Hey y'all,
This is a discussion of the uses of flour items.
Currently, there is only one flour item, rye flour, which lasts 5 hours, weighs 0.5u and costs 2 trade credit. You can buy it from traders or craft it from 1u valueless rye bulb drops using 0.5 hammering, which both makes storing the rye bulbs more compact, and gives you discovered crafting recipe. The bulbs 30 minute decay time isn't worth attempting to maximize around. the extra space isn't worth squeezing an extra 30 minutes over an already overkill 5 hour decay time.
There are 3 recipes you can make with them. I think it is worth it to craft all of them at least once, because they each give you at least 20 hunger solving on top of the mood and int exp boost of a new recipe.
Each recipe takes one rye flour to make and 1 heatsource. I will be assuming that you eat them all at once to keep this somewhat short, and only noting how long it takes to lose a bite.
Starting with Bread because it is the simplest.
It costs 150 water quality to make and you get 0.75u, 8 trade value item. If you use clean water that's 13.5 quenching you forgo to make it.
The bread itself gives you 6 hydration and 27 filling, so that's really only 7.5 hydration for 27 hunger, IF you use the most efficent source of water quality. .
i find it really useful to use less efficent sources of water quality, mostly a mix of hell mixture mini-barrels (using dirty water for example) and chocolate milk/alcohol.
It takes at least 1 hour to lose a bite of bread, and you gain 0.51 kg directly eating it
Trade value wise, you are generally gives up 2 for the flour and 2 for the water quality for net 4, which generally pays for the cost of the campfire, while not requiring fluid containers or temporary bottle management to use.
Next is Pancakes
Pancakes costs 100 water quality and 100ml tree sap to make a 0.8u 12 value item. using clean water, that's 13 hydration and 4.5 hunger given up to make it, as well as 0.17 kg weight. and about 0.8 sickness and 0.5 mood
Pancakes give you 30 hunger and 3.75 mood, 4.5 sickness, and 1.23 kg weight in 3 bites, making this easily twice as fattening as bread, but it takes about have an hour to lose a bite.
Pancakes are ... hard to set-up, but you just need to get lucky with a mini barrel or be in layer 5 to have roughly the same set-up cost as bread.
Not as good long term storage of hunger as bread, but a bit better at producing trade value, as tree sap and clean water are 15 and 14 trade value respectively, so the fluid bit of the recipes costs about 3 vs bread's 2, but you get an extra 4 trade value.
Next is Nutrint Bar,
This requires no water but 25 fat quality and durability 50% produce to produce a 0.5u 10 value item.
This gives you 37.5 hunger and 0.406 across 3 bites that don't decay, ever, making this the best storage of pure hunger satisfying in the game at not much weight gain.
Unlike water and tree sap, the food/drink parts of a bar craft are not ... particularly easily stored and consumed. You aren't forgoing 150 to 200 ml of perfectly drinkable fluids, but like 0.25u or 25 ml in fat worth of somewhat sickening and/or upsetting meat items, and using produce that is either somewhat dangerous to eat (all custom produce besides geofruit) or decays really fast (geofruit).
Which makes it arguably the best flour use in terms of storing hunger, but can be somewhat finicky to set-up, given produce limits.
Looking this over I think the key takeaway is that rye flour is worth considering as a 20+ hunger 0.5u item that doesn't really decay edible (5 hours is overkill) that requires some finessing to actually eat, and gives you access to 3 recipes for mood and int exp. Bread is the easiest and decently long lasting, while the pancakes is the mood and weight option that is medium long lasting that needs a harder to source liquid, and the nutrient bar is the best in class hunger solution that actually requires a decent amount of set-up (meat/produce is somewhat bulky and can't be processed into less bulky stuff without a heatsource, and fat shouldn't be stored in your drinking fluids.)
Note
The game engine could easily support a bag of flour type item with more than 1 flour quality, but I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't happen in the Nov 9 out of demo/EA/now a full game release
