I LOVE S’Mores, as if you didn’t know that already, and I am excited to announce that this summer, the Hershey Company is encouraging families to create their own S’mores memories with the Say S’mores campaign. Starting June 15, families are invited to capture and share their favorite S’mores moments on the Hershey’s brand Facebook page for a chance to win S’mores-themed prizes.  The grand-prize is a Canon Rebel Camera, slate marble outdoor firebowl, $250 SnapFish gift card, roasting skewers set and all of the ingredients needed to make S’mores, including Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars. Families who visit the Hershey’s brand Facebook page on or after June 15 can download the Say S’mores application to participate in monthly photo contests and receive a $1 coupon good toward the purchase of any two Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar 6-packs.

In addition to all this great prizes I am participating in a secret campaign and will be posting about a secret S’More theme later this summer. Stay tuned!!

By the end of the first day at the King Arthur Flour Blog & Bake I was exhausted. After madly taking notes on everything from how to make bread rise perfectly and the difference between flours, to Sara Moulton’s herbed spaetzle and how to properly debone a chicken breast, I had absorbed just about all I could. Following our elegant dinner at The Norwich Inn I turned in for the night and slept soundly until my alarm the next morning. Pizza dough was the first order of business on day two. We had begun making the dough starter the day before and set out to finish it in time for lunch. I was so glad to go through this exercise because I’ve always loved making pizza at home. I usually make it on a baking sheet in my oven and it works well, but I was eager to try the gigantor King Arthur Flour in-house wood burning pizza oven:

I had the sincere pleasure of attending Blog & Bake at the King Arthur Flour headquarters in Norwich VT earlier this week. And when I say it was a pleasure, I really, truly mean that. You all know how I love to bake. Being invited to spend two days learning tips from the pros was an unbelievable opportunity. Some people may wonder why I would take basic baking classes when I just wrote a book with a whole baking chapter in it, but that is one of the best parts about cooking. It is impossible to know how to do everything perfectly. There is always more to learn about the craft, more techniques to know. The teachers at King Arthur were, in my opinion, unparalleled. Our two days of classes covered the basics: white bread, pizza dough, pate brisee (butter crusts), pate sucree (sweet butter crusts), and flour. Even though I’ve made all of these many times I learned all sorts of useful tips from the best way to make a make a flakey pie crust, to how to knead pizza dough so that is produces a perfectly crispy crust every time. We even got to take home everything we baked, including our gorgeous tomato pies.

In addition to the baking classes I learned a lot more about King Arthur Flour as a company. I’ve always used their flour because it works so well and I strongly believe in using unbleached flours. (Bleaching is an unnecessary process which adds carcinogenic chemicals to flour.)  Since my experience I have redoubled my affection for their products. King Arthur is committed to maintaining very strict criteria about the flour they sell. All of their wheat is purchased from farmers committed meeting their high standards, and they really make an effort to get to know their growers (just check out these cool videos!) They are also very particular about protein levels in their products. Protein levels in other commercial flours can vary greatly which means you can bake the same recipe with the same brand of flour, but from two different bags, and get completely different results. This won’t happen with King Arthur, their flours behave the same way every single time you bake with them.  I thought it was neat that the company is 100% employee owned. Everyone I met had a smile on their face and demonstrated a tremendous amount of pride in their work.

It is impossible to cover all of the great tips in one post so I’m going to break out my experience into two parts. One this week, one next week. So, let’s get started.