Can flour go stale?

Does it either; smell bad, or clump together or has it got a yellowish tinge to it?

Any, all these things, then yes, it's gone past it's best, and you should probs buy some new.

Check to see if it's mouldy, smell it to make sure it doesn't smell off, then bin it and get some fresh stuff.

You could just mix it up with some water to make dough and bake it and use it as bird food if you're bothered about wasting food.

it's always best to use freshest flour you have. It's probably okay fro today but older brown flours with seeds should really be used by the BB date - something to do with oils breaking down

@MrOvershoot will be able to explain much better

Yes, and it can get weevils which are very obvious,  lots of tiny holes in it, and tiny worms.  I never keep any flour for long.

If it's kept dry it lasts for ages, not sure how long but a year should be fine.

Self-raising does seem to loose it's raising ability over time though, so add a bit of baking powder after a few months

IIRC @mrovershoot on here works in a flour mill and should be able to give a definitive answer

Keep ours in air tight containers

Well it looks fine, is still white and isn't lumping together. Kept in an air tight container.

Regards weevils, we are too far North for them.

However, when we lived down South, we had a jar of self raising flour that got infested, it must of been unopened in about 3 years, when we opened it, it looked like they had built some kind of alien settlement in the flour!

I still might buy a new bag just to be on the safe side.

Flour keeps pretty much for ever if dry and uncontaminated.

or if baked into Christmas cake.

If it looks and smells ok then sieve it before you use it to make sure there.

Sounds like it will be rite.

Some one called @MrOvershoot

I don’t work in flour milling now!

I retired after 31 years in it, though it’s not changed in the 2 1/2 years since I finished.

IMO and with my knowledge based on storage of 1000’s Tonne’s at a time, after 6 months it starts to drop off in baking quality that’s for a strong white bread flour 12.5% protein and above.

White cake/biscuit flour up to a year but you will have variable results if your product has fruit in i.e. in a cake it will all sink to the bottom.

Brown & wholemeal flours can go off in 3 months depending on the wheat germ level, wheat germ goes rancid pretty quickly as the natural oils degrade.

If your plain flour has been in a cool dry dark place & well sealed then it should be OK, obviously if it has a musty smell then it probably has flour beetle in it pretty much all flour has the possibility to have confused flour beetle or flour mite’s in due to their eggs being so small that they are impossible to sift out with even the finest sieve meshes.

Some cake flour will have been heat treated to kill off a particular enzyme that effects the baking process and by doing so will kill any eggs.

As the other ex-flour miller MrOvershoot has it. Germ oil is terrible when rancid.

The only exception was Security Flour milled to a low moisture and stored for 5 years in case of nuclear war. Anyone eating sliced white in the 90's will have had some as it was mixed back to avoid waste (make more money for the millers).

Question for the flour millers: I have heard that spelt flour is much more likely to have mites/beetles than regular wheat, is that true and if so why?

every day is a school day/  I thought flour lasted for years.  All mine is years old.  Oops

@ossify Possibly due to organic growing conditions as it's a type that will not benefit too much from intensive growing like modern wheats. As a result insects and more likely their eggs will survive storage and milling.

Most white flour will have bits of insect in them due to the inline disruptors at the end of the process (there's a specified maximum ppm). Leave a bag of flour alone and opened for a reasonable length of time and mites will get in and start breeding.

Well I forgot to buy some fresh flour, used the old stuff and the yorkies were absolutely perfect.