How do I store flour, rice and dry goods properly?

Dry goods look indestructible and are not. Flour goes rancid, spices fade, and pantry moths arrive inside packaging and spread through a cupboard within weeks.

Step by step

1. Decant into airtight containers.Paper bags and folded-over packets let in air, moisture and insects. Glass jars, clip-lock boxes or good plastic tubs with a proper seal.
2. Label with the date.The date you opened it, on masking tape. Dry goods do not smell obviously off, so without a date you have no way to judge.
3. Keep them cool, dark and dry.Not above the oven, not next to the kettle, not on a sunny windowsill. Heat accelerates rancidity and light degrades everything.
4. Refrigerate or freeze the oily ones.Wholemeal and rye flour, oats, nuts, seeds, nut flours and wheatgerm all contain oils that go rancid within a few months at room temperature. The fridge roughly triples their life; the freezer more.
5. Know realistic shelf lives.White flour about a year, wholemeal three to six months at room temperature, white rice indefinitely, brown rice six months, dried pasta two years, ground spices about a year, whole spices two to three.
6. Recognise rancidity.A sharp, slightly bitter, crayon-like or oil-paint smell. Rancid flour makes an entire bake taste wrong and cannot be masked.
7. Freeze new flour for 48 hours if you have had moths.It kills any eggs already in the bag. This is how professional bakeries handle infestation risk.
8. Deal with pantry moths thoroughly.Small webbed clumps in flour or grain, or larvae in the lid seals. Empty the whole cupboard, bin infested packets, vacuum the corners and hinges, wipe with vinegar, and only then restock into sealed containers.
9. Store opened dried yeast in the fridge.Once opened, dried yeast loses activity steadily at room temperature. In the fridge in a sealed jar it stays good for months, and in the freezer longer.
10. Rotate stock.New bags behind old ones. Most dry goods waste comes from finding two half-used bags and buying a third.

Tips

• Wholemeal flour in the fridge. It is the change that saves the most disappointment.
• Freeze new flour for two days if you have ever had moths — it kills the eggs.
• Ground spices are past it in about a year even though they never look different.

Common mistakes

• Keeping wholemeal flour in the cupboard for a year — The germ and bran contain oils that oxidise within a few months, and rancid flour gives every bake a bitter, stale edge that people usually blame on the recipe. White flour, with the germ removed, lasts far longer.
• Binning only the packet the moths were in — Pantry moth larvae travel and pupate in cupboard corners, hinges and lid seals, so the infestation returns within weeks. The whole cupboard has to be emptied, vacuumed and wiped.

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