I always love this time of year as it gets colder outside and I just want to stay inside and create memories with my kids baking cookies, rolls or a loaf of warm bread and making lots and lots of soup. This year takes on a whole new excitement though as my daughter is progressing through her journey of seeing a food allergy specialist and has now been cleared to eat egg. We have been on this journey for two years now and this was one of the big moments we have been waiting for!

We have done really well making eggless recipes for all the various baked goods and cookies you can think of, but I couldn’t wait to make special family recipes and other favorite recipes without having to modify. This adorable girl couldn’t wait to try regular brownies (that is one recipe that I could not get to taste quite right without eggs--so this is huge!) She LOVED them!

As you gather the necessary ingredients for baking this season and see all the brands of flour on the shelves at the grocery store--is there a particular one you always choose? Recently, I have learned a lot of cool things about The King Arthur Flour brand (which is now called The King Arthur Baking Company) that I wanted to share with you today. They are an American brand, in fact one of the oldest American companies ever--who stand behind some really cool things that might make you a King Arthur brand supporter forever.

King Arthur Flour was founded in 1790 in Boston, Massachusetts by merchant Henry Wood as an import business, shipping flour from England to America. The company then began milling their own flour locally in 1825 and soon stopped importing from overseas. The name that we all know with the logo of the knight on a horse came from Henry Wood being so inspired after watching a performance of the musical The Knights of the Round Table, that he and his partners named their company after those Arthurian values they saw: purity, loyalty, honesty, superior strength, and a dedication to a higher purpose.

Like I mentioned, they changed their name this year in 2020 to The King Arthur Baking Company to better reflect their vast variety of products and services including baking equipment, ingredients, baking mixes, and cookbooks.

A couple other things that make them different than other brands are that all of their flours are unbleached. This includes their cake flour--they are the only ones on the market that have an unbleached cake flour. Also, they never add bromate to their flour. Their company motto is “never bleached--never bromated”. On their website it says that some studies have linked bromate, a dough-stiffening chemical that reduces mixing time, to cancer.

King Arthur is an employee-owned Certified B Corporation--which means they have committed to a set of rigorous ethical and environmental standards. You can see this in action with their initiatives like 100 percent recyclable flour bags, offering its Bake for Good education program to more than 200 schools per year, and providing solar-powered charging stations for electric vehicles.

At King Arthur, they are changing with the times and are the leaders of gluten-free flour sales, with a whopping one-fifth of all their flour sales being gluten-free. 

They have very active social media accounts--which have become more busy this year with everyone being at home baking so much more. Their head baker Martin Phillip has posted a lot of videos at home baking with his kids that are very fun that you can check out on the @kingarthurbaking Instagram account. We’ve all heard how popular it has been this year for everyone to try their hand at making sourdough bread, so they have a lot of tips and tricks for sourdough bread on there as well.

They also have a baking hotline you can call anytime if your bread falls flat or your cookies crumbled--they are there for you to answer any and all of your baking questions via telephone (855-371-2253), email or live chatting online.

Well, I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit more today about this neat American baking company that sets them apart from the rest. I hope you also have a wonderful season of cooler temperatures and delicious, wam baked goods and cookies that never crumble. If they do, you know who to call ;)