Covid-19 Discussions and Stories

[BakerAunt]

Jimmy Kimmel is posting "minilogues, which he does from his home, with opening pictures done by his daughter, and his wife holding the camera. On a recent one, he showed off a focaccia that he had baked, using a Bon Appetit recipe. He said that he enjoys baking. Who knew? He will have time to practice his skills.

Note: I've looked at that Bon Appetit recipe before, and I'd go with another one, but I've been baking longer than he. At least he is baking. We should send him a link to Nebraska Kitchen.

[RiversideLen]

The order I placed with KAF last week arrived today, 5 lbs of AP and 10 lbs of bread flour. Add that to 5 lbs of white whole wheat I was able to get from Whole Foods last week, plus the rye and semolina I bought in February, I'm OK for a while.

I had a delivery yesterday from Whole Foods, they showed 5 pound bags of AP in stock (the 365 brand) so I ordered one but then it turned into an out of stock.

The order I place this week with KAF still has not shipped, so I have a feeling I won't be getting it, not for a while anyway.

[BakerAunt]

Len, the order that I placed on March 15 shipped on March 19, so be of good hope.

I opened my last ten pounds of Bob's Red Mill's bread flour today. The BRM site has either crashed or been taken down amid the current insanity. I was hoping that they would at least send out an email to let us know what is going on, as KAF finally did, but so far, nothing. Patience is the order of the day.

For now, I have a good variety of flours, although I'm a little low on whole wheat.

[Mike Nolan]

Nebraska's governor has relaxed the state's liquor laws to allow curbside pickup of alcohol in unopened containers as part of restaurant service. That doesn't help with lost sales of mixed drinks, of course.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Yes. We have made that legal here too.

My wife found 10 pounds of KAF bread flour online at Walmart today and it has been appearing briefly on store shelves here. So KAF must be restocking. Have not heard boo from BRM. I found a spare 5 pound bag of KAF bread flour in the basement today too!

[BakerAunt]

BRM's website keeps crashing whenever I go there. It was not great to begin with, and I suspect that traffic dealt it the final blow. I looked at the KAF website, but they still show as being out of most flours.

My sister mentioned seeing a 25lb. bag of BRM at Smart and Final in California. She doesn't bake, so passed by what I would have grabbed--even BEFORE the current challenge was upon us. We are planning to sit tight in our small town for a while, and the one grocery store never had much by way of specialty flours.

I found that I have some bags of KAF high gluten flour in the back of my pantry, so I need to figure out the best way to use it. I've found a KAF recipe that calls for it (naturally), so that will likely be the next loaf of bread.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

High gluten flour makes great bagels. My next door neighbor used to say it was only good for bagels and pizza. (He carried one that was around 15% protein.)

[BakerAunt]

Could it be used in the recipe you used in the Bagel thread?

[Mike Nolan]

I don't see why not. I've used everything from Gold Medal AP to 15% high-gluten flour in that recipe (or the one in BBA, which is similar but makes more dough), and they all came out fine. The other day I used KAF AP, because it's what I've got the most of on hand.

You may need to adjust the moisture level a bit, just make sure it meets Peter's criteria: satin appearance and not at all tacky.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Ahhh. This is what they used to call Sir Lancelot (maybe they still do.) I seen people use this for pizza and bagels.

Could you mix it with AP to lower the gluten? I haven't used AP in years. I use bread flour for AP flour in cookies and brownies and cakes.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--I thought Sir Lancelot was the bread flour. Wasn't there a Sir Galahad as well? And yes, I may start mixing it in with other flour.

Mike--Thanks for the response. I pulled out my copy of Peter Reinhart's book and told my husband that bagels will be making an appearance, perhaps within the next two weeks.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by BakerAunt.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Per KAF, Galahad is 11.7 and Lancelot is 14. Bread is like their patent flour which is 12.7. My friend uses patent to make pita after trying Lancelot and not liking the result.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for clarifying Aaron. Clearly I was muddled.

We made a quick trip to our local grocery today. I actually found organic long grain brown rice at a reasonable price. There was a fair amount of brown rice on the shelves. I think people don't know how to cook it, or in this area are unfamiliar with whole grains. I was also pleased to find frozen turkeys at 99-cents a pound. We bought the smallest, which is still over 14 pounds. My thought is that some restaurants are not buying food now, so the retailers are turning to the grocery stores. I stowed the turkey in the freezer of the apt. refrigerator.

Our grocery store sent out a request for egg cartons, since the only eggs they could find (originally destined for restaurants) were not in cartons. They were able to find some used cardboard holders.

I'm low on wheat germ, which I use in my granola. There was none at the store, so the next batch of granola will use only what I have.

It's good that I wasn't looking for flour, as that section was bare, although the tiny health section had some small bags of Bob's Red Mill wholegrain rye. I read a story about a cook and her boyfriend, who is a cook, who are both laid off due to restaurant closings, and she mentioned a flour shortage, so it is hitting nationwide.

Of course, we were commenting on some flour scarcity BEFORE all of this started.

[skeptic7]

I went to two large grocery stores, both of them were seriously short of flour. one of them had some bags of BRM all purpose, and a little specialty flour. The other had only a little cornmeal and some storebrand flour. One of them did have toilet paper, they were selling 1 bag or 6 rolls per customer. There must be more people willing to bake than I expected or something is putting a glitch in the supply chain.
I was out looking for more whole wheat flour. I have enough for the current recipe but not much extra.

[Mike Nolan]

I think early spring is the natural low point for flour availability in general, because the spring wheat that was harvested last fall is starting to be used up, and the winter wheat crop doesn't get harvested until June. I don't know how much wheat is currently in storage around the country, the last figures I can find from the USDA were from December of 2019 and said there around 1.8 billion bushels of wheat in off-farm storage, which was down around 9% from the previous December. Annual wheat production in the USA for all types of wheat is around 800 billion bushels per year. About 55% of that is exported to other countries.

It takes time to harvest wheat, transport it to mills, mill it, age it, bag it and transport it to wholesale warehouses and then to stores. Hoarding produces shortages at the tail end of the supply chain that takes time to resolve.

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