jayfurr | Flour Thoughts

I had Friday off and decided to drive over to the New Hampshire side of Vermont to do a little shopping at the King Arthur Flour company store in Norwich. King Arthur Flour is the company that sells premium and super-premium flours in many US grocery stores and also distributes its products via the "Baker's Catalogue" print catalog. I love their stuff but don't like the fact that many of my favorite products are only available in little tiny 3 pound bags via their website or print catalogs. If you want to buy in quantity and avoid paying a fortune in shipping (and don't want to wait for a sale where they offer free shipping for large orders) it makes the most sense to just have done with it and drive over there yourself.

Yes, that's only rational if you live in Vermont or New Hampshire. I know. Aren't I lucky?

And did I mention the best reason of all to drive over in person? No, I didn't! It's the FIFTY POUND BAG OF SIR LANCELOT HIGH-GLUTEN FLOUR FOR $31.50. Whee! You can't get that via their catalog or website. Unless you have a friend who's a professional baker, you have to buy it via their website or catalog in those aforementioned three-pound bags at $6.95 a pop (before shipping).

It's great flour and I don't begrudge the company a profit, but if you make a LOT of bread and you like making chewy bagels and pizza crust, you can go through a lot of little bags in a hurry. Buying it in fifty-pound bags at $31.50 a bag is a lot more cost effective. Fifty pounds of Sir Lancelot in three-pound bags would be $115.83 (if you could magically get 2/3 of a bag) or $118.15 if you bought seventeen bags. And then there's the shipping (although they do often offer free-shipping-on-orders-over-$75).

Me, I'll drive to Norwich now and then. My only regret is that I didn't know about Sir Lancelot flour sooner, but when I started getting into serious pizza-making and did a lot of poking around on the net, so many people mentioned that the only flour they used was Sir Lancelot and would move heaven and earth to get it that I decided to try it for myself and was very pleased with the results.

I wish they'd sell the flour in, say, 10 pound or 12 pound bags, though, because it's a teeny bit of a nuisance, bringing home a bag that size and then having to portion it out into Ziploc bags and freezing 'em until needed. If you don't have a big freezer in the basement I don't know where you'd store all that extra flour until you need it.

While I was there I also picked up several bags of their Mellow Pastry Blend for pie crusts and so on -- regrettably, you can't buy that in fifty pound bags or even ten pound bags. Apparently it's three pound bags all the way. And for good measure, I randomly chose a bag of their Irish-style Wholemeal Flour. I can't say I have a lot of personal or familial experience with Irish brown breads but I'm eager to learn.

When I checked out, one of their seasonal employees was on her first day (or close to it) on the register) and had some difficulties with the point of sale software they use. I helped her out (even though I'd never seen the software before) and explained that in my work, you see a lot of user interfaces and can pretty much figure out how they work. Unfortunately, when she finished the sale, she punched the 'cash' button -- and when her cash drawer popped open, she blinked and reflexively pushed it shut. Aiee!

So at that point we had to get a manager to void off my entire order and re-enter it and ring it up as a debit card purchase, many apologies, many apologies. I kept smiling and telling them it was fine and, apparently because I kept turning down opportunities to be a cranky ogre about the whole thing, got one of my bags of Mellow Pastry Blend thrown in for free. So, that was nice. Very friendly people.