{"id":1097,"date":"2006-09-21T16:21:43","date_gmt":"2006-09-21T20:21:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=1097"},"modified":"2017-09-06T11:38:51","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:38:51","slug":"say-it-with-flour","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/back-issues\/y2006\/fall06\/features\/say-it-with-flour\/","title":{"rendered":"Say It with Flour"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

“Try dealing with five pans of brownies a day,” says Susan Reid ’79 of King Arthur Flour. Photos by Phyllis Graber Jensen<\/p><\/div>\n

Susan Reid\u2019s cozy nook at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vt., sits outside a baker\u2019s dream \u2014 a kitchen where the ovens are always warm and recipes are remade until they\u2019re right. On this day, it\u2019s raspberry mousse dome cake.<\/p>\n

The recipe will accompany a pan featured in The Baker\u2019s Catalogue, King Arthur\u2019s mail order business (circulation: six million). Soon the cakes will be free for the tasting. It\u2019s enough to make one giddy.<\/p>\n

Or stoic. \u201cTry dealing with five pans of warm brownies a day!\u201d says Reid. \u201cYou have to taste and evaluate each. My rule: I take one bite. If I take another, I spit it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Culinary tough love aside, Reid truly relishes her job. Since arriving at the company in 2002, she has become one of King Arthur\u2019s prominent cookbook writers, editor of its bimonthly newsletter, The Baking Sheet, and instructor at its on-site Baking Education Center and in popular national classes. Among her responsibilities, \u201cthe thing I love best is that I get the idea of a food in my head and I can write a recipe to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reid didn\u2019t latch onto a career in food early, though she loved helping her parents and five siblings prepare monthly dinner parties. An \u201cintellectual omnivore\u201d in high school, Reid clashed with her dad when he encouraged her toward medicine or law. She won the argument for liberal arts, leaving Kinnelon, N.J., for Bates in 1975.
\nHer memories of Bates, where she majored in English and spent her junior year at Scotland\u2019s University of Aberdeen, naturally include food. \u201cThe salad bar \u2014 a work of genius!\u201d she says. \u201cIf nothing else looked good, that did. The coffee was abysmal. A chem major once put salt in to balance the pH.\u201d<\/p>\n

Postgraduation, Reid landed an entry-level job at Leo Burnett in Chicago, then the world\u2019s fifth-largest advertising agency. (Ever heard of the Pillsbury Doughboy?) She soon recognized her potential. \u201cThese guys were running up and down the halls making $100,000 \u2014 and I\u2019m typing scripts. I said, \u2018I can do this!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As an ad executive, Reid refined her writing skills and learned to set up photo shoots and produce commercials (now handy for cookbook design and television appearances for King Arthur). \u201cI loved the interdisciplinary aspect, but I felt like a professional liar. You\u2019re supposed to be creative, but all for the sake of adding 30 percent to [a product\u2019s] value.\u201d<\/p>\n

After nearly 10 years, Reid listened to her gut. A cookbook connoisseur and gourmand, she applied to the Culinary Institute of America. After graduating in 1990, an exciting \u2014 and punishing \u2014 decade followed. She would work for Lydia Shire, still one of the biggest names in the Boston restaurant scene, at Biba and at the Westin Copley Place. At high end restaurants, such as Chicago\u2019s now-defunct Avanzare, Reid worked 80-hour weeks and tore her left rotator cuff.<\/p>\n

Fond of Vermont, Reid applied to be a chef instructor at the New England Culinary Institute, based in Montpelier, and lucked out. She taught the basics \u2014 cooking theory, knife skills \u2014 and lectured dreamy-eyed, celebrity-chef wannabes. \u201cI had a student quit because he didn\u2019t want to be on his feet eight hours a day,\u201d she says. \u201cHe thought it would be more like a cooking show. I told him, \u2018You don\u2019t do something because you want to be famous \u2014 you become famous because what you\u2019re doing springs from inside.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

To fulfill a NECI contract in summer 2001, Reid took a position as executive chef at The Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor, Maine. While creating the nightly menus was fun, not much else was. Her dad\u2019s health was failing, the other rotator cuff tore, and a cousin died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Reid says she \u201chit bottom and decided it was time for a change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Missing writing, she wondered, \u201cWho in Vermont does words and food?\u201d Off went an e-mail to King Arthur: \u201cYou got any use for a chef that writes?\u201d A reply arrived 20 minutes later.<\/p>\n

Little did Reid know that King Arthur had just signed the contract for The Baker\u2019s Companion, a 640-page tome featuring everything from rye crackers to gingerbread pancakes. She was hired to test recipes and contribute to the book, which later won a James Beard Foundation award. P.J. Hamel, editor of The Baker\u2019s Catalogue and cookbook co-author, says Reid\u2019s a natural.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s got a top-notch background in cooking and food science and a fresh, imaginative outlook on recipe development. She never holds back from tackling any project.\u201d<\/p>\n

Case in point: Whole Grain Baking, due out now. The cookbook includes 400-plus recipes replacing white flour with healthier whole grain flours. It\u2019s uncharted territory \u2014 attempting to debunk the decades-old notion that whole-grain baking equals cinderblock production \u2014 but Reid has high hopes. \u201cA lot of people wouldn\u2019t touch this, but we\u2019re pioneers.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the King Arthur way. Founded in Boston in 1790 as the Sands, Taylor & Wood Co., the business moved to Vermont in 1986. Today, it\u2019s a 50-state brand grossing $45 million annually with a reputation for superior quality. (In fact, the flour was named \u201cKing Arthur\u201d in 1896 to suggest purity in an age \u201cwhen everything from chalk to bone was added to flour to whiten it,\u201d says Reid.) The Baker\u2019s Catalogue, with its yogurt makers and scone mixes, has a warehouse the size of a small airport hangar to prove it. An on-site retail store, built in the round, is the Catalogue come to life.<\/p>\n

Most pioneering of all, the company is 100 percent employee-owned. From cookbook writers to call-center employees, the personal investment shows, says Reid. \u201cPeople here are grown-ups. They get their job done, no matter what. But it\u2019s also flexible \u2014 if your kid has a softball game, you go.\u201d<\/p>\n

All that and warm brownies, too. No wonder employees refer to the place as \u201cCamelot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Larissa Vigue Picard \u201992 is program director for community reading and discussion at the Vermont Humanities Council. She lives in Woodbury, Vt.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Susan Reid\u2019s cozy nook at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vt., sits…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":1096,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-1097","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13316,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1097\/revisions\/13316"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}