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On the subject of new bakers, here's a link to a short (11 minute) NPR story on the science of making bread:
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/13/833428230/the-science-of-making-bread
Thanks for asking, Aaron.
I have looked at two sites:
https://www.bakersauthority.com/
The shipping is the expensive part, although it would actually be cheaper to buy a 50 lb. bag and pay shipping from these places than pay the Walmart price for a 50 lb. bag with free shipping. I don't know anything about these two sites or how backed up they are on shipping. I'm going to keep looking for a closer location to north-central Indiana.
A 50 lb. bag of whole wheat flour would be a storage challenge, but I could probably stuff the refrigerator with individual bags.
I wish that KAF and BRM could let us know when they might have flour back in stock to ship.
I put an order (not for flour) into KAF last Monday, so as not to lose my Bakers Bucks which was expiring, and I have yet to receive a notice that it has shipped. All items were supposedly in stock. I would have waited on the order, but KAF never managed to answer my question as to whether they would consider extending the expiration dates on Bakers Bucks, so I went ahead and ordered.
My Bob's Red Mill order arrived yesterday. I think that I was lucky, as I went back to their site last night and whole wheat flour was listed as sold out. If you need one of their flours, it probably pays to monitor the site. I was lucky to get the steel-cut oats and wheat germ as well.
Based on what I'm seeing from the Bon Appetit and Epicurious (aren't they owned by BA?) emails, banana bread, focaccia, and sourdough seem to be leading the online baking. I've not seen much on chocolate chip cookies, but surely they must be in the running for most popular Pandemic bakes.
For cooking, I've seen a lot of cheesy casseroles (comfort food) in Martha Stewart and Real Simple emails. Bon Appetit, of course, is coming out with the usual very strange main dish recipes that always manage to have an odd ingredient or two that is not easily available even in the best of times--unless you work in the BA test kitchen--that will probably convince most millennials NOT even to attempt to cook. I read comics online at Go Comics, and Luann is about to attempt an online stew recipe that had a long list of ingredients, some of which are rather odd, not to mention expensive. She must have gotten it from Bon Appetit.
King Arthur had been offering some blogs for new bakers. I read P.J. Hamel's blog on using the flour you've got, which would be useful for newbies. There is also one on substituting bread flour for AP, which I think someone here asked about.
In reading the comments, I saw someone wanted to know when the website would have flour again. The reply was that they could not ship to individuals right now as there are too many people wanting to order flour and socially distancing in warehouses makes the work slower.
The upshot is that King Arthur is shipping flour out to stores, so we have a better chance of getting it at a grocery store vs. no chance of being able to order it online from KAF at this time.
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