Where have all the flours gone?

New Yorker staff writer Bill Buford recounts in a recent issue of that magazine his experience as an apprentice at a bakery in Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France. At one point he asks his mentor for the secret to good bread. "Good bread comes from good flour," he replies. "It's the flour." Buford inquires further, having expected the answer to be the yeast or the slowness of the rise or a high speed mixer, "The flour?" "Oui," comes the answer. I thought flour is flour is flour, Buford muses to himself, asking once again, "The flour?" The final answer is once again, "Oui. The flour."

That answer is easy enough to accept. Surely every baker would identify the ingredient as important to the very structure of the finished product, especially, as when baking bread, you are looking to develop gluten.

No wonder then that during these times when people are electing to stay at home (even Martha Stewart says she is "cooped up" in one of her spacious houses) they're doing more cooking, particularly baking and especially comfort foods, and as a consequence flour is in limited supply, at least for the time being. Things have gotten so bad in Great Britain that Facebook there has been flooded with "flour shaming" posts condemning people for profligate consumption of the white stuff.

To compound matters, yeast is also getting scarce, so if you're a bread baker you may be out of luck, though it should be noted that if you have the flour you can make a credible soda bread that rivals yeast-risen versions. (If you don't believe me, try the recipe for Irish soda bread in my book, still available in fine book stores, on Amazon, and by appointment from the trunk of my car.)

But without flour there's not much you can do. In my experience, most substitutes, like almond flour or oat flour or banana flour (there really is such a thing) just don't stack up. Some are useful if you want to add texture to a baked good, as Donna Hay, Australia's answer to Martha Stewart, does with almond flour in her splendid pear upside-down cake. Others, however, leave something to be desired. Take oat flour, which you can grind yourself from old-fashioned oats in a blender. It's gluten free, so not much good by itself in bread.

Peanut butter, raisins, chocolate, and oatmeal -- but not a trace of flour -- are the main ingredients in a terrific cookie that's the perfect comfort food if you're facing a flour shortage.Submitted by Tom Harte

Searching for a substitute makes you appreciate why good old wheat flour has been a staple food for millions for, some say, as long as 30,000 years. The grist mill even predates the invention of the wheel. In all that time cooks have not found the perfect replacement for flour.

So when you are running low on flour, rather than experimenting with stand-ins, which is likely to result in some measure of disappointment, I recommend merely looking for recipes that don't require it.

With respect to comfort foods, when it comes to cakes, the obvious example is the flourless chocolate torte, now practically a cliche. Said to have been invented by celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongericheten, its roots can be traced back 100 years to an Italian cake developed by accident. (You can find a good recipe, ironically, at the King Arthur Flour website.)

But when it comes to that ultimate comfort food, a warm cookie, leaving the flour out of a recipe is risky. Happily, there is a cookie which offers an alternative. Tracing its heritage to a 1925 treatise by George Washington Carver, its secret ingredient is peanut butter. Properly doctored it can achieve gourmet status without the need for any flour power.

No Flour-No Problem Cookies

Even if you have a 25 pound bag of flour in the cupboard, you'll want to make this recipe, adapted from Taste of Home, again and again.

• 2/3 cup butter
• 1-1/4 cups brown sugar
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1-1/2 cups peanut butter
• 6 cups old-fashioned oats
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1-1/2 cups raisins
• 2 cups chocolate chips

Melt butter. Stir in sugars, eggs, and peanut butter until blended. Stir in oats, baking soda, raisins, and chocolate chips. Drop 3-tablespoon portions onto parchment paper lined cookie sheet, flatten slightly, and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.