But in early March, Ely noticed a change in the questions. Partly it was an increase in the sheer number of calls, a jump that seemed more sudden and pronounced than the normal mild pre-Easter build-up. But even stranger was how many of the callers seemed, well, clueless. How do you tell if bread is done? Do I really need yeast? And strangest of all: What can I use instead of flour?

…

Co-CEO Karen Colberg was staring in shock at the recent daily sales figures that had just popped up on her screen. “I fired off a text to the sales team to check their figures,” says Colberg. “It was obviously some sort of mistake.”

No mistake, came the reply. The figures had already been double-checked. They showed a 600% increase in grocery-store sales almost literally overnight.

Even before the pandemic really began to impact daily life in early March, it was nearly impossible to find all purpose and bread flour in our local stores. I chalked flour up there with toilet paper and hand sanitizer as things I didn’t understand the logic behind hoarding during a pandemic.

Empty flour section

It wasn’t until mid-March that I remember reading an article explaining that bread making and baking was an activity that people found comfort in which explained the run on flour.

I tried ordering online and it was out of stock everywhere. I tried OfferUp and Craigslist, no dice. It wasn’t until mid-April that generic all-purpose flour started showing up in stores. And it wasn’t until late April that I went to the grocery store, right at 7 a.m. when they opened, and finally found a bag of bread flour.

bread flour

That day I made several loaves of Hokkaido Milk Bread.

milk bread

And a couple more the following week. And then pandesal.

bad pandesal

Except that I messed something up and they came out like rocks. They were so bad that I wasn’t going to feed these to the birds. They went straight into the trash.

pandesal

The second batch came out much better.