Flour goes rancid quick, better way to store flour?

[dieselpower]

I just found a bag of white flower that had to be 5 years old. Made bread with it just fine. So you guys are saying it goes bad when you seal it up...cuz there is nothing wrong with old bags of standard white flower that I can find?

[AEC1]

I have a 5 gal container that i have been using for years, no problems, It it not airtight though...

[rspar]

Generally any type of flour only stores unrefrigerated for 2-6 months up to a year refrigerated. Whole wheat going rancid faster than processed white. For food storage whole wheat(not flour) preferably in cans is best.

[IEShooter]

Grinding

+1 on the grinding your own wheat we have hard red and white but don't do any sifting or adding gluten not sure what your talking about there. We just grind it and let the breadmaker mix it and rise it, kneed it by hand and rise it a second time, and bake it in the oven. It comes out beautiful with a soft crust.

I tried that multiple times and it simple wouldn't rise a second time, no matter what I did. They yeast was fine as I tried two different packages and both were new. I used about a 50/50 mixture of hard red and white wheat and a small hand grinder from Honeyville.

I talked to the lady at Honeyville and she said to add wheat gluten or some regular flour to it. After adding about 1/3 regular, while flour, it rose like crazy on the second rise and baked up nice. She said that fresh ground wheat is sometimes too "heavy" for a second rise unless ground very, very fine, which my hand grinder would not quite do.

What grinder are you using?

[rspar]

I make my dough in a bread maker where it rises and then kneed it and rise it again in the oven (off). I had trouble getting it to rise in the beginning then I started adding the sugar and salt to one side and digging a small hole for the yeast and covering it. All so the sugar and salt didn't come into contact directly with the yeast. Now plenty of rise in fact a couple times I forgot the second rise and had to kneed and go for a third rise because the second rise over flowed the pan so much.

[MudCamper]

Don't store flour. Store whole wheat. Or is that what went bad on you? If so that is odd. I just had some bread that my brother made from 25 year old wheat berries. But he did seal them in a no-02 environment. Not sure what type of container he used, but he said he dropped a chuck of dried ice in them and let it push most of the O2 out before sealing the containers.

[ExAcHog]

Saw this post and tonight I checked the flour I put down 18 months ago. It is all rancid. Thats 40lbs wasted. I guess hard red wheat is the way to go.
Learned a lesson on this one, just glad it was now and not AFTER we needed it.