Why I read Cook's Illustrated

[prusik]

In a Kitchen Note called "Humidity and Flour", they show skepticism to the view that an extremely humid or extremely dry day makes a noticeable difference to flour. However, since this is Cook's Illustrated, we get the following, lovely sentence:

"We constructed a sealed, humidity-controlled chamber in which we could simulate various types of weather."

Anyway, they showed that one extreme day doesn't make a difference. Prolonged exposure may, so they suggest storing flour in an airtight container. (This is a good thing to do anyway, IMHO.)

The chamber they built was probably more make-shift than the chamber I'm imagining. But I love the idea that they did it at all.