I have been getting my supplies at the grocery store, but I know I am paying a premium price for superfine sugar and cake flour (in particular) by doing that. And I make a lot of trips to the store!
Do any of you buy cake flour, superfine sugar, cocoa or any other dry ingredident in bulk?

If you buy via mail order, do you have a source you recommend?

I know Rose recommends suippliers for specialty items and equipment but I know where to locate everything I need in regular stores at this point. I am just hoping to buy more at a time to get a better price and make less trips.

Just checking….I did search the forums and blogs, but probably didn’t hit on the right keyword if this has been discussed before.

Happy Friday!
R

When I lived in the States I bought a lot of my supplies for King Arthur Flour.  They have many bulk items and things that are hard to find in the supermarket.  The link is: http://shop.bakerscatalogue.com/items/. I don’t know if you are near a Whole Foods but they used to stock KA Flour in 10lb bags and had big chunks (1 - 2lbs) of Callebaut coverture and all sorts of other goodies.  I wish I was close to one now!  Hope this helps. 
Annie

Hi Rachel - did you know you can make your own superfine sugar by running standard granular sugar in the food processor?

as in the cb you can order swan cake flour from luzziane.com

i don’t use superfine sugar or cake flour, but i do purchase regular sugar and flour at costco. it is actually cheaper than our rest supply. i get my butter at smart and final for small batches and local rest supply for 30 lbs or more. worht checking the rest supply in your area.

jen

Thanks to all of you for your help!
I went to the restaurant supply store today to pick up an Ateco 612 cake decorating turntable before I make a wedding cake for next Saturday.
I think Costco might be the way to go for everything but the cake flour (I can order that from the site), and then I will just need to make batches of superfine myself (using the food processor) as Patrincia suggested.

Rachel - you are going to love that turntable so much!  I purchase a huge number of my cake ingredients at Costco too.  I buy Softasilk cake flour at Wal-mart - I know they turn over rate is high because I think I’m the one who buys it all .

I wish the Wal-Mart stores here carried Softasilk flour. I have to go to a specialty store to buy it.

I can only find it in the Super WMs that have a full grocery section.  Like every other flour on the market, the price has gone up quite a bit, but it’s still pretty affordable at 2.50 for a 2 lb. box (32 oz).

Patrinicia- I wanted to let you know that I ended up grinding my own superfine sugar last night and it came out very well! I couldn’t find superfine sugar in my shopping last weekend but there was a great deal on a huge bag of regular C&H;granulated sugar at Smart & Final.

Since I had to re-bake my 12” layers for the wedding cake tomorrow (UGH!) I ended up needing to dip into that bag. (I updated the other thread about that. ) Thanks again for the reminder!!

Also, I re-read in the cake bible that you can order a case of Softasilk (12 boxes?) at a discount.

So glad it worked out for you - I looked into purchasing Softasilk by the case once, but it’s actually cheaper for me to purchase individual boxes at Super Wal-Mart.

Look in the yellow pages for food service distributors such as Sysco, Perkins, Puratos.  They will normally have minimums (dollar amounts or piece counts) and you can buy sugar, butter, flour, eggs, etc at food service prices which are a little cheaper in some cases than the warehouse stores.