Cambro Crazy

I got it into my head that I wanted to reorganize the baking shelf.  The flour bucket has been such a success, it only made sense to expand the concept to other bulk items.

Plastic containers are expensive.  I was at Big Lots! and they were $15 each.  Amazon didn't have much better prices, and neither did Target.  Ross had some for $7 each, but they were glass and not stackable.  I didn't even go into Bed Bath & Beyond.  I finally decided that the problem was I was looking at "pretty" containers, when what I needed was functional.

I went to Chef's Toys, a no-membership restaurant supply store.  Well, first I looked into getting containers from U-Line, but you had to buy in multiples of six, and the lids were separate.  Very good price though, if I had needed that many.  Not sure what they charge for shipping.  Chef's Toys prices were a little higher, but still half the price of the lay-cook version.

I went straight to the Cambro aisle.  Cambro is a brand, but also a generic term for plastic containers.  Like Kleenex.  They have every size you can imagine up to 22 quarts.  Yes, that's big, but it holds 25 pounds of flour.  The containers are BPA-free, industrial dishwasher safe, microwaveable, made in the USA, and the company is headquartered in Huntington Beach.

I picked up a bunch of 3-packs of various sizes packaged with the lids, as the most economical way to do it.  The square gallon ones are for bread flour, now that I'm using it regularly for challah, and A.P. once I get it down to that point.  The third will find a use in time.  As much as I love the flour bucket, it takes up a lot of space.  I got two packs (6 total) of square half gallons.  Those are for the freezer items of whole wheat flour, masa harina, cornmeal, and cake flour, plus granulated sugar that doesn't fit in the kitchen crock.  The masa and wheat flour actually had more than half a gallon left in their respective bags, so I'm making it a priority to use whatever didn't fit and I'm going to buy them in smaller packages in the future.  Since I was on a roll, I got round quart containers for kosher salt, powdered sugar, and brown sugar.

Putting all these flours (and sugars) on the shelf accomplishes four goals.  One, I'm not dealing with bags and boxes when I scoop or pour.  Two, it tidies up the freezer and pantry to stack the containers.  Three, I can see what I have.  And four - which should really be #1 - the airtight seals will keep the ingredients fresh and bug-free.

An advantage of using the industry containers isn't just that they are more durable than average.  They're marked with volumes in English and metric.  If I see that there's less than 4-1/2 cups of bread flour left and challah day is coming up, I can put bread flour on the shopping list.  Less than two cups of brown sugar?  Better get some before pies and gingerbread start happening.

If you're going to decant all these similar-looking flours and granulated anything, make sure you label the container.  I used some pretty canning labels I was gifted.  They go on the lid for the chest freezer and the front for the pantry.  The lids do have a place to write on with a sharpie, but I didn't want to commit to that.  I didn't bother to label the brown sugar, since it could never be mistaken for any other Cambro item. Neither would the cornmeal, but since that's stacked in the freezer, it's easier to see when you look down into it.

As long as I was in a reorganizing mood, I transferred a lot of beans and grains into smaller mason jars, freeing up a little space.  I didn't put the flours in mason jars because the whole point of this project was to make them less messy to scoop and stackable.  I did make a pint jar of vanilla sugar, separate from the Cambro of regular sugar.  I'll never need more than two cups of it at a time, even for canning.

I admit, this little remodeling project wasn't cheap.  I spent a hundred dollars.  But with home levels of usage, I'm never going to have to replace them, and it would have cost me about $250 if I had bought the OXO or Rubbermaid offerings.  In a bakery or restaurant, the containers last 2-5 years, depending on usage and how often they're dropped.  In the long run, it's worth it to prevent loss due to spoilage and spillage.