King Arthur Flour

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Prepare to drool. I loved writing my last two posts, making pizza and crackers during our visit to King Arthur Flour this past weekend, but I could not wait to share with you the decadent chocolate, whole grain (!) delights that we learned to make. Brownies from scratch. Now, we all know I have a huge interest in food, but I have never actually made brownies that did not come from a box. I had no idea how easy brownies from scratch were! I really have been in awe of people who made these things over the year, and I can not wait to spend the winter holed up in my house baking.

Once again, Susan broke the process into a couple of demos and hands-on time at our work stations. We started by melting a half pound of butter and two cups of brown sugar into a caramel-like substance, then adding the cocoa powder, flour, eggs, and other ingredients. While these ARE whole grain, they aren’t health food. Still, it’s nice to add a little bit of nutrition into a treat!

making brownies from scratch making brownies from scratch
making brownies from scratch Oh the evolution of brown sugar and 1/2 pound of butter. We learned that you want to measure brown sugar differently than flour. You actually WANT to pack the sugar in so tightly that it holds its shape when dumped out of the cup.
Dutch process cocoa has an alkaline agent added to it and gives it a smooth, milder flavor. Look at that color!
Dutch process cocoa making brownies from scratch
chocolate chip brownies

As though creating our own deliciousness was not enough, we were invited to King Arthur’s other baking classroom where a class with visiting baker En-Ming Hsu was just finishing up. We thought we were just going to look at and photograph these beauties, but we got to EAT them too.

palmiers Sarah Bernhardts macarons
opera cake Banana gems

I am more confident with my baking skills, but I am not sure I will ever be able to create something this beautiful.

I have to say, my brownies didn’t look too shabby.

 

brownies from scratch

Susan instructed us to wait until the next day to eat them as the bran taste would be more evident the first day. I can’t believe it, but we were good bloggers and actually didn’t eat any of the brownies while in VT! Since I have gotten home. . . a completely different story. They are quite delicious!

If you are a baker, what is your favorite thing to bake? Do you dream of baking something super complicated?

If you don’t bake, what’s your favorite baked good to eat?

Tags: baking, brownies, chocolate, King Arthur Flour

Whole grains are becoming more and more widely used in home baking, and since I love whole grains and most of my (failed) baking attempts have involved whole what flour, I was excited that our King Arthur Flour experience included a class on baking with whole grains. Before I get down to the baking part of the post, and since it is Whole Grains Month, I am pleased to announce that the winner of The Oldways Table is Megan from the blog Stetted! Megan please email me with your contact info so I can send your prize.

Our second baking adventure at King Arthur was making multi-seed crackerbread. You can get the recipe here, and it is beyond easy. I am looking forward to homemade crackers and cheese!

Just as with the pizza dough, we watched Susan do a demo of making the cracker dough, then set out in pairs to make our own.

multi-seed crackerbread recipe
The recipe for multi-seed crackerbread is incredibly simple and versatile as it allows each baker to add her own seeds and herbs for completely personalized crackers 
cracker bread ingredients
Indulge Inspire Imbibe
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Alicia and Megan were partners for the day. Here they are hard at work making cracker dough.image
Michelle flours the work table while Bridget makes the dough.
Daisy and I were partners for the crackerbread. We made a good team!image
And here we have Katie and Jen. How happy does everyone look?!  

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Elina and Kerstin scraping their cracker dough out of the bowl 

Once we had made our cracker dough, we went back up to the demo space so Susan could show us how to roll it out and add the toppings. We had so many fun options available to us, including fresh herbs from the King Arthur garden.

King Arthur baking class

It is so funny to be with a group of bloggers. Someone is always taking a photo!

Boston bloggers

I loved making the crackers because, in addition to being so simple, they allow you to get creative with the variety of seeds, herbs, and flavorings. I want to make curry crackers and cinnamon crackers, and I think I actually have all of the ingredients at home!

rosemary and thyme seeds and salt

After we watched the demo on how to finish our crackers, we chose our toppings and returned to our work spaces to cut and roll out the dough.

herbes de provence cracker dough

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cracker dough homemade crackers

In a few short minutes, we had ready-to-bake crackers! And we got to see the big King Arthur oven. It is very deep and has multiple levels. The doors are small and open inward so that the heat of the oven is preserved. A long stretcher-like conveyor belt is used to quickly push in pans. It was so neat to see how they can bake so many things at once.

King Arthur Flour oven  

Once our crackers were in the oven, we had a little snack (fresh made bread and butter, yum!) and then moved on to our next whole grain baking task. . . brownies! You will want to see these photos and to use this recipe, just trust me on this one, and I will be posting it tomorrow.

I am playing around with photo layouts for big events like our day at King Arthur. I have lots of work to do on them still, but do you prefer big single photos to the table with photos and captions? Does a mix of both look weird? I am hoping to make some blog improvements over the next couple of months, and feedback is welcome!

Tags: baking, crackers, Food, King Arthur Flour, whole grains

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