baking bread in a time of pandemic

It’s weird when finding a package of toilet paper in the grocery store comes close to making your day. But such are the times in which we live.

One of the side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (or perhaps simply one of the effects) is that people who never thought of baking before have suddenly started baking. That’s all well and good, but those of us who are long-time bakers are having to change our routines. If you bake, and if you have visited the baking aisle in the grocery store recently, you know exactly what I mean. You’re lucky to find all-purpose flour, and coming across bread flour is like unearthing a diamond.

There can be upsides to such adversity, however. I couldn’t find King Arthur bread flour either in the store or online, so when our WinCo supermarket had a small cluster of Bob’s Red Mill bread flour on the shelf, I grabbed a bag. I ended up baking the best loaf of sourdough bread that I had ever made. (Sorry, King Arthur.)

In recent months I have made a variety of heartier, sandwich-friendly breads (while including my sourdough in the rotation, of course), using 10-grain, whole grain, and sprouted wheat blends from King Arthur. None of those are available these days. Nor does King Arthur have regular bread flour or organic bread flour. They are even selling their all-purpose flour in 3-pound rather that 5-pound bags, but I’m fine on the A/P flour right now thanks to stumbling across it on a trip to Grocery Outlet in search of milk (which, fortunately, no longer seems to be in short supply).

What I found available when I went to the King Arthur web site on Friday was artisan bread flour, French bread flour, and vital wheat gluten, that last being something essential when standard bread flour is in short supply. They also let me order pizza flour, which is due in three or four weeks.

I must therefore change the varieties of bread that I bake and put aside the whole grain/multi-grain blends in favor of French, rustic, and sourdough breads.

That will be all right. It’s a change, and it is far better than not baking at all.