Fun and Fearless Adventures at King Arthur Flour Company

This past weekend, I was lucky enough to attend a fabulous Boston blogger event that crossed several state lines.  My friend Megan organized a wonderful overnight trip to visit the King Arthur Flour Company in Norwich, Vermont.

We arrived at King Arthur Flour shortly before noon and it was a beautiful day.

Living in the city only makes me appreciate views like this even more...

We headed inside the Baker's Store and also did a little browsing.

We were all planning on shopping afterwards but we couldn't help but take a peek beforehand.

Baking bread - past and present.

I already have two aprons but these aprons were seriously tempting!

A stand mixer will definitely make it onto our wedding registry!

Pickles and preserves - yum!

We headed upstairs where we got to learn a lot of interesting things about King Arthur Flour Company.  To be honest, I didn't know a lot about King Arthur Flour and I was surprised to learn that:

• King Arthur Flour Company is America's oldest flour company.  It started in 1790 in Boston.
• Since 1996, King Arthur Flour is 100% employee-owned, which is a principle I wholeheartedly support.
• King Arthur Flour provides travelling educations programs but the one that I found most interesting is their Life Skills Bread Baking Program which teaches kids in schools to bake bread and encourages them to bake two loaves - one for their family and another as a donation to a community program (like a soup kitchen or food pantry).

We learned all of this great information over lunch, that King Arthur Flour graciously provided for us.  This included an assortment of sandwiches and fruit salad.

I seriously want one of these serving bowls.  I think it is adorable!

I opted for a tomato, mozzarella and basil sandwich on a crusty roll.

As I munched on my sandwich, I was interested to learn that King Arthur Flour has a great online presence.  You can find over 1,200 free recipes on their website.  And for inexperienced bakers like me, they have a baking hotline where you can ask questions via email, phone or live chat when you need some baking help.  I'm wondering if I should put this hotline on speed-dial?



Of course, you can't end a lunch at King Arthur Flour without some kind of baked good.  Since it was Megan's birthday earlier in the week, Alicia called ahead and asked if they could do something for Megan's birthday.  The folks at King Arthur Flour went all out and baked this beautiful birthday cake!

I don't even like chocolate cake but I couldn't resist trying a piece of this delicious cake!

With our bellies full, we headed downstairs to begin the second portion of our day at King Arthur Flour.

In addition to learning about King Arthur Flour, we had the opportunity to take a few baking classes there.  I must confess that I am not much of a baker.  To be honest, baking has always really intimidated me because it requires exact measurements, specific baking times and precise temperatures.  If you are a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that I am a lot more laid back about cooking in my kitchen.  I add ingredients by whim.  I stop cooking based on sight and smell.  I basically use recipes as guidelines but very rarely follow them closely.  Quite simply, baking is not my thing.

After this weekend, I definitely have a different perspective about baking and feel a lot more comfortable about baking.  I learned a lot and I'll be blogging about these different experiences in several different blog posts.

Until then, from the words of King Arthur Flour...

King Arthur Flour Company is located at 133 Route 5 South, Norwich, Vermont.