Can’t find flour during the pandemic? Here’s why — and it’s not ‘pantry-loading’

If flour shelves at your local grocery store have remained empty during the coronavirus pandemic, you’re not alone — but experts say there’s no grain shortage.

So what’s making flour so hard to find?

It’s simple: People are baking more.

Carey Underwood, director of mission-driven partnerships and programs at King Arthur Flour, told CNN that people are baking more since they’re stuck at home and that empty flour shelves aren’t due to “pantry-loading.”

“People who were baking monthly are now baking weekly, and people who were baking weekly are baking daily,” she said, according to the outlet.

Social media appears to agree. A quick search of #quarantinebaking on Instagram returns more than 140,000 posts of what bakers say are their at-home creations.

Despite the uptick, Underwood said there’s no shortage of wheat; rather, demand for all kinds of flour has skyrocketed and warehouses just can’t keep up, CNN reported.

“The wheat is available, but it must be milled, bagged, and transported to warehouses,” she told the outlet. “These steps simply take time and the flour is selling out again as quickly as it reaches shelves.”

It’s a similar story in other mills across the country.

Robert Harper, president of Hopkinsville Milling Co. in Kentucky, said business is typically slower during the spring but that the mill — which sells primarily corn meal and self-rising wheat-based flour — has been packing double the flour it usually does this time of year, Time reported.

“It started to look like Thanksgiving and Christmas all rolled into one,” Harper told the outlet. “People have time on their hands and are trying to save some money.”

Experts agree that in-store shortages are a matter of logistics, not supply.

“Here in the U.S., our wheat supplies would be considered abundant at this point,” Erica Olson, market development and research manager at the North Dakota Wheat Commission, told Time. She added that mills were “not prepared” for the rush during the pandemic.

However, experts say home-baking doesn’t account for much of the U.S. flour market as a whole.

Sales of two to 10 pound bags of flour that are typically found at grocery stores only make up roughly 4% of sales, The Counter reported. The other 96% can be contributed to commercial customers, according to the outlet.

Mark Swenson — CEO of Shepherd’s Grain, which sells various types of flours to retailers in the Pacific Northwest — says retail orders have a four- to six-week lead time because they’re milled at an Archer Daniels Midland facility that’s slammed with its own production, The Counter reported.

“Mills are absolutely buried,” Swenson told the outlet. “I have people screaming at me wanting more and more and more flour, and I just can’t give it to them.”

With grocery stores and many online retailers having trouble getting it in stock, can you even find flour?

Yes, but it might take a little creativity.

Some home-bakers are turning to surprising methods, ordering flour from Etsy and purchasing baking kits from local bakeries.

One man spent $50 for a baking kit because he couldn’t find flour or yeast at the store, MarketPlace reported.

KentuckyFinest, which sells Weisenberger’s flour in its Etsy shop, has garnered pages and pages of reviews for flour since the onset of the pandemic.

“I bought this flour out of desperation...” one reviewer wrote in May.

“Couldn’t find bread flour in stores due to the pandemic,” wrote another.

“Thank you for coming to my rescue!” wrote a third.

This story was originally published May 4, 2020 at 9:57 AM with the headline "Can’t find flour during the pandemic? Here’s why — and it’s not ‘pantry-loading’."