Is it a sign?

DThomasC

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I've been checking every grocery store and pharmacy that I enter since March for a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. Today, I found one in my local Wegmans. Actually, there were three bottles on the shelf, but I only took one.
 

AcornHouse

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Toilet paper has returned to being readily available here and yeast is now in stores more often than not.
I’m still covered whatever may come. At least as far as the yeast goes.

12C5EC9B-6B13-4EDB-B249-466883860BDE.jpeg
 

fronobulax

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and there is still a bunch of beer.

but we never had local shortages....

There is a nice brewery in walking distance. They aspire to be a a tavern or pub and not just a tap room. Local liquor laws have been changing but at the moment they are treated much like a restaurant. They had to close indoor seating but they were allowed to open for carry out. They did. While growlers were filled, they also started canning (no small feat given that their canner could fill two cans at a time and over a few weeks they sold thousands of cans). They can serve beer again to be consumed socially distant indoors or out on premises.. But month they were just selling cans and growlers set sales records for them. Running out of beer was not a problem for me :)
 

DThomasC

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Beer, wine, booze were never in shortage here. Well, maybe there have been temporary shortages of one brand or another, but always enough to choose from. Toilet paper was unavailable for a couple of weeks. After that I saw plenty of it on the shelves. Don't know about yeast... was there a shortage due to people doing more baking at home?

But isopropyl alcohol. I hadn't seen a bottle in months.
 

fronobulax

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was there a shortage due to people doing more baking at home?

The story was people were baking out of boredom and so yeast was hard to get.

That might also have been a supply chain issue since no home brewers I heard from complained about a shortage. Apparently if you went to a restaurant of bakery and not a grocery story, you could get some as well. But I mention it because it was an unexpected shortage coming from a region where the Weather Person says the "S" word and suddenly cars are being abandoned in the street and bread, milk and toilet paper are gone from the shelves. If the S word is accompanied by "x inches" and X is greater than 3 shovels of any type seem to disappear.

In the old days I thought of this as panic'd buying but maybe it is just good "just in time" logistics?
 

HeyMikey

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and there is still a bunch of beer.

Funny, I just got a notice today from a large liquor store in the area that they’re expecting a beer shortage by July 4th from a number of larger brands. Supposedly Covid shutdowns have caught up and warehouse stock is too low for the upcoming holiday.
 

Opsimath

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I’m still covered whatever may come. At least as far as the yeast goes.

12C5EC9B-6B13-4EDB-B249-466883860BDE.jpeg
Do you bake? About a year or two ago I waded into bread territory. I wasted a lot of flour before I got the hang of it and now I can bake bread to eat, not to use for building houses.

As far as signs, my last trip to the grocery store netted a refill-sized bottle of liquid antibacterial soap. Still on the lookout for disinfectant wipes, especially the kind with a scrubby side. Great for cleaning up after pets, and I'm on my last canister!!
 

AcornHouse

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Do you bake? About a year or two ago I waded into bread territory. I wasted a lot of flour before I got the hang of it and now I can bake bread to eat, not to use for building houses.
Yes, I’ve been baking breads for a long time. I got typecast so I was always the one designated to do breads for the Dept. X-mas dinners. The hard part was having to work with instant yeast, which was all you could get (when you could) when this started. I was used to traditional methods. But I found the no-knead recipes that used only 1/4 teaspoon of instant yeast could yield some very nice results, once I got the hang of dealing with that type of high hydration dough.

(Insert obligatory bread pic here)

32D40F4B-3C79-4EFE-9D4E-844DA85D5C50.jpeg
 

Opsimath

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Yes, I’ve been baking breads for a long time. I got typecast so I was always the one designated to do breads for the Dept. X-mas dinners. The hard part was having to work with instant yeast, which was all you could get (when you could) when this started. I was used to traditional methods. But I found the no-knead recipes that used only 1/4 teaspoon of instant yeast could yield some very nice results, once I got the hang of dealing with that type of high hydration dough.

(Insert obligatory bread pic here)

32D40F4B-3C79-4EFE-9D4E-844DA85D5C50.jpeg
Well, looking at that bread it's no wonder you are typecast as the bring the bread guy! Beautiful loaves.

I generally do all my bread as an almost no-knead, however, I mix - by hand - very slowly for about 20 minutes. This was a tip in one of the bread books I read and it seems to work fine, although when I make dinner rolls there is some shaping so the dough gets worked a little more then. I do a folding method and then round them up into little dough balls to rise before going into the oven.

My first venture into bread by hand (I'm a bread machine user from way back, but I don't know if that counts) was a sourdough using a levain with captured wild yeast, no commercial yeast. Results were edible but dismal. I put that on the back burner for a while and went for simpler recipes and eventually got those coming out pretty well. I haven't tried the 1/4 tsp recipes yet, but plan to, and eventually may try sourdough with wild yeast again now that I almost know what I'm doing.

So you don't use instant yeast. What do you use and where do you get it? - when it's on the shelves. The yeast in your picture was not familiar to me. I've only ever seen what's in the grocery store, which I buy in the jars, which would probably be considered in bulk as compared to the little packets.
 

AcornHouse

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The SAF brand is French, although they are partners with Red Star now, so the origin may be mixed. It is traditionally a commercial brand, but can be found at online sources: King Arthur Flour and, of course, Amazon. I don’t know how readily available it is in stores. Fancy schmancy bakers prefer it. It’s my first time using it (I would get the jars from the supermarket, too.), but I am impressed.

EDIT: Just checked my package; it say “manufactured in Wisconsin” but also “product of Mexico”. I’m guessing Wisconsin is the Red Star half of the corporation and they have a Mexico plant to actually make the stuff.
 
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