I question how many people are actually using the flour they're hoarding, and how many are just putting it in the back of the pantry because, "When the end of the world comes, you'll need flour!"
It's very irritating for those of us who actually bake on a regular basis and resisted the temptation to hoard for hoarding's sake.
I've been baking bread under quarantine when I haven't in the past been a baker on a regular basis. What it does is allow me to extend the time between grocery store visits; the usual choice is to buy less frozen food so I can store a loaf or two of bread in the freezer, instead I can fill my freezer and bake when my bread runs out.
I'm doing this quite explicitly - on my last shopping trip I bought one loaf that went straight into the breadbox. When it is gone it will be replaced by a baked loaf.
I don't know if this thinking is common, but obviously extending the time between grocery store visits is a good thing.
tangentially related: I think there's been a lot of unwarranted gleeful bashing of people as universal stockpilers when I suspect that most of this is a tempo/timing thing (which easily destroys a JIT supply chain.) It's not that most people were stockpiling unnecessarily, it's that everybody was shopping at the same time, and fully stocking their larder rather than doing it as casually as they usually would. The special cases of particular staples like toilet paper were intensely covered by the media, IMO creating the hoarding of those staples. In normal times, if I have three rolls of toilet paper at home and I'm at the grocery store, unless a sale jumps out at me I'm probably not going to buy - I only buy when I'm critically low. In current times, that would be a bad move that would result in a special trip just for TP (which would be trivial in normal times.) Not buying the largest size of TP available (which is only around $20) seems reckless under the circumstances. If I hear that people are stockpiling, I might want to buy more than one for fear that when I need TP, I might have to travel from store to store to find it, exposing myself even more.
I'm saying this as somebody who always buys the largest size unless there's a sale that makes a smaller size cheaper by sheet, went shopping a couple of weeks before any quarantines were announced, and therefore hasn't had to buy any during the pandemic. The fact that I was able to make it 5 weeks on what I had at home before going out again was a comfort.
I've talked to most of the friends in the group buy about their baking; it just comes up. People are making bread, pizza, naan, waffles, all sorts of things. I don't think this is people buying flour who aren't going to bake with it.
Around 50% of US meals are in commercial kitchens, be that schools or restaurants. The massive change in commercial to retail sales is going to cause far more issues than hoarders.
If you're willing to dismiss 200 lbs of flour as hobby levels, then do you even believe in hoarding at all?
We're talking enough flour to make 200 loaves. At best, they bought a 3 month supply of flour (and that is baking 2 loaves every day). At worst, this is more flour than they can possibly use, and a large amount of it will go bad (storing 200 lbs of flour inside is a bit of a challenge, so it may be stored in a garage or worse).
And of course, with every product in the grocery store, if we all go out and buy a 3 month or further supply of a basic good, there's not going to be any left. Which only encourages more hoarding.
I don't know about willing to dismiss but you're making assumptions about facts not in evidence. For all you know the poster is cooking for 6 adults.
Moreover, ... whats wrong with a three months supply of flour? For the last few years we've maintained that much flour at my house-- just because its a convenient level to purchase/manage for us, nothing to do with preparedness (which, incidentally, is virtuous), and certainly not any kind of hording.
I totally agree with you. The more people that maintain a 3m supply of non-perishables and rotate through them, the more robust society will be to problems like this one.
Households also vary a lot in size: ours is six adults and two kids, so we do go through a lot of food.
Or they intend to bake and when their first try at a sourdough starter fails they give up, in part because at least around where I live there's no shortage of bread (and there hasn't been) in the stores.
> there's no shortage of bread (and there hasn't been) in the stores.
Bread, especially good bread, gets stale kind of quickly. If you want fresh bread right now and don't want to continually go out an expose yourself to infection the only real option is to make it at home.
You can slice it and freeze it. Even when I make it myself, I don't go through enough bread (and don't want to) to make it more than once a week or so. So, in my case, it's definitely not about baking fresh bread every day or two.
It's very irritating for those of us who actually bake on a regular basis and resisted the temptation to hoard for hoarding's sake.