Oh yes! I'm a happy girl.
This is not a very typical Wednesday Baking post, but I just had to share my joy about something. My $.99 and $1.25/5 pound flour stash has been getting a bit low...I have maybe 10 five-pound bags left, which isn't a lot to me(I still have plenty of wheat to grind into whole wheat flour, though). So, I've been keeping an eye out for a flour sale(flour usually goes on sale around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter). The best I've seen so far has been $1.99/five pounds, which, while not horrible, is not a great price. I was considering buying some because it's better than paying $2.50/five pounds(that's how much off-brand flour costs at Weis, and that's not even unbleached flour).
Today, though, I got a sale ad from Weis, and I was thrilled to see a pretty good deal. Gold Medal unbleached flour(my favorite kind) is on sale for $1.99/five pounds this week, and on top of that, if you buy $40 worth of Gold Medal products, you get a coupon for $10 off your next shopping order. Since I shop at Weis every week, this is like cash to me, so I could get 20 bags of flour for $30. That's $1.50/bag ...not as good as my Thanksgiving flour, but since I'm not overly optimistic that I'm going to see $.99/bag this Easter, I'm going to snag this deal while it's here.
This will eat up $30 of my grocery budget this week, so I'm just going to try to plan a really cheap week of meals so that I can stay within or under my budget. I may do a freezer inventory and try to use up some of the food we have in there so that I mostly just have to buy produce and milk. And a lot of flour. 😉
I know this isn't terribly helpful to those of you who don't have a Weis nearby, but if you bake and you're looking to stock up on flour, you might want to peruse the sale ads in your area this week and next to see if you can find a good deal.
Am I the only one who is having trouble getting used to grocery inflation? I've finally given up on the fact that I won't be buying a 2 litter of coke for $1 on sale anymore. Getting pasta on sale for less than 75 cents a box is much more rare. Wasn't flour 99 cents for a 5lb bag not too long ago? I can still get a dozen eggs for $1 at Wal-Mart. I keep telling myself 'that's not a good sale' when I open my flyers each week, but in the new reality of grocery shopping, my old "good sales" no longer exist.
Yeah, I totally have that problem. Flour hasn't been $.99/bag regularly here for a while, but it used to be a LOT easier to find it on sale for $.99.
I can still get soda for $1 or $1.25 on sale, but I don't think pasta is usually available for $.75 here.
Wow! I will have to look for that sale. I hope our Weis has that!
@Kristen
There is a grocery store in town that is famous for its b1g2 and b2g3 sales. During those sales, I can get pasta for 50 to 66 cents per box. The cheapest I've seen coke or pepsi lately is 1.25. I refuse to buy cans because its wasteful and we have a 5 cent deposit on cans and bottles. I don't return them, I just put them in my recycling bin since we don't drink very much soda.
Everything is more expensive. The lady working in the deli, who I feel like I know since I see her every week, told me that they are simply advertising "everyday low prices" now instead of putting things on sale. Not good for a bargain shopper like me. I hear rumors of getting a Super WalMart in my area, have you shopped at that store? Wondering about the prices?
By the way Kristen, I don't know why, but I think it's funny that flour makes you happy. Kind of like the way the clean laundry and an organized house makes me happy!!
Have a great Wednesday,
Dana
Do you ever use bread flour? I get unbleached bread flour from the health food store for $1.50 for 5 pounds. I have to buy it from the bulk bins, but at least it's organic!:P I like Gold Medal flour for baking quick breads and muffins. Recently I've started replacing whole wheat flour with spelt flour. Have you ever tried this? Spelt makes a softer dough and an airier, less dense finished product. I get spelt flour for about $.75 a pound on sale.
Kristin-we don't drink much soda either. Just our weekly root beer for our pizza! lol
Dana-a clean house makes me happy too. and clean laundry. :p We have a Super Walmart here, but I hate how busy it is. And I feel like I can do better price wise by shopping at Aldi and Weis. Plus I know that Aldi treats their employees better than Walmart does.
Liz-I don't usually. Cook's tested a bunch of flours and decided that Gold Medal unbleached was best for yeast breads, as it has a pretty high level of gluten in it(bread flour is high gluten flour). It also works for quick breads, though, so it's versatile. I like that I only have to have one bin of white flour this way instead of having bread flour and regular flour and whole wheat flour and so on.
I've never tried spelt flour before, but someone else suggested that too. Maybe I'll have to buy some!
I'm TOTALLY jealous that you pay $1.50 for 5 pounds of organic flour. I'm going to come move in with you. lol
Smith's (a kroger owned store) is having a case load sale starting today. You can buy a case of 8 - 5lb. Gold medal flour (all purpose or unbleached) for $12.80, which works out to $1.60 a bag.
I guess we should be thankful that the wheat prices went down. Last year I was paying almost 4 bucks for a bag of KA flour. Now its about 3 dollars, and the regular price of gold medal is 2 and change. I dropped using KA for baking cookies/cakes and now only buy the bread or white whole wheat or regular whole wheat. Even though I live in Canada, I buy all my flour in the US. I hate Canadian flour. Everytime I bake something using Canadian flour, I screw it up.
For those who live near a Shaws they are having a great promtion (through 4/15). If you purchase a $300 Shaws card they will put an extra $30 on it. You can buy up to $1200 of cards. I just got $120 in free groceries just for pre-purchasing (I'd have to clip a lot of coupons to save that much...).
@Adrienne Sounds good depending on how often you shop there. Assuming say Kristen's $80 a week budget that would be 15 weeks for the $1,200 so in that period of time you could call it an approximate 30% APY (10% gain for approximately a third of the year)
Not bad at all considering ING just lowered their interest to 1.5%. Ugh!
Do you use unbleached for everything?
Angela-whenever I need white flour, I use the unbleached stuff, yes. I use cake flour VERY occasionally, but usually I find that the unbleached flour works well for whatever I need to bake.
It's crazy how seasonal baking stuff goes on sale after holidays! I snapped up icing and valentine M&Ms for cookie making. Seasonal cake mix and icing are two of my favorite finds. I simply don't use the seasonal ingediants (sprinkles, candies, etc) and use the cake mix plain. I save the candies for cookies and cupcake decorations. Works great.
Congrats on your bargain buy Frugal Girl!
Thanks for the head's up. I'm definitely visiting Weis this week.
Just wondering....how do you store your flour. I bought 3 bags one time thanks to an awesome sale, but when I opened one of the bags, it had those weasel bugs in it. Yuck, had to throw that away.
Thanks, I'm loving your site...I think I've printed all of your bread recipes 🙂
Sandy