You’re right but that flour would have to be out (unsealed) for a while. Boy, weevils!

That strikes me as a fairly modern thing. I imagine that weevils and/or rocks in flour was a common issue just a few generations ago (or, in many countries, to this day).

It can also remove clumps that can form in wetter climates, or from flour of lower quality. During the pandemic I got a big ol bag of flour that was loaded with clumps, and I had to gradually sift all 50lb of it. So, I guess it can still be totally useful in modern times if you have bad purchasing and storage options.

Sifting flour will still leave you with the lesser of two weevils.

flour here is sold in paper bags, which are glued shut but not waterproof or beetleproof

i have not had weevils in a number of years but I have recently had red flour beetles or confused flour beetles

they suck

Well, you can always put the flour in another container which can be closed airtight (or at least bug-tight)...

The issue isn’t that bugs get in, but that bugs are already in. Weevils will lay their eggs in with the flour, which are impossible to sift out. Unless you bake them at 140°F/60°C, freeze them at 0°F/-18°C, use pesticides, or deprive them of oxygen, they’ll eventually hatch and eat your flour/grain.

Hah, for once, a benefit of having celiac, no wheat for me apparently means no weevils for me. I mix up a lot of gluten-free flour mix to substitute for all-purpose flour. It's a mix of way too many flours and starches (white rice, brown rice, sweet rice, potato starch, potato flour, ivory teff, tapioca starch, arrowroot flour) that I got from a blog many years ago, and haven't tried to slim down because it works great for me. Never had any bug issues; maybe specialty flours have better quality control.

maybe the tapioca is toxic enough to kill the bugs

what proportions do you use

I mix up 2 kilograms at a time: 500 grams sweet rice flour, 400 grams brown rice flour & potato starch, 200 grams ivory teff & arrowroot starch, 100 grams white rice flour, potato flour, & tapioca starch. The original recipe had almond flour instead of white rice flour, but I decided to make this nut-free (had some friends with nut allergies).

thanks, this is great info! it seems like you have some premixed starch mixes as ingredients?

Nope - those are all bagged single ingredients I usually order online. Authentic Foods has most of them. The ivory teff is from Maskal. The arrowroot and tapioca might be called flour, starch, or powder - all the same thing. Potato starch and potato flour are 2 different things.

oh, so for example it's 100 grams white rice flour, 100 grams potato flour, and 100 grams tapioca starch, not 100 grams of a mix of the three? i guess that makes it add up to 2 kg

Yep, that's what I meant.

thanks! should have been obvious, but to me it wasn't

yes but see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36048781

I always put my flour in clear plastic containers so I can see how much I have left. I also put bay leaves in with the flour, as the eggs/larval stages of a lot of grain pests are susceptible to their eugenol. [0,1]

For anything long term I pour the flour out onto long trays, let it reach 0°F/-18°C in my freezer and keeping it there for 3 days, then storing it in food safe 5-gallon buckets with bay leaves and oxygen absorbers, though some also use dry ice. [2]

weevils/beetles all absolutely suck.

[0] - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/096708797229040?...

[1] - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/096708799227950

[2] - https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

these are great tips! i recently bought some of the buckets (pp), and I've been freezing all my grains and legumes upon purchase for a long time for exactly that reason

i'd be nervous about putting dry ice in a hermetically sealed container like a bucket

a thing i've noticed with storing food in plastic (pet) coke bottles is that they never seem to get beetles and that they tend to collapse a bit over the first year or so; i suspect that, even without a fe/nacl oxygen absorber, the food oxidizes enough to consume the oxygen initially present, which reduces the gas volume about 20 percent and kills any beetles initially present

my older notes on the topic are at https://dercuano.github.io/notes/food-storage.html

Aren’t the weevil eggs just always in the flour?

Nah, a cake with settled, minimally touched flour is dense and too… cakey. You take a fork and run the tines through settled flour thats been sitting for any length of time and you see you end up with much less fluffed up flour in a given volume. Now mix in cornstarch, for either cake or frying batter, and that helps prevent the gluten from forming when you mix in whatever liquid, keeping the texture of the cake or breaded whatever airy and light.

I think it's supposed to be to incorporate air.

I only sift flour if I'm making scones, it seems to make a difference. I'm not a cakey person, I don't bake cakes. It's cake bakers that tend to care about sifting.