Flour Storage -- Fido Jars/refrigeration

[Voix]

I would like to store my flours in the pantry, as preserving them in the refrigerator takes up so much space due to the number of flours needed to bake a variety of recipes.

If I were to store my gluten-free flours in Fido jars (air tight glass jars sealed with a rubber gasket and metal clamp), can I store them in the pantry with the same length of preservation as if I were to store them in the refrigerator?

[IrishHeart]

From what I have read, if you go through your flours quickly because you bake frequently, a storage jar is okay for a couple of months. Garbanzo bean and almond flours spoil rapidly, though. May want to keep them in the fridge.

We don't get through ours fast enough, so I have to keep them in the fridge. And yes, they take up a lot of room I may need a bigger fridge, I am afraid.

[mushroom]

We don't get through ours fast enough, so I have to keep them in the fridge. And yes, they take up a lot of room I may need a bigger fridge, I am afraid.

A food fridge, a beer fridge, a wine cooler, a flour fridge... how on earth did our grandparents get by?? I grew up in a home with a "safe" -- a cupboard in the kitchen that opened onto the shady side of the house with fine wire screening Didn't have a fridge till I was 10 yo. I went crazy making ice blocks

[IrishHeart]

A food fridge, a beer fridge, a wine cooler, a flour fridge... how on earth did our grandparents get by?? I grew up in a home with a "safe" -- a cupboard in the kitchen that opened onto the shady side of the house with fine wire screening Didn't have a fridge till I was 10 yo. I went crazy making ice blocks

My Gramma's old Victorian house had a root cellar for cold veggie storage and a freezing cold pantry off the kitchen for her produce, flours, drying herbs, etc. I thought those two things were the neatest places for hiding when playing hide and seek with my cousins.

They were also the first family on the block to have an "ice box" in the 1920's. Not bad for an immgrant family.

[Voix]

A food fridge, a beer fridge, a wine cooler, a flour fridge... how on earth did our grandparents get by?? I grew up in a home with a "safe" -- a cupboard in the kitchen that opened onto the shady side of the house with fine wire screening Didn't have a fridge till I was 10 yo. I went crazy making ice blocks

Neat! My grandma lived in a modern high rise in Berlin that had a built in cooler/pantry. There was a vent in the back of the pantry that you could slide open or closed to allow in cool air. She was on the 7th floor, and rarely does it get hot enough for a/c, and most buildings don't have it anyway, and there is no need to water lawns, plus there are few bugs--no screens on the windows. The building was built in the 1970s or 1980s. I use my current pantry to store the butter that I am using, which works for 3 seasons, but in the summer it gets rancid. I think those cooler/pantries worked in the old American houses, because the houses were built with plaster walls. It just doesn't work in my modern American house. My unfinished basement is even warm (I don't know how) but it really disappoints me!

[Ellie84]

My flours are stored in a shelf in an unheated room, and boy do I regret that I completely forgot about the chances of mealworm infestation, so I had to throw lots of things away. From other coeliacs I've had the advice to freeze bags of flour for a couple of days before storing them, so that's what I'm going to try next.

[Takala]

The flour mixes I use everyday, I store in heavy zip lock bags in the kitchen refrigerator, because they take up less room that way.

The ones I have in storage, before being opened or ziplocked, I have in the small spare refrigerator in the garage.

I didn't mean to have a "spare refrigerator," but the first year we had the big, new one in the kitchen, it broke down under warranty, AND it took a week to get a repair person out here to fix the &^%$* thing. We've also had bad storms that take down the electrical supply for days at a time.

After a few days of trying to keep a lot of produce and horse vaccines from spoiling ( $$$$ ) with ice chests, we went ahead and bought the little cheap refrigerator, and put it in the garage. Where it has faithfully worked, ever since, storing all sorts of things.

We live in a hot climate (CA) that does not get hard sustained freezes in winter, only rain, the lil' fridge has more than paid for itself in keeping flours unbuggie, and things from spoiling. I can store bags of nuts in its top freezer, too. I try to remember to freeze flours that I purchase first, before storing, to keep them from going buggie, and that helps. Otherwise, when you open something.... it's fair game for anything. You should see the attempted ant invasions in late summer it looks like something out of a horror movie. The freaking things were climbing down the side of the house from the roof this year trying to find an opening. Ants, btw, can be zapped with enzyme sprays like Febreeze in the house where you can't spay insecticides.

This way with extra fridge storage, I can buy things in larger quantities and save more money, too. We live about 30 miles roundtrip from the closest grocer that has any sort of gluten free ingredients, and it's more like 50 to 80 miles roundtrip for some of the basic ingredients used in gluten free baking.