From a conversation over at Pandemic Flu Information:
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 9:14 pm
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(Alfie the Wombat):
Ok, a question already: in the material above, at one point, ACM, you recommend storing the whole grains, then grinding them, rather than buying already-ground grains. But I thought that whole grains, like brown rice for example, go rancid sooner? So if you grind brown rice or another whole grain, won't it also go rancid sooner?
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(Average Concerned Mom):
Whole grains go rancid more slowly than ground whole grains; but refined flours and grains (white flour, white rice) will last the longest as they have had all their oils removed.
If you want whole wheat flour, then it is better to store the whole grains and grind the flour at the time you will use it. You can only store whole grain flour for a short period of time, maybe 1 to 3 months. You can store the whole wheat kernels much longer -- up to a year or longer if you take care to keep moisture out (using O2 absorbers, etc.) I think.
One advantage of refined white flour is that it has all the oils removed from it. So it is less nutritious than whole wheat flour BUT will store much longer -- at least 6 to 12 months or much longer if you take pains to specially store it (O2 absorbers, etc.)
White rice will store much longer than brown rice, again because most of the oils have been removed. I think you can only store brown rice for about 6 months, unless you have special packaging. And if you want brown rice flour, that will probably only store a week or two!
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(Hillbilly Bill):
I am currently consuming white flour that I bought over 2 yers ago. My treatment consists of a 3 day stay in the freezer when it first comes home, then I seal the 5lb bags in a gallon ziplock. No problems at all concerning taste or nutritional quality.
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(Average Concerned Mom):
I didn't mean to make it sound as if white flour would go bad after 1 year! I was just looking up official reference for food storage and they mostly said white flour stores for 1 year "or longer with proper packaging".
I found one reference that said you could store white flour "indefinitely" which was defined as 2 to 3 years! I am sure though that people store white flour for five to ten years in those buckets.
Anyhow, there's really not much in white flour that will spoil as long as you keep it dry and in some kind of air-tight container. My point was that whoel wheat flour doesn't store well for any length of time, so if you WANT whole wheat flour, best to buy the kernels and grind them yourself.
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(MountainBiker):
On the question of how long flour lasts, my non-expert thoughts are that it partly matters on where you store it. If in a dry enough and bug-free environment, my experience is that this stuff lasts almost indefinitely. I have never frozen flour or any other dry goods and have never had any kind of bug problem, nor have I had flour or other dry goods go bad even after years of storage past the "date". Crackers kind of stuff might get stale but that's different than going bad. In my case my basement is bone dry year round without needing any kind of dehumidification and to date I have not had any bugs down there. The house stays dry all winter because the air is so dry in winter but we also keep it dry in the summer via air conditioning. We turn the system on in April and don't touch it until it gets turned off in October and never open the windows all season. When it is warm enough for the AC to run, it runs. If not, it doesn't. Come a grid failure situation where we no longer have AC, the basement will still be dry year round.
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(tammy):
What happens to flour that hasn't been frozen first? I have flour over a year old, no sign of any bugs and it is straight off the shelf. Can it go off? Mine is mostly white plain flour or self raising flour. I also have bread flour, white and wholemeal. Also yeast - I have some sachets of yeast for bread making. Can they be used past their best before /use by dates? Or will my bread spoil?
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(Hillbilly Bill):
The freezer treatment is only to prevent bugs in the flour. Freezing for 3 days kills any bugs in the flour, as well as any eggs they may have laid.
I also take the precaution of packaging my dry goods in individual airtight plastic bags (ziplock freezer). That way, if there is a problem with one bag, it doesn't contaminate a lot of other goods.
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(Greenmom):
My basement is NOT dry- in fact it tends to flood during heavy rains. Even so, I have not had any thing spoil, and its remarkably bug-free-save for Lady bugs!
I do HB's trick of freezing flour (and rice) then transferring to Zip- bags then I put the zip bag in metal pop-corn tins- a tin will hold about 20 lbs of flour -I think I get about four lbs of flour to Zip bag then, the tin holds five bags.
Ive stored flour (white) oats, and powdered milk this way. Rice and beans I store in glass jars. I pasta sauce jar will hold 1 pound of rice or beans.
I recently used some flour that Ive had stored since 05- it was fine.