Kitchen

[depglass]

I've had a bag of flour in the pantry for a good five years.  It was bought on sale with others years ago and never got used.  What are the odds this is OK, meaning there are no bugs in it?  Pitch?  

[LindaSal]

Pitch!!!   Nothing lasts forever and if you store your flour and use it infrequently, I would suggest to keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  I have always done that as parasites can eventually grow as they do in expired spices,  have you checked the dates on those lately????

[mom2four0418]

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@depglass wrote:

I've had a bag of flour in the pantry for a good five years.  It was bought on sale with others years ago and never got used.  What are the odds this is OK, meaning there are no bugs in it?  Pitch?  

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Pitch 

[Still Raining]

As a veteran of many years of third world living, you absolutely must establish if you are infested by weevils.  You can do a test of a sample.

Weevils spread like fleas and need to be dealt with.

Up your storage game.

[River Song]

White flour lasts one year at room temperature, two years in the refrigerator.  Whole wheat flour has a shorter lifespan than white flour.  So, after five years at room temperature, your flour is probably rancid.  If your flour is still in the paper bag in your pantry and not in an airtight container, you would've known by now whether you had weevils as they will crawl out of the bag and infest your entire pantry.  

[Sooner]

Any flour this old is rancid.  Bugs or no bugs, it is long past it's shelf life. 

[SharkE]

EWWW people are like my husband he won't throw away empty box, hoarder. Our outside pole barn is full of junk. I keep flour in freezer.

I saw on Inside Edition this young girl who only washes her towels every 5th time she uses. EWWW !   I wash mine after every use. she was so surprised when they showed her under a microscope all the germs and bacteria she was drying herself off with. Geez, lady, do some laundry. LOL

[gardenman]

As an aquarium keeper, flour weevils are a good, easy to culture, nutritious, live food for aquarium fish. Put out a bowl of flour and you'll eventually get flour weevils. I have a bowl of flour in my kitchen now hoping flour weevils find it. I had a flour weevil on my pastry board a week or so ago and didn't realize what it was until I'd already killed it. I'm hoping some of his friends find the bowl of flour I have set out for them. Weevils become essentially free, high quality, nutritious live fish food.

I keep my baking flour securely sealed so no weevils, but one had found the flour residue on my pastry board and was eating that before I mistakenly killed it. And as unpleasant as this may sound, flour weevils are edible by humans and even allowed to a certain degree in some prepared foods. 

[ValuSkr]

What's the best way to dispose of old flour?  I've read flour can be explosive and I don't want to cause problems for myself or the garbage collector.

[fthunt]

I had bugs in opened box of  spaghetti once.  Not a big pasta eater.....in fact......I should check my stock again.