Just wondering how other people store their flour. Have heard people mention getting flour bugs before & this terrifies me. I keep a VERY clean house that is child & pet free but still worry about this happening. Is Rubbermaid the best way to go? Better safe than sorry.

After we moved to AR, I began storing my flour in Tupperware, in the freezer. Keeps the bugs away!

Flour bugs/ weevils can come home with you from the grocery store, they lay their eggs in the food, so if u get one u get alot of them. i keep a very clean house but have had deal with them twice over the winter, i had to throw away 12kg of flour so i finally resorted to super sized tupperware (what doesnt fit in the containers goes in the deep freezer) and havent seen any since, everything in my pantry is either ziplock bagged or in tupperware now. you have to check everything that is open, throw away what seems suspicious or has bugs in it,wash and disinfect the area and then u shouldnt have any probs after that. definitly rubbermaid/tupperware is the way to go. hth

So is it a good idea to just keep my flour in the freezer? Does this affect it's baking in any way? Gosh, how do you know if the bag is bug free to begin with? the only bugs that don't bother me are lady & butterflies lol.

True story. My dad never cooked or baked, but one day my mom and I were out for the entire day.(back in the 70's) My dad got an urge to bake and baked some bread. Later he came out to meet up with me and my mother. I headed home to get ready for work and my dad told me about the bread. I cut a piece and it was delicious. I couldn't stop and ate many pieces of bread. I then left for work. When I got home in the morning my mom asked if I was the one who had eaten all the bread. I hated to admit that I had. She asked if I liked the seeds in the bread. I said I didn't get a particular flavor from them, but the bread was delicious. That is when she told me that it was bugs in the flour and my dad didn't know any better and went ahead when he made the bread. EWWwwwwww. (It was still delicious.) lol

I store my flour in a tupperware container in the cupboard. Never a problem until a couple of years ago. All of a sudden I had weevils in the cupboard trying to get into my tupperware.

I killed everything that moved, emptied the cupboard, wiped the whole thing down with bleach, then vinegar and threw a few bay leaves in there. I also keep bay leaves on the top of my flour in the tupperware now. Haven't had a problem since.

The bay leaves are something passed down from my great-grandmother, seems to work and it's pretty cheap.

I keep my flour in tupperware too, also have [ about 4 bay leaves in there too. No problems with weevils, but forgot about them in there one day when i was in a hurry and mixed them up in some sugared wedding cookie I was making YUCK !!!![/quote]

Yeah protein. That sounds good..... better than what it really was.

It doesn't really matter how clean your house is, the bugs aren't attracted to dirt, they like flour and cereals. If you have them, then you probably purchased something with the eggs or larvae in it and they spread. They aren't really dirty, just a little disturbing to find in your food.

Most often I've found them in flour or cereal that I have purchased from stores that don't have a lot of turnover. But I did buy a bug infested bag of flour from Walmart before and their flour should have a pretty fast turnover. You can tell if a bag is infested because you will see small webs or silk with flour hanging from stuck inside the bag. It just doesn't look right. They travel quickly so if you have flour and boxed cereal in the same cabinet, like I did, they can get to it all.

They are pretty easy to get rid of though, just throw away and take outside everything that is infested. Wipe out the cabinet and don't store any flour or cereal items in it for a few weeks or keep everything in airtight plastic bags or containers.

I keep my flour in an airtight plastic container but if the eggs are already in the flour, they will hatch even in a plastic container. I don't freeze my flour but can see the advantage because the cold probably kills the little guys or at least keeps them from hatching.

They usually start their infestations about October. When I worked for a large grocery chain the first week of October we would have to go to the cereal, flour, grits section, anything that had grain. We had to inspect the boxes by looking for tiny bored holes that were done by the weevils and check the shelves to see if there was an over the normal amount of spillage from the boxes. You can see the holes they bore and they do have a spider type web a lot of times and the content in the box will be attached or just the bore holes. We washed the shelves down trying to be sure there were none.
I put my flour in containers I got at the restaurant supply and the rest of my 50 pound bag goes inside a clean trash bag with the lid of the bag folded over and over until it is completely closed. I store it in the freezer and take it out when the bin needs refilled. I have not had any problems and you can use it the way it is and it does not affect you product.
Hope this has helped you.
evelyn

I was always told that the eggs are already in the flour,grits, cereal, cream of wheat,etc. My grandma made us keep flour and grits in fridge always. If she went to someone's house and it was out on counter, she wouldn't eat the food

I got some bugs in the beginning of fall and had to empty out all of my cupboards. Our bug guy came and sprayed all the cabinets and i then put ALL of my grains into rubbermaid containers that i picked up at wal-mart and target. I also picked up some large glass jars for my flour, sugar, and some other baking items that sit on my counter for easy access.

As mentioned before, you can easily bring them in and not even know it. They are VERY common in flour, cereals, and other grains like pasta. I also found out that they lay their eggs in the cardboard of grains so it's really easy to bring in the eggs and no living bugs.

I have read that if you put your flour in the freezer for 48 hours when you bring it home, that will kill any weevil larvae that is in there - and supposedly, it is in ALL flour.

The worst infestation I ever had wasn't weevils, it was pantry moths. I got them twice from shopping at the same grocery store. Those things are horrible, they chew through plastic. Even in my new grocery store, I sometimes see them fluttering around in the baking aisle. Gross.

http://www.livingwithbugs.com/mealmoth.html

I had the weevils in flour once, at home, it totally grossed me out, I hate all bugs! I only noticed them though when I went to get my apron off the back of the kitchen door one day...It was full of little larvae and a couple of little black moth-type things flew off it. I threw the apron out into the hall and it later went in the bin (hubby picked it up for me ) Thing is, the 5kg bag of flour I had bought was too big for me to put in my cupboard, so it was just in the dark behind the door. On closer inspection of the bag, it had little holes in it and flour was coming out. On a much closer inspection of the cupboard and aroundabouts, there were little larvae things everywhere, we even pulled the cupboard out from the wall and they were behind it. Totally gross. I inspected everything and threw out so much stuff. Bleached the whole area of the kitchen, and haven't had any since.
At the bakery, I sieve flour before storing it in a big plastic airtight box because of this incident. But now I'm worried that the actual eggs might get through the sieve?? Maybe the freezer is a better plan...

Haha! I have one too! 11 years ago this February, my MIL at the time gave me and my husband (x now) a big bag of food she had taken out of her cabinets. She is a hoarder and just had too much to fit anymore.

Well, I used to stay up all night reading and I made some hot chocolate out of a pack she gave us. I was reading as I made it and drank it and my eyes never left the page (Anne Rice, lol ) when I got down the the last big gulp of it, I glanced into the mug and watched about 100 bugs flow into my mouth! It was too late once it registered what they were. I ran to the bathroom and threw up about 5 times and when I saw all the bugs that I had drank, I threw up more and I was crying and vomiting and crying some more. (LOL, I was barely 20)

Well, every time I thought of it for 3 or 4 weeks, I got sick I lost about 15 pounds and I was having cramps and just general malaise, so I went to the hospital thinking some the weevils were killing me (no insurance, hospital can't turn you away!) Well, they did some blood tests and told me I was pregnant! It was about 2 in the morning. But since I was having cramps they sent me to another bigger hospital in an ambulance (I was so embarrassed, but they MADE me!)

They had me wait until 7 am when the ultrasound technician came in and she got started with the lovely internal ultrasound thingy and casually asks me if twins run in the family. YEP! You should have seen my face! 5 hours after i found out I was pregnant, I was told it was twins! lol! And I thought it was weevils!

Thats why its a good idea to sift

annabakescakes......which child was named weevil? lol jk

lol that really is a great story! Congrats to you on a lovely family!!!!

My flour goes right into the freezer when I get it and stays there for 1-2 days and I have a very airtight large container for my flour. Good tip about the bay leaves, thank you.

Moths are the culprit,if you see any flying in the house get rid of them before they get in the flour, oatmeal and grains. I always seive my flour just before use even if it is only 1 cup, don't need the extra protein,lol.

Moths are the culprit,if you see any flying in the house get rid of them before they get in the flour, oatmeal and grains. I always seive my flour just before use even if it is only 1 cup, don't need the extra protein,lol.

This post has me itching

I never once had a flour moth and store my flour in lock&lock containers... until, of course, the day my mother-in-law came to visit from California and opened the flour to see a flour moth. Of all the times...

She told me about bay leaves, so now I keep one in the flour canister and it works great!