How to choose

To avoid any surprises when you open the package at home, study it before purchasing. The advantage of weighed products is that you can see, touch and even smell it. But usually it is available to us in opaque bags. Fortunately, this packaging has a flaw - flour spills a little from the top above the sealed seam, its quality can be assessed. In addition, it is worth studying some points:

1. Date of manufacture and duration of storage.
2. What products are located nearby?
3. Packaging integrity.

Advice!
The longer the packaging is stored in the store, the less time it will stay at home. Choose packages from the back rows, as they always try to sell goods with an expiring shelf life first.

Sanitary standards require compliance with the product neighborhood rules established for stores selling groceries. If this is done as expected, it is possible to maintain the quality of the products, as well as maintain their marketability and food safety for a long time. Flour is a dry bulk product. It is very important for them to constantly maintain air humidity at 60-65%. Good ventilation is also important.

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There should be no household chemicals, products with a characteristic odor (fish, smoked meats, spices), wet vegetables and fruits, or rancid flour nearby. The product absorbs easily and retains odors well

The packages must not contain holes, stains or other contaminants.

Storage requirements

To ensure that the product does not lose its properties for a long time and does not deteriorate, it is necessary to store it correctly in the apartment. To do this you need to consider:

1. Under what conditions should it be stored?
2. How long does flour last?
3. How to store it.

Table: Shelf life of different types of flour

Storage conditions

Regardless of the type, type and grade, flour quickly deteriorates from excess moisture and temperature changes. In order for the product to be stored for a long time, the humidity must be maintained at around 60%.

The ideal temperature range for any species is 5-15 degrees. With values ​​from zero to five, the product will not deteriorate throughout the entire period. Temperature fluctuations contribute to the formation of condensation inside the container and wetting of the powder.

Advice! Is it possible to store flour in the cold? Certainly. This is even done specifically to increase the shelf life to two years. It must be stored in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. An additional plus is that it will not become infested with pests, mold or go rancid.

It is advisable to store flour at home in a cool, dry cabinet protected from light. In the kitchen, it is better to place the container closer to the floor, since the temperature there is usually lower than above. A balcony is suitable for this purpose only in winter, since in other seasons the humidity there is high. In addition, flour quickly deteriorates when exposed to sunlight. Do not store odorous products near the container to avoid the smell being absorbed into the flour.

Storage containers

You can keep the flour in a paper bag until opened. Then it should be poured into an airtight container. In addition to protecting against moisture and absorbing odors, this is necessary to prevent bugs from infesting. Suitable for this:

• glass jars;
• plastic containers for food products.

It is customary to keep flour in linen or cotton bags. But the fabric is permeable to air, moisture and odors, so it can be stored in a small amount and for a short time. To protect against parasites, the bag can be kept in a concentrated solution of table salt.

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Insects are a headache for people who buy bulk products for future use. They can be crawling or flying. To prevent their appearance, place in a container:

1. A couple of cloves of garlic.
2. Dried calendula flowers, after placing them in a fabric bag.
3. Red pepper pod.
4. Laurel leaf.
5. Several carnation inflorescences.

The aroma of spices and herbs repels parasites. A 9% acetic acid solution also works well for this. They are advised to wipe down the inside of cabinets when cleaning.

Ways to get rid of bugs

To get rid of bugs, it is necessary to carry out a whole range of measures to destroy not only them themselves, but also their offspring, waste products. And first of all, this is, of course, to carry out high-quality cleaning. Armed with rags and sponges, you will have to open all the kitchen cabinets and empty and treat all the shelves and drawers.

It is necessary to carefully sweep away any remaining grains that may have spilled and simply wipe everything with a dry or slightly damp cloth. After this you can proceed to processing:

• Table vinegar copes well not only with adult individuals, but also with their larvae and eggs.
• Therefore, you need to dilute 9% vinegar approximately 1:1 with plain water and wipe all surfaces with this solution. And not only the horizontal shelves themselves, but also the vertical ones, including the doors.
• Particular attention should be paid to the joints. If your furniture allows it (not varnished), you can pour the solution into a spray bottle and spray hard-to-reach joints, for example, in the area of ​​hinges on doors.
• Then dry the furniture thoroughly so that it does not get wet or deteriorate.
• Soda-salt solution can be used instead of vinegar. Dissolve a couple of tablespoons of ordinary rock salt and a spoonful of baking soda in a liter of warm water, stir well, the solution is ready.

Now let's move on to storage containers:

• If you choose glass or plastic containers for storage, then you need to not only wash them, but also thoroughly rinse them with boiling water, which will kill the bug eggs.
• If you store cereals in fabric bags, then they should not only be washed, but also boiled.
• It’s better not to do anything with plastic bags, but simply throw them out and straight into the garbage disposal, and not into the trash can in the kitchen, from where the parasites will quickly crawl back out.

We suggest you read: Bugs in cereals and in cabinets in the kitchen: how to get rid of them, where they come from, what harm they cause
After the main shelters of the bugs have been eliminated and treated, it is worth moving on to other items. It is advisable to wipe everything with vinegar solutions: refrigerator, microwave and other appliances and furniture:

• Pyrethrum helps well; it is a flower powder that is made from Caucasian chamomile, absolutely organic and safe for humans and pets. It should be sprayed carefully in cabinets. To do this, you can simply pour a little onto a dry palm and blow gently in the direction of the shelf you need. Make sure that the powder gets into the cracks and joints.
• If your pest is a food moth, then in addition to the procedures described above, it is necessary to add treatment with any chemical agent for ordinary moths. Moreover, you also need to spray carpets, rugs, and upholstered furniture, if any.

If you choose glass or plastic containers for storage, then you need to not only wash them, but also thoroughly rinse them with boiling water, which will kill the bug eggs

How to determine if a product has become unusable

If the flour is cool to the touch, it has absorbed a lot of moisture. A sour or moldy smell, a rancid taste - any of these signs are an indicator that the flour has gone bad. Chewed packaging, feces, eggs and chitinous shells signal infestation with parasites. They are tenacious even in tightly closed containers, and some cannot be destroyed even by freezing.

You should not try to dry such flour or sort it out from insects. The best solution is to throw it away and buy yourself a bag of fresh product. And the container in which the spoiled flour was located must be washed and be sure to rinse with a solution of table vinegar.

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It is not always possible to create conditions for proper storage of a large supply of flour. It is available in every store. It is better to buy a fresh product more often than to think about the conditions under which it will retain its properties longer.

How to prevent insects from appearing in flour?

Bugs themselves do not appear out of nowhere, and they almost never enter a person’s home:

• The most common reason for their appearance is that you brought them yourself, with some of the products. Alas, despite all the norms and state standards for production and sales, it is quite simple to buy a product infested with insects.
• Bugs can end up in the cereal already at the production stage, say, at the factory where it was produced, supposedly neutralized from parasites, dried, threshed and packaged.
• They may get into the bag during transportation or in one of the storage warehouses.
• Often these midges live in stores and supermarkets, where they instantly master each new batch of goods.
• Or they settle in bakeries or bakeries and from there migrate to your kitchen in a loaf of bread or a bunch of dry goods.
• Bugs can also enter along with food from neighbors who shared a glass of flour, friends or relatives who sprinkled you with some nuts or dried fruits.
• Since these insects are quite tenacious and unpretentious, they can penetrate into the cracks and joints of furniture. Therefore, one of the ways to add such an inhabitant to yourself is to purchase used kitchen furniture or interior detail, from which they will very quickly crawl out and get comfortable in a new place, closer to your food.

In order not to fight pests, it is better to protect yourself from their appearance and reproduction in advance. General advice is to keep it clean and ensure that cabinets are periodically ventilated.

If your furniture is quite airtight and the air in it does not circulate well, do regular ventilation by simply opening the cabinets for a short time:

• Try not to make large reserves. This, of course, will not protect you from pests, but it will significantly save your money; if a bug does settle in, you will have to get rid of the products.
• Give preference to airtight glass or plastic containers with tight lids. Only such banks will not be defeated by Khrushchev.
• If you can’t deny yourself this and still stock up on food in bags, then use dust. Herbal dust can be bought at the market, less often in a store, in the insect control department. This product must be sprinkled on the floor, under the bags. Bugs are not suitable for it, and it is absolutely safe for human health.
• Try to differentiate products rather than storing everything together on one shelf. For example, try to keep wet dried fruits away from cereals.
• Use a folk remedy for prevention – garlic. You can put a clove of garlic at the bottom of a jar of cereal. And between the jars, place dried bay leaves, which parasites cannot tolerate.
• If you still store cereals in fabric bags, then “salt” such containers. To do this, you need to prepare a saline solution, about a couple of tablespoons per 1 liter of water, and soak the bags in it. After half an hour, take them out and dry them. Parasites try to avoid such salted bags.

If you still store cereals in fabric bags, then “salt” such containers.
To prevent flour from being infected by bugs, you need to adopt the following techniques:

• Salt is an excellent protection against insects. If bags intended for storing flour are pre-soaked in a concentrated salt solution and dried, the risk of bugs will be minimal. You can also cover the contents of a glass, plastic or metal container with such a cloth.
• The smell of garlic also repels insects, so you can put a few cloves directly into the flour.
• Dried calendula flowers are another effective remedy. True, it is used only if the flour is stored in a paper or rag bag.

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There is another interesting method of preventing the appearance of insects in stocks - several large, pre-cleaned stainless steel nails are vertically lowered into the flour.

Even when all the rules for storing flour have been properly followed, at the first sign of problems, it is better to get rid of the product. If the composition becomes crusty, its color or smell changes, large lumps appear, no methods of mass resuscitation will help. The use of such a component may lead to food poisoning.