Posted on: Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Brand of flour has a cult following

By Elizabeth Weise
USA Today

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Visions of sugar plums may dance in our heads at Christmas time, but many Americans are lucky if they manage a pan of slice-and-bake cookies from the supermarket before the full rush of the holidays is upon them.

But you wouldn't want to admit that to the ladies (and increasing numbers of gentlemen) who are such fans of a 214-year-old flour formula that they order 25-pound bags of it to be shipped by mail when they can't get it locally, and travel hundreds of miles to meet — and bake with — other devotees.

On this raw winter's morning in a business hotel near the Ann Arbor airport, 314 of them have gathered in the ballroom to learn the secrets of holiday sweet bread baking: poppy stollen, Swedish almond braid and the rarely attempted six-stranded braid.

The object of their passion is the signature product of the oldest flour company in America, King Arthur Flour, founded in 1790 and based in Norwich, Vt. Milled to exacting specifications, it has a higher protein content than most all-purpose flours, and it stays consistent bag-to-bag. That makes it a favorite of many serious home bakers.

Baking buddies Michelle Gately and Lori Heyring of Ann Arbor have been using it for more than a decade, since before it had national distribution and they had to have it shipped out UPS. Today it's available in about half the markets nationwide (including some Hawai'i Safeway stores). Each year King Arthur offers two sets of free baking classes around the country, one in the spring and another heading into the holiday baking season. Both sell out completely.

Michael Jubinsky, a retired nuclear-submarine safety engineer, has been teaching King Arthur classes for 25 years. At noon sharp, he starts off the class by joking: "Yeast is a single-celled life form. Remember, you're smarter than it is!"

As he waits for his starter sponge to rise, he regales the class with a litany of common baking mistakes. Like scooping flour from the bag rather than sprinkling it into the cup. "A cup of flour weighs 4.2 ounces. But if you really scoop hard, you can end up with as much as 5.5 ounces of flour. So by the time you add your four cups of flour, you've actually added as much as five. And you know what that means?"

He leans out, waiting for the crowd to answer.

"Dry bread!" they roar back.

As he kneads he expounds on the virtues of King Arthur flour, which is milled from hard red winter wheat. At 11.7 percent protein, it's at the high end of all-purpose flours.

To get a good bread you need a flour with at least 11 percent protein, says C.E. Walker, a professor of bakery science at Kansas State University. "Then there's enough protein present to form a uniform gluten film to hold the starch granules and the gas bubbles in place to form a nice, light bread."

That precision doesn't come cheap. A 5-pound bag of King Arthur costs a bit more than store-brand all-purpose flour.

Home bakers typically buy all-purpose flour, generally the store brand, unless they bake year-round, says Sharon Davis of the Home Baking Association.

That can yield uneven results, as store-brand all-purpose flours can vary up to two percentage points in protein content.

Christa Geraghty of Westland, Mich., swears by the consistency she gets using King Arthur flour. With five kids, she buys it in 25-pound bags when she can. "I bake pretty much every day," she says.

"We have a sign in the kitchen that says 'Fresh Bread Daily,'" says husband Jack, who swoons over her cinnamon rolls and doesn't bake himself.

That used to be true of most of the men who came to the baking classes, says Jubinsky. There would be three or four, sitting with their arms folded. "They were the designated drivers and obviously there against their will."

Today the audience has gone from 98 percent women overall to up to 50 percent men in the artisan bread class.

Jubinsky says men's interest grew with the arrival of the bread machine. "For a guy it's a perfect thing — it's a power tool you can use in the kitchen."

To find out more about King Arthur Flour, call (800) 827-6836; or see www.kingarthurflour.com.