https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/quarantine-bakers-are-making-flour-a-hot-commodity/ar-BB12qmn9by Lydia Mulvany and Michael Hirtzer, Bloomberg
April 10, 2020
The art of baking at home, while not exactly lost, has been on a decline as Americans slowly shifted from eating in to dining out. But with over 90% of the U.S. under some form of stay-at-home order due to the ongoing pandemic, it appears that an increasing number are dusting off old recipes for breads, pastries, cookies and cakes. Sales of baking yeast were up 457% over last year for the week ending March 28, according to Nielsen data. Flour was up 155%, baking powder up 178%, butter up 73% and eggs up 48%.
Home baking began dropping off in the 1960s, and today, with many households having two working parents, there's less time for even basic meal preparation, never mind baking. Food away-from-home accounted for 54.4% of total food expenditures in 2018, compared to 26% in 1953, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Still, a rising U.S. population contributed to consumption gains for wheat-based flour in recent years even as per-capita use dropped from 146 pounds in 2000 to 132 pounds in 2018, DOA data show.
Now, stuck at home and trained to perform for social media, Americans are posting pictures of their edible triumphs under hashtags like #isolationbaking and #lockdownbaking.
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