What is the shelf lfe of all purpose (labelled) flour?Does/can it get rancid?
Are there any tell tale signs/smells?Absent these what would be the consequences of using an opened,possible year old bag, for cooking/baking.
Eventually bugs can get in. But if there are no weevils (tiny creepy crawly brown bugs) within the flour is good to use. (actually even if there are weevils, you can sift them out and it’s still good. But it grosses some people out!) I have at times taken more than a year to use up a bag of flour.
Yep, I got weevils in flower once. Threw it away. I found that putting it in the fridge keeps the bugs away.
If you use it to bake bread, old flour may not rise as well as fresh flour.
Flour can be stored in the freezer. No problem. It works out fine for me.
Your standard white, bleached flour has had 70 percent of the nutrients removed from it (Laurel’s Kitchen). Therefore it doesn’t have much in it to go rancid. If you put it in the fridge, as Jake suggests, it should last indefinitely. Also that keeps the weevil eggs from hatching out (I know, TMI) 