Yep. I freeze any grain that comes into the house for at least three days to discourage any univited "guests" fro mhatching. if I know it's going to be a while until I get to use the grain, it stays in the freezer. I double wrap it (or break it down and use the food vac on it) to avoid condensation (from open/cosing the freezer and keep it from picking up that freezer smell. (I don't have a separate freezer, so I sometimes notice the fridge smells "migrate" to the freezer. And I completely agree with you about White Lily. IMO, it's the only flour that makes a "proper" biscuit or scone.

Something caught my eye in the link cloudy christine provided -- about "strong" flour -- which might need a little more explanation. Strong vs weak wheat is an interesting study and information we don't generally get when it comes to a bag of flour. But we may have noticed it if we purchased an inexpensive bag of flour somewhere along the line and it didn't perform as well as good old ___________ (fill in the blank) flour. When I teach bread classes I advise people NOT to purchase off-brands of flour from discount places like the Dollar General Store, Aldi, etc., because it can be an inferior flour product that can lack enough gluten for making good bread - or a weak flour in other words. Professional bakers use the terms strong and weak to indicate a wheat or flour's "baking strength", or whether it's suitable for specific baked goods. Hard and soft wheats are terms primarily of interest to the fine folks who mill the flour and it describes the texture of the endosperm and how it breaks down in milling - but we also attribute these names to the protein/gluten levels. If I forget whether I have soft wheat or hard wheat milled into flour, all I have to do is take a pinch of the flour and rub it between my fingers. Soft wheat is just that, soft, like a fine silky powder, while hard wheat is grittier. Soft wheat kernels are usually plumper and have a larger endosperm - and appear more transparant than hard wheat. The commercial uses for flour from soft wheat is often used for crackers, cookies, cakes, doughnuts, pancakes, waffles, muffins, soft noodles, ice cream cones, flaked breakfast cereals, granola, soup thickeners, gravy thickeners and wheat germ (according to one source). Strong wheats are generally in the hard wheat variety, small and wrinkled in appearance with a small endosperm, and the dominate protein in the gluten group are glutenins - so they are best used for yeast breads. Weak wheats have a deficiency of glutenins - but can also be milled from hard wheat varieties. So it's not just the amount of protein, but the type of protein in the flour. Weak flours can be milled from hard wheat varieties, and this happens around here to the wheat crop when we have too much rain during the growing season. This is why you don't see wheat being irrigated like you do corn. Too much moisture is a bad thing for producing high-gluten, high-protein wheat that makes great bread. To add to the confusion, there is also durum wheat - which has the highest amount of protein of all wheat varieties, but the dominant protein in the gluten group are gliadins - which is what you want for making pasta, and generally what durum wheat is used for. You can find a mix of strong and weak wheat in most fields. If there is an area shaded by trees, or a low-lying area where water tends to pool, the protein in the wheat in those areas will tend to be "weak" (lacking quality gluten levels) due to the growing conditions. FYI - White (bleached and unbleached) bread flour is milled from medium-strength wheats. Too much gluten in flour will make your bread tough and it takes a LOT longer to knead and develop the gluten. That's why adding a lot of vital wheat gluten to recipes isn't a good thing - unless you like rubbery bread. Another interesting point, all wheat used for making flour were soft wheat varieties until the mid- to late-1800's with the advent of hard wheat varieties. Especially Turkey Red Wheat, which became the source of many new varieties of hard wheat we grow today. Turkey Red was hand-picked and carried to Kansas in 1874 by Mennonites from Crimea, Russia. Turkey Red wheat once covered over 90 percent of wheat acreage in the Great Plains - now it's considered an heirloom wheat variety and I've only seen it entered at the Kansas State Fair as an heirloom variety. It's still available, if you know who to ask, but you probably won't like the bitter-tasting flour it produces due to the dark bran color. It has three genes that determine bran color, while most of today's varieties of red wheat only have 1 or 2 genes for bran color. Contrast that to white wheat that is the "albino" of wheat, which has none of the genes that determine bran color. -Grainlady

For the small amount of cake flour called for in this recipe, it probably won't make much difference and I wouldn't worry about it or alter the amount (more about that below). If you keep one of the Southern All-Purpose flours around for making biscuits and quick breads (White Lily, Martha White, Gladiola or Red Band which have 7.5-9.5% protein) it would make an excellent substitute (cup for cup) because it has close to the same amount of protein as cake flour (7.5-8.5%). People who make lots of quick breads and cake would get better results if they DID use a Southern All-Purpose flour instead of National Brands and Northern Brands of all-purpose flour which have more gluten/protein in them. Southern All-Purpose flours have less gluten than Northern All-purpose (Robin Hood, Hecker's and King Arthur 11-13%) and National Brands of All-purpose flour (Gold Medal & Pillsbury 10-12%). It's all about the gluten development... The more gluten there is to develop in the flour, the tougher the cake will be. But once again, there's not enough cake flour in the recipe to worry about. Hendricus gave the #1 advise when substituting all-purpose flour for cake flour - less mixing. The more you mix, the more the gluten develops into long strands. The more gluten you develop during mixing the harder it is for the leavening gases to escape. They literally have to "drill" their way through the long gluten strands. The leavening gases leave narrow holes that run from the bottom to the top of the cake (or quick bread). Tunnels are the hallmark of overmixing and over-developing the gluten. There's not enough cake flour involved in the recipe to alter the amount of the flour. The reason for reducing the amount of all-purpose flour when you use it instead of cake flour is because gluten absorbs a lot of hydration and the cake can be drier because of the added gluten found in all-purpose flour. A reduction of the amount of all-purpose when substituting it for cake flour will reduce the total amount of gluten -- a little. There's a third way to reduce gluten - add more fat. Fat coats the gluten so that it doesn't have as much contact with the hydration, so it only develops into short strands. This is a common method used when people want a more tender pastry crust and are using one of the higher-gluten (higher protein content) Northern all-purpose flours. After the flour lesson, I wouldn't worry about using all-purpose instead of cake flour. -Grainlady

If you can get King Arthur flour, that works better than anything else. Buttermilk Biscuits 2 1/2 cups self rising flour (I use King Arthur) 1 teaspoon sugar 1/2 cup PLAIN Crisco (not butter) 1 cup whole milk buttermilk Preheat oven to 425*. Cut Crisco into flour with a pastry cutter or fork until well mixed. Add buttermilk and stir. Turn out onto floured surface and pat out, turn in half, flip, pat out, and turn bottom half over. Pat out and cut with biscuit cutter. Place in pan sprayed with Pam. Reform leftover dough and cut rest of biscuits. I form the last biscuit by hand. You can do them all by hand if no cutter. Bake about 10 to 15 minutes. 1. You can cut recipe in half. You can also take out of oven after they are just done, but not brown, and freeze after they are cool. 2. To use regular flour, 2 1/2 cup plain flour, 2 tablespoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt. 3. We like to butter our biscuits after they are cooked and do not like butter in the dough. If you want butter in the dough, use 1/2 cup unsalted butter, omit Crisco. 4. The lard you get in the grocery stores now is not the same as old fashioned lard. If you have a source for real fresh lard, you can use 1/2 cup lard instead of Crisco or butter. 5. Keep your hands well floured and also dust a small amount on top of dough and under dough as you turn. Keep a light hand, you are not kneading yeast dough. Dust the cutter with flour, also. The first biscuits after I got married in 1970, you could of used for hockey pucks, lol. He ate them anyway!