King Arthur Flour and Home-made Bagels!

After my trapeze class on Saturday, we headed to the King Arthur Flour Flagship Store in Norwich, Vermont. My Step-Mom and Sister went over the winter after a ski meet and have been raving about it since. 

It is pretty amazing, especially for someone who likes to cook as much as I do! You can watch their bakers in action in their huge state-of-the-art bakery, get a snack at the cafe, take a cooking class, and browse their awesome store. Unfortunately the cooking classes were sold out for the day (I would have LOVED to take the Petite Pastries class!). But the store was more than worth the trip. They had pretty much everything a baker could ever need. 

I was too busy shopping to take any of my own pictures, so I "borrowed" one from their website

I could have easily spent hundreds of dollars there, but I tried to control myself and just get a few things that were unique and not available other places.  The first was a dough improver which helps makes dough easier to roll out. I make grilled pizza a lot and one of the secrets to a great pizza is getting the dough really thin. I frequently feel like I am fighting with my dough and get really frustrated because it keeps shrinking back as I try to roll it out. Problem solved!!

The next thing is Sir Lancelot Flour. This is a high protein, hard wheat flour. It is supposed to make extra chewy bread and work well when mixed with whole wheat flours. I try to use primarily whole wheat flours, but sometimes too much wheat flour leads to dense, heavy, not so yummy bread. Adding in some Sir Lancelot is supposed to fix this and make it tall and fluffy. Cool! 

The back of the Sir Lancelot had a recipe for home-made bagels, so I also grabbed a bag of Everything Bagel Topping. I love bagels and couldn't wait to try my own. In fact, I tried it the very next morning! For the most part it was pretty easy. My only point of confusion is that the recipe on the bag didn't have any liquid in the dough. Maybe the "instant yeast" it called for was a special premixed liquid yeast they sold? So I just added in some warm water a little bit at a time until I got a thick dough. I let my dough rise while I went for a bike ride, then came back and shaped and boiled the bagels. They baked while I showered, and then I had hot bagels for breakfast. Yum! I can't wait to make them again!

What is your favorite thing to bake?