Best Places to Buy Baking Essentials
Since corona is making professional cooks and bakers out of all of us, we all need constant stream of supplies. Unfortunately constant stream of supplies is not always available. Not only we are continuing to sit at home and venture to grocery stores as little as we can, when we do, some staple products are simply gone. Thank you those same people who bought out all toilet paper a month ago!
Last time I went to Whole Foodsand Publix to buy products that I never gave a second thought to before, were nowhere to be found. Publix was all but out of every brand of flour and sugar. Whole Foods didn’t have any eggs.
Yeast hasn’t been seen in stores for a long time. Thankfully I have a big supply of baking soda, thanks to my husband’s stock of kitchen grade baking soda for pool cleaning.
Most stores also have salt, milk, oil, and extracts with flavorings.
Due to my disappointment of not finding the main baking ingredients, I decided to take matters in my own hands and look around online, without leaving home and dealing with shopping while wearing face masks and gloves. And there are quite a few options for getting baking and cooking essential products online.
Amazonused to be my go-to place for pretty much everything, except groceries.Yes, they deliver groceries to your home, but I always enjoyed getting my apples myself. This, however, might change in the future as we are getting used to get groceries delivered. Many experts say that once the pandemic is over, we will never shop the way we used to in the past. That remains to be seen.
Current Amazonis not what I like. They raise prices to insane heights and take their sweet time delivering. I understood that for the first two weeks when they experienced unprecedented demand, but now, 6 weeks later they still can’t catch up. When my time to renew Prime membershipcomes along, I will think if I want to do that.
One example that speaks volumes to me – Gold Standard All-Purpose Flour 5-lbs pack is not found at Publix, is $25 at Amazonwith a week delivery, and $3.65 at Target, delivered in 2 days.
Hell yeah, I will go with Target, and I went! Before all of this, Target has been my favorite place for kids’ clothes and towels, but I will have to include groceries in the future, even if I think that their produce department is too small.Targetis also not very big on organic products, it doesn’t have its own bakery or deli, but they sure have flour and plenty of it. And yes, Target currently has eggs, sugar, and one type of yeast. This retailer is not a place for organic green banana flour, but you will find a few kinds of organic gluten-free flourif that’s what you need.
Amazon, of course, has all kinds of organic, natural, kosher, gluten-free, GMO-free, paleo, keto, and other specific supplies for dietary baking. But as I said before, you will pay many times over normal price and will probably have to wait way more than two days.
iHerb is my new obsession for everything healthy.Besides thousands of vitamins and supplements, this retailer has a nice section for baking supplies. You can expect the highest quality flour, all 210 types of it and baking mixes. There is everything, from coconut, almond, brown rice, and green banana flourto organic starchesand gluten-free pancakes mixes. And that’s just flours.
iHerb also has oils, teas, spices, nutsand seeds, honey, andbutterand spreads. You won’t find your milk, buttermilk, and eggs here, so it’s not quite one-stop-shop, but what iHerb carries, they will deliver in a couple days and won’t rip you off. The site offers many savings opportunities as well, from flash deals to coupons and sales.
Vitacost is one other place that I like for various healthy products. I usually go there to look for vitamins and always find them cheaper than Amazon, but about the same price as iHerb. The selection of all healthy things is similar to iHerb as well. When it comes to baking essentials, Vitacost has 123 different flours and mixes, various baking chocolate, egg substitutes, bread crumbs, flavorings and extracts, frostings, evaporated milk, and yeast. All the products that Vitacostcarries are organic, natural, and high quality. So while you won’t find milk and eggs here, you can easily get organic evaporated milk and all natural egg substitutes. I can really say the same thing about iHerb as well and can buy the same items there too.
Vitacost, like iHerb, offers multiple coupons and free shipping deals with Vitacost orders over $49+. iHerb charges $2 flat shipping fee for purchases of $25 and above.
All in all, I suggest getting organic eggs and milk at your grocery store, but leaving all other baking supplies and necessities to iHerb and Vitacost. You will get high quality products, good prices, and speedy delivery with both of those healthy food retailers.