I'd Like a Word

Not long ago, I found ten-pound bags of unbleached Gold Medal flour on Amazon for not too much more than I pay for the Sysco flour from the school. The Sysco flour is bleached, so I thought I would pay the nominal extra money to get unbleached flour.

And then it arrived. And it smelled like detergent. Which meant anything I made from it tasted like detergent.

I was very upset.

This is something I first started noticing maybe ten years ago. Sometimes the produce I would buy at the very small grocery near Blackrock would taste like perfume to me. Apples particularly had this problem.

I have also noticed it with crackers, cookies, and, as in this case, flour. Anything that is prone to absorbing odors will pick up this disgusting taste of chemical fragrance. Most of my issues with this have been with small grocery stores. My guess is that it happens when these items are stored in a warehouse or truck with cleaning supplies or whatever that have artificial fragrances in them.

I'm very sensitive to it, and it grosses me out. I can't ignore it. Which is why I was so mad that the FORTY POUNDS of flour I ordered was unusable. Particularly because I had no other flour on hand, and no way to get it easily. 

This of all weeks is not the week I can afford to be low on flour. This is one of the biggest baking weeks of the year. I use a LOT of flour in the week leading up to Christmas, what with the bread for teacher and neighbor gifts, the molasses cookies, and all of Jack's birthday requests. I had to borrow flour from Ms. Amelia to make pancakes for his birthday breakfast, and he had to choose a runner-up dinner because the pizza he wanted was a no-go without usable flour.

This was meant to be five loaves of bread for teachers, and Jack's birthday pizza.

Instead the chickens got all five loaves, and I baked the pizza dough in these pans for the chickens as well. Lucky chickens.

I will note that Amazon gave me a full refund on the flour without requiring me to return it. But still. Not cool.

Have you noticed this issue with flour or other foods in recent years? 

Update: I can't believe this, but I bought flour from the tiny store in the village yesterday, and when I got it home, it too was contaminated with artificial fragrance. (I couldn't exactly sniff it suspiciously in front of the store owner.) I was afraid it would be, because I could tell from the brand that the store owner got it from a dollar store, and sure enough, it too is unusable. It's a plague.