Because we use those ingredients constantly and regularly.

You don't usually make a particular type of cookie every week or two. You might only make it once every six months. And your cake mix won't stay good exposed to oxygen for six months.

It's not about being helpless, c'mon.

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dml2135 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Well this is why it makes sense to bake from standard ingredients like flour that have many different uses, instead of a processed box that can only be used to make one thing.

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dghlsakjg 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Standard flour? Which standard?

There are a lot of different kinds of flour. At most well stocked grocers in North America you will find pastry flour, all purpose flour, bread flour, organic flour, self rising flour, etc. That’s just the white wheat flour that you could use to make a cake. Don’t forget that whole wheat and different varietals of wheat exist. If you make cake with bread flour it is going to be very different from one made with pastry flour. There is no such thing as “standard flour”. Hell, even the mill that you use to grind the wheat berry can drastically change the nature of your flour.

That’s the whole point of this article. That what you think of as a standard might not be a standard forever, or it might not be a standard at all.

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dimensional_dan 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> all purpose flour

Use that one. It's flour, but like for all purposes. You can make cake with it fine.

	▲	wink a day ago \| parent [-]
		fun fact: in other parts of the world it's not called "all purpose", and I don't mean translations.

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account42 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> self rising flour

That's just another unnecessary mix you can buy individually.

> That’s the whole point of this article. That what you think of as a standard might not be a standard forever, or it might not be a standard at all.

Flour types are not up to some corporation's marketing team. And for home cooking they don't really matter as much as you are implying. Just get the types best suited for the most common thing(s) you are making and make substitutes for the rest.

Also, there's going to be one type that is always stocked more than others. That's your standard flour. You can use it for most recipes (cake and bread) just fine.

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zdragnar 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Eh? We eat almost no flour on a daily basis. We might eat cake every few months.

"Standard" is not standard at all.

	▲	dml2135 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		If you only bake cakes I guess it makes sense — but you can make many other baked goods with flour.
	▲	bruce511 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah, "Standard" will vary a lot from one place to another. For what it's worth, flour is used almost daily here. (We keep several kinds to hand.) We make pizza (ie make the dough) at least once a week. Bread on occasion. Batters for fried fish. As a thickener in sauces and gravys. For making fresh pasta, and so on. All this of course is very cultural. We cook at home. If we eat out once a month it's a lot. We don't get take-aways or fast food. Because (frankly) they're just not that good. So yes, our "standard" leans towards a well-stocked, varied, pantry. And I completely get that this is weird by US standards (although common outside the US).

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bruce511 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I think you and I have very different ideas of "helpless". :)

"Oh no, the premix is a different size, no more cookies ever" - seems like a pretty helpless response to me.

First World Problems I guess...

	▲	crazygringo 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think you're being extremely judgmental and making a lot of assumptions. I didn't see any "helpless" in the article. I see someone who doesn't want to spend twice the money for no good reason, and then have leftover ingredients they don't have any other use for. It's sad that you seem unable to sympathize with someone else's inconvenience and chose to diminish them instead. When standard ingredient sizes change, that have remained unchanged for decades, and lots of recipes are scaled to match them precisely, you... choose to call people helpless, rather than call it out as corporate greed? It's actually constructive, not "helpless", to stop buying the product, because if enough people do that, the company gets the message and brings back the old size.
	▲	brian-armstrong 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's time to log off lil bro