Last Updated on November 22, 2021 – Originally Posted in May of 2009

Where We Buy Bulk Bread Flour

I make all the bread for our household with my bread machine.  Really!  I use my Zo to make bread, dinner rolls, hamburger buns, hoagie rolls, hot dog buns and more. 

As you might guess, we go through a lot of bread flour.

Flour sources vary from area to area.  In my neighborhood, we have two sources of bread flour;  Costco Business Center and CHEF’STORE (formerly Cash&Carry Smart Foodservice Warehouse). 

At Costco Business Center, we buy 25-pound bags of Ardent Mills Harvest Bread Flour. 

In the past, all Costco stores carried bread flour.  As I understand from readers, some Costco stores still do.  However, in my neck of the woods, only Costo Business Centers have bread flour.

At CHEF’STORE we buy Morebread Flour.

Getting flour is a team effort.  The Man of the House (TMOTH) hefts the flour into our SUV.  There’s no way that I could manage it by myself.

Wondering about the difference between bread flour and all-purpose flour? Click here to see the answer.

Storing Bulk Bread Flour

So how do we store that much flour? 

Previously we stored our bread flour in food-grade, 5-gallon buckets.  

A 50-pound bag fit into two five-gallon buckets with no problem.   However, they were heavy for me to lift and dealing with the lids was a nightmare.

We recently switched to two-gallon buckets with Gamma Lids.  We’ve purchased two of these eight bucket sets. 

If you’d like to buy them one at a time, here’s another link for two-gallon buckets with Gamma Lids. 

Note the top of the buckets.  I can easily grab the top of the bucket and twirl.

Don’t you love this? When TMOTH fills up the buckets, this is how he shows me which buckets contain the older flour and need to be used first. 

I have a regular flour canister in my kitchen.  When it gets low, I refill from the two-gallon buckets.  

We go through 50 pounds of flour in about three months.  If we’re going to store the flour longer than that we add an extra step. 

We first put the whole bag of flour into the freezer for four days.  This takes care of any potential insect issue.  We let the flour come up to room temperature before putting it into the buckets to avoid condensation.