Freeze & refrigerate flour?

Unless it's whole wheat flour, it's not going to go rancid (there's so little oil left in AP flour). If you live in an area where there are mealbugs, freezing and then refrigerating the flour will keep the bugs out of your flour.

-- Jenn Ridley : snipped-for-privacy@chartermi.net

The freeze/refrigerate directions may be fine to prevent insect infestation. For high fat flour like whole wheat, chilling would slow down oxidation. Buying flour in quantities that you use quickly is a good idea and precludes having to chill or freeze it. I also keep mine on the shelf at room temperature.

My farmer friends tell me that the reason to freeze all wheat flour is to kill the bug eggs that are an unavoidable part of the flour you purchase. Flour that has not been frozen and which is stored for a long time doesn't "get" bugs, but rather hatches the little bug eggs that are already in the flour from the start. Freezing kills the eggs so they never hatch. [Of course, you can also attract bugs from outside the flour, depending upon storage method, and whole wheat flour can go rancid.]

I read that one needs only to put flour into the freezer for one or two days to destroy the bug eggs. It seems like 2 weeks is longer than needed.

I have never heard of flour going rancid. Is this maybe a humidity and temperature rated thing? (I live at about 57 Degrees North and far, far from large bodies of DHMO. So not much heat 6 months of the year, and except for wet summers, a place you need humidifiers all year round. I see a lot of things happen in places like Louisiana to food that will never happen here, solely due to climate.)

And on the egg thing, I have been buying flour for decades and storing at room temp. Only once did a 5# bag of flour develop insects, and I think that was white flour. And that was years ago. I stopped buying that brand, and the problem has not ever come back. And I will keep flour maybe a year on a shelf at room temp.

H.