Storing Baking Ingredients

It’s no secret that I enjoy baking. (I stress bake too, and on more than one occasion, I’m positive people I know have intentionally placed stressors in my life so that I can that I can bake for said people. But I’m not bitter…) Anyway, because of the baking I do, people often ask me how I can manage to bake on any whim. I have a couple tricks, but one of the most important is fairly straightforward: I keep key baking ingredients in my kitchen at all times. I recently came across this post on the How to Simplify Blog. It covers how to store baking ingredients.

Some of the basic suggestions include

Store baking powder in a dry place for up to 18 months

Store flour in a cool, dry place for up to 12 months

Store whole wheat flour in a cool, dry place for up to 3 months

Store honey at room temperature for up to 12 months

To test yeast, stir in 1 teaspoon sugar and two teaspoons yeast into 1/2 cup warm water. If a mixture (three layers will form: sugar and yeast, cloudy water and film of yeast) foams and bubbles within 10 minutes, then the yeast is still active.