Leaky bags

It is adequate.
\ It performs it's function.

No need for extreme consumerism & garbage production.

It's biodegradable, renewable, and only needs to get from the manufacturer to your cabinet, where it can be replaced with heartier permanent storage.
- Real environmentalists just pack the flour into their jeans pockets to avoid unnecessary paper waste
- Same for sugar, it’s really annoying that so many things have switched to plastic. Gram crackers, Ritz and Saltines all used to be in waxed paper when I was a kid and were fine.
  Now they switch to plastic, but make sure it’s tinted to mimic the old paper versions.
- And it also needs to leave everything inside my backpack coated in a thin layer of flour.
  What I don't get is why they put it in a single two-layer paper bag instead of two single-layer paper bags, which would clearly be more effective.
Top comment is against the post, but the post has almost no downvotes. What is happening here?
- Downvoting isn’t for disagreement. If you think the conversation is valuable you can upvote for visibility while disagreeing in a comment. This is important subject matter that needs to be hashed out!
- There might be a desire from those that were looking for the top response to let it ride for visibility. I wish most things were as practically packaged as flour.
  Edit: Can we do coffee next? I drink a lot of the stuff, and unless I roast my own, there is absolutely no environmentally friendly option. I tried roasting my own. I set off the smoke detector, upset the dogs, and made my house smell bad.
- I think it's because a lot of people's (myself included) knee-jerk reaction is "yeah, those bags do suck", then they look at the comments and either realize the tide is against them or end up agreeing with the points in the comments upon reflection.
- General rule of thumb is that for every 100 that vote, 10 read the comments and 1 will ever post.
- *tits
  (And yes, ofc it's its, but my phone keeb is doing its best, ok, I love my HeliBoard)

OK. We'll start using single-use plastic.

Can we get some extra micro thrown in for our balls?
- Hey remember the phase like 10 years ago when shower gel companies were selling shower gel with fucking little plastic balls in it as an exfoliant?! Can you fucking believe that was a thing that really happened fml
- Of course, for an extra 10 cents on the dollar.
  (it was already included)
- I don't know that there isn't.
How about we start with slightly thicker paper bags that don't leak as easily first?
- They recently did that in Norway, it has improved my life by about 1%. You still get the flour explosion when opening a new bag though.
Wow dude I dont know if you know but thats actually really bad for the environment link
- 🫨
My bag of flour is in a Ziploc bag as we speak. As was the previous bag. The choice between environmentalism and a pantry without flour everywhere is unfortunately an easy one to make for me.
Oh please god no

I like the flour bags, I would hate to have to buy in plastic containers.

Exactly, one of the last products not sold in single use plastic packaging yet gets shat on
- My main thing with the paper bags is the glue they use that makes it difficult to open without ripping the bag,
Seconded. Pretty much minimum waste for the amount you get. Buy a four jar or snap container that will keep the air out. Reusable, keeps four fresh longer, easier to scoop from, less mess.
- Empty popcorn tins sometimes work pretty well.
- I bought a set of containers for stuff like that that is just too small. The bigger tubs hold about 4.8 pounds of flour so if I buy a 5 pound bag I have to wait until I make something to transfer it to the tub.
Much easier for shoplifting, yeah. Just stick a knife in the bag and inconspicuously drain it into your fanny pack while pretending to browse other baking items. Walk on out and you've got 1.5 lb of that all-purpose grain glitter and no one is the wiser.
- Flour is like the cheapest food you can buy, though? A whole day of cheese and jalapeno stuffed bread takes like $5 to make.
- So you're the reason there's always at least one ripped bag.
Why not a recyclable cardboard tube like oats come in sometimes? Probably easier for logistics too when packaging (of course retooling all the equipment from like 1988 wouldnt be easy but its one and done)
- The bags aren't much better in this regard, but anything that easily topples over is going to add likeliness of spills. Also, those tubes are probably more expensive than the bags or the plastic.
- Why not a recyclable cardboard tube like oats come in sometimes?
  ???

At least it's paper and not plastic

I already have plastic in my balls
- That's where pee is stored idiot

We should go back to cloth sacks that we can make dresses out of again!

We've gone full circle, my mom has flour pots and my aunt makes dresses (little coverlets) for them.
- coverlets ( small covers )

what is the complaint? not enough testicular microplastics?

Says someone who's never tried to get flour out of a plastic bag before...

I haven't even seen flour in a plastic bag and I can already imagine it being a PITA because of static cling! 😬
- Ok, think of it like getting the last of the cocaine out the baggie.
You roll down the bag and stuff that in the bag. It's not that hard.

You want them to use plastic?
Then later complain about runaway plastic pollution?

The same kind of circular logic applied to politics leads people to not vote, arguing that bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe and never make the connection that their chronic apathy and fickleness is what caused the mess the are apathetic about, only now with more cynicism.

They used to use cloth with patterns on it you could make clothes out of.
- Thank you for sending me down a delightful little rabbit hole looking into this
- got people thru the great depression
Bitches about flour bags.
Turns it into a not both party are the same temper tantrum.
God I love this shithole of a website.
- I'm honestly impressed by the leap
- Dang facist paper flour bags! /s
Where I live it's plastic and they are still leaky.
Jesus christ, take a break... go for a walk.
- And vote Biden to send trump to prison.

Also, i guarantee that there are bugs infesting the flour section of your grocery store and they absolutely hitch rides on the bags home

Former grocery store worker.

Flour isn't stored in sanitary conditions. It's just giant piles in warehouses. This is the real reason that raw cookie dough isn't safe to eat. The eggs are usually fine, it's the flour that's riddled with disease. If you heat it to about 160°F you can eat all the cookie dough you want.
- NYT just posted a recipe two weeks back:
  Heat-treat the flour: Heat oven to 400 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchment, add the flour and spread it into a thin layer. Bake flour for 5 minutes (see Tip). Cool flour completely.
  Edible Cookie Dough
- But my favorite hobby at home was spooning raw flour into my mouth and washing it down with melted crayons…
- It's just giant piles in warehouses.
  EXCUSE ME?
- At that point....it ceases to be cookie dough.
  Are you saying that substituting apple sauce for eggs doesn't make them safe?
I could have gone my whole life not knowing that and you just walked right in here and said it.
- To be fair to the stores, they arrive in the stores on the bags too.
What kind of bugs are you talking about? Flour mites?
- Honestly its been years. I just remember the bugs and that they werent roaches.
Oh. No, thank you.
Good idea to freeze a new bag of flour to kill the bugs/eggs

Garbage take. Just fill it into a glass jar at home. Nobody cares about the 0.03g of flour lost leaking out during transport.

The worst possible container for flour would be a hot sauce bottle.

Well you should be transferring it to a better vessel when you get home anyway. Flour really wants to be in something airtight.

I wish the shop just had each beand of flour in massive barrels and you could bring your own containers and fill them up. This would eliminate the need for packaging altogether. This should be the case for everything tbh. Soap, milk, detergents
Edit: I just realized I described eco-shops
- Or old school bodegas.
- The Winco near my house has exactly this. Pretty sure PCC does too for like 8x the price.
- Tf is an eco-shop?
Oh, like my caboose
In my experience flour doesn't care (as long as it is stored dry). Me neither.

"What ever you do, do not breath in the concrete dust. We also packaged it in a flimsy paper bag allowing all the dust spill out and enter the air."
On one hand I get why they do it, you need a lot of bags for larger jobs and trying to put those in plastic containers is extremely wasteful and costly, but they could at least double ply the bags or something.
- Concrete bags are usually two ply, but they are pretty thin. Most of the dust gets shot out the corner when you move them around, especially the ones with the tear-out corner for pouring. They do sell concrete in plastic bags though, great for wet weather but they can get kind of slick. For the bigger jobs you get a mixer truck delivery.
- I've dealt with double bags and it absolutely makes a huge difference

I buy it in paper bags and transfer it to cereal Tupperware.

If I buy flour in bulk, like more than 10kg at a time, I vacuum seal it in bags and then freeze/thaw/freeze it to kill beasties.

Beasties in the flour?
- Weevil eggs
- Yes there are bits and pieces and whole insects in your flour. And they are impossible to remove. So there are actual legal limits as to how much insects parts can be in the package of flour.
  Things like meal worms tend to come from poor home storage though. If you store your flour in an air tight container, they aren't much of a problem. Unless it take you years to use up a bag of flour.
- Put it in the freezer for a couple of days before storing it

Won't be long before flour companies start packaging with fabric so people can make clothes.

Again? I have a lovely quilt made by my great grandmother out of sack cloth.

They should learn from the masters: cocaine smugglers package their goods in a variety of ways and the penalty for leaking even just a few particles can be high (heh).

Paper lets the flour breathe, releasing moisture. The grain isn’t 100% when milled and the milling process generates significant heat (mill some grain at home with a motorized mill and see). Warmth + moisture + hermetically sealed plastic smells like a nice way to grow some fungus.

Edit: isn’t 100% dry when milled.

Well we wouldn't want people to make dresses out of the packaging, now would we? That might be a drag on the economy.

Y'all know you can have a flour container at home that the bag goes into right?

Yah but you still gotta find a bag at the store not ripped open or completely covered in flour.
- I buy flour in nice paper bags and don't have any issues.
  When I buy a larger bag, it's still paper but it's sewn shut. No problems either.
  Maybe you're shopping in the wrong places.
- My favorite is the pallet of flour in the isle that's got a whole bunch of ripped bags.

This is exactly why I mill my own threshed wheat.

Look at this guy, he has his own mill while the rest of us have to use a mortar and pestle.
- Dude at least invest in a quern, you are gunna fuck up your wrists!
- If you get into homebrewing, you will likely end up owning a grain mill as well, which is also capable of turning wheat into flour

Some techbro needs to start a subscription service for flour pods delivered by drone. Insert them into your $800 flour bank, and then whenever you need flour, you can just use the app to indicate how much the machine should dispense!

edit: the app also provides AI-generated recipes, and every time you use flour you'll automatically earn some FlourCoin cryptocurrency.

The flour will be sold in “convenient” disposable plastic containers that each hold 1 cup or 120g.
For an additional fee, drones will pick up the used pods for “recycling” which is actually shipping them to a landfill in southeast asia.
- Make sure the containers have DRM so the machine can validate that they are genuine high quality Flourz™ Refill Paks before dispensing the flour. Wouldn't want you to just, like, refill them with inferior flour from Walmart or anything.
You receive flour coins for storing flour in behalf of the flourchain, this is done with a proof-of-flour algorithm.
Flourmillo

Not sure I want to go back to wooden barrels holding 196lbs of flour.

Cloth sacks are cool too, but packaging cost is a real concern with bulky staples.

Just get a plastic bin.

Important distinction: Get a bin for your house - no sane educated person wants flour to be sold in disposable plastic bins.
(I'm sure you agree, but it bares mentioning in case there are ever any business folk reading this.)

The incredible strength of the glue on those bags guarantees they rip and always make a mess. Flour here is mostly sold in 5lb bags that perfectly fill a gallon jar, at least. I don't mind the paper at all but do you have to glue it down in this arrangement that guarantees ripping, with glue that could hold a bridge together?

If you're putting it into another container anyway, I humbly suggest trying scissorS along the seam below the glue! Tear no more my friend.
If that fails, I also like the just intentionally poke a hole in the bottom trick

The grain is harvested, milled, etc., ultimately processed into flour and bagged.

Warehoused, shipped, warehoused, shipped, stored, shelved.....then sold to you.

Cue people here telling you it's not supposed to be in a bag bc "it must know it's in your house now...."

Usually once it's bagged, its put on a pallet and shrinkwrapped, effectively sealing it. You absolutely should be using an airtight container once you purchase it.

I see your flower bags and I raise you bacon packaging.

What, paper bags? Not that big a deal, just ziplock out or stuff it in a sealable plastic container. I'm guessing @ArtLesbO there didn't grow up in the Midwest lol

People leave it in the paper bags? What a bad idea lol.

Ok let me just quickly transfer these 10 kg of 4 different types of flour I bought into a bunch of containers
- Yes that's what people do
- Good idea. Not sure what you need 4 new types of flour at a time but good idea nonetheless
- I just buy 50 lbs of all-purpose flour, throw it in a big, wheeled food-safe container marketed for dog food, and use it for nearly everything that calls for flour. I've never had a problem with my breads or cakes while using all-purpose flour. I still need gluten-free flour and some specialty stuff like corn flour and almond flour for some recipes, but those come in nice, resealable bags.
- I mean, yah. If you're going to be baking enough to merit 10kg of multiple flours, you absolutely want them in separate containers. Even if you only have the AP, bread, and cake flour trio that covers most baking needs, you'll want them stored in airtight containers.
  It ain't even that hard or slow; my crippled ass with arthritis can do it fine. Well, it hurts, but I don't lose enough flour to matter.

Go buy a set of Tupperware. Yes they are plastic, but the set I have I got from my Mother. She bought it back in the 1970s. And one of my Grand kids will still be using them after me and Grandma are long gone. That's a pretty good use of plastic.

The large one I have will hold 5lbs of flour without issue, the next size down will hold 3lbs of sugar easily, then next size smaller yet a bag of brown sugar. Now my Grandmother, she bought flour by the 20lbs bag. And she had a wooden box in her pantry that she stored the whole bag in. She baked a LOT of bread and other baked goods nearly every day.

Dude...stop using 40 year old plastic Tupperware. That shit probably has some unsafe chemicals in it.
- You got proof?
Why not just buy some glass containers. I have a few cheap ones that each fit about 1kg of flour. And I don't have to worry about any microplastics.
- I mean you probably still need to worry about micro plastics. A glass container of flour is not a magic talisman .... Or is it?
- Buy them if you want. Glass is fine to use. But I think the lids might not be as air tight as a Tupperware lid is.
Bro I really hope you're not using these
https://startsat60.com/media/health/vintage-tupperware-containers-lead-arsenic-unsafe-health-lead-safe-mama
- yummy arsenic
I bake a lot so I have a plastic bin with wheels on it that can hold 50 pounds of flour.
Still comes in paper bags, though.
- There's a thing where I am where you can buy stuff in bulk by going to the front till and weighing the container and writing the weight of the empty container on the bottom so you just directly fill your stuff. They usually are independent eco grocery stores but they are pretty awesome. Probably not up to filling 50lbs at a shot but good for your regular home baker.

Boxes leak more. And plastic with make it mold if there's any amount of water in it.

Why don’t they use those cardboard tube things oatmeal comes in?
- Here oats come in the same (adequate) paper backs as flour.
  I'm really stepping into a parallel universe right now. I have no idea what problem one would have with paper backs...
- Circles leave gaps during shipping.

9 times out of 10 all that flour on the outside of your bag of flour is not your bag leaking it's because one bag in the palette busted open and got on all the other ones. When you get home, you either transfer the flour into an airtight reusable container, or put the bag inside a 2 gallon zip lock and seal that.

Baking pro tip for shopping: buy some buckets. 3 gallon is plenty big enough for a grocery store sized bag.

Get the cart to your car, put the buckets (one for each bag of flour) in the buggy and transfer the bag/s into them.

Then move the buckets into your car. They'll be less messy, protect the paper bags better, and make carrying it in easier via the handles.

If you're a high volume home baker, it's still easier than dealing with ordering in bulk.

Boy reinvented the shopping basket...
- Do you mean the shopping bucket?
- Shopping baskets would not contain the loose flour.
- Like brianorca said, baskets don't contain the flour that comes out, or whatever is on the surface of the bag. Plus some baskets have enough in the way of hard edges to damage flour bags, I've had it happen in the store while carrying stuff to checkout before. Only three times ever, but still
  Kinda depends on what the basket is made of and the design, I guess. Like, an old school woven basket could work fine as long as it's well woven, but the typical shopping basket in stores is going to suck.

also the feeling of the paper texture makes me want to die

Wow I can't believe that guy buys flour that comes in dogs' asses.

Don’t complain or they might switch to a blister pack.

Always transfer mine to an airtight canister after purchase

Some companies put them in boxes. A bit more expensive though

Don't eat the white poison. It's made from the ice wall that contains the oceans of the flat earth. Sometimes even from chemtrails!