Inside the Flour Company Supplying America’s Sudden Baking Obsession
How King Arthur Flour found itself in the unlikely crosshairs of a pandemic
Baking bread was a regular family affair in Linda Ely’s childhood home, leaving her with a lifelong bread-baking habit and some powerful memories. “I think of my family every single time I bake,” she says.
Ely has been able to pay some of that gift forward to the thousands of people she has advised over the Baker’s Hotline run by the company she works for — and is to a tiny degree a part-owner of — King Arthur Flour. Most of the people who call with bread-baking questions already know a thing or two about the craft themselves, but want to check on some of the finer points for a particular project: Should you alter the hydration ratio if you’re using a mixture of white, whole wheat, and almond flour? How long can you keep the unbaked dough in the refrigerator if you want an extended rise? So tricky and specific are some of the bread-baking questions that even though Ely is one of the bread specialists working the hotline, she sometimes puts callers on hold and yells over the cubicle walls to colleagues for second opinions.
But in early March, Ely noticed a change in the questions. Partly it was an increase in the sheer number of calls, a jump that seemed…
