I just read somewhere that you shouldn’t mix old and new flour, but can’t find any websites that explain why you shouldn’t do this. Does anybody know?
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Raw flour can harbor microorganisms that can make you sick, as well as things like insects and insect eggs and larvae. The longer it sits unused, the more likely it is to have more of these things, so if you mix new flour with old flour you’re introducing more of those bad things to the new flour and causing it to go bad much sooner.
Who says you can’t? You can. Obviously if you’re storing these mixed flours, the use by date of the combined flours becomes that of the flour that expires soonest.
Don’t mix old and new ANYTHING.
Flour comes up because its the type of thing that will sit for a very long time and people assume because of that it has 100% unlimited shelf life. A lot of folk have a big container they pour their flour into so if you constantly just add new flour to it you will potentially have 40 year old flour in that thing at some point.
In food service we say FIFO First In First Out to keep foods fresh and prevent food-born illness. Apply this to every ingredient you use including your flour.
Even if nobody gets sick, using fresh high quality flour will make your baked goods taste much better. That trick I learned from old grandmas who never even considered it for food safety.
Flour contains small amounts of oils (fats). Most plant-based oils change over time to taste bad, so mixing old and new flour will introduce that stale, rancid flavor into your food.
Next time you buy a new bottle of vegetable oil, save the old container. Give the new and old containers a sniff, and you may notice a difference if you have a sharp nose!
When you mix old food with new food you make new food old.
Over time, bacteria and fungus grows on food. Mixing old food that has had time for this stuff to grow on it with now food just spreads that stuff on the new stuff. It makes it spoil faster, and it makes the risk of getting sick from it bigger.
Flour’s a not-so-obvious problem because we let it sit on the shelf a long time so we tend to not think about it spoiling or stuff growing on it.
What about bulk foods? I know it will depend on the store and whether they follow best practices. I have avoided them because I’m not sure if they get cleaned after being emptied or if they just keep getting filled with new stuff.
First expired first out
Mixing old flour with new means you still have old flour. If the next person does it too (say you’re working commercial and everyone has a habit of topping off the old stuff into the new), you will have an infinitely old mixture of dangerous food pathogens.
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