday was 2 days after lock down started so I went off to find SR flour & eggs to make her cake as always & couldn't get any! I had to buy one of those nasty premade birthday cakes which sadly the kids hated.

My sons birthday is next (and still during lockdown) so you can bet as soon as I came across baking essentials I stocked up! Still cant find eggs though 🙄