Even before I got my hands dirty with baking 
I already kept a steady supply of all-purpose flour in the kitchen. Flour is essential for making gravy and for binding ingredients together as when making meat balls.
Not always, but most often, I also have a supply of glutinous rice flour. It’s really the best variety of flour for making native delicacies like palitaw.
Why Pillsbury all-purpose flour? Because it’s cheaper than Gold Medal and because there seems to be no perceptible difference in quality between the two.
I have a friend, a true-blue baking afficionado, who told me once that there is a store in the public market here in Antipolo that sells commercial flour in bulk, cheaper and you can actually choose the quality. Like, you specify high-grade flour for baking cakes but a coarser kind will do for making bread. She should know — her family owns a bakery.
I haven’t tried going to the store she mentioned because she said they sold flour in bulk — I only buy two kilograms at most, five is max, and that lasts for several weeks. I’m still curious though since the store also sells other baking products and equipment. Perhaps, one of these days…
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