{travel guide} Pizza Perfected with King Arthur Baking School

 

If you follow me on Instagram you'll know Christian and I went to Vermont last weekend and one of our activities was taking a baking class at the King Arthur Baking School in Norwich, VT. We signed up for the Pizza Perfected class, a 3 hour session to teach us how to make better pizza! Longtime followers will remember that I've been getting into making pizza from scratch these past few years so I was excited to learn from the professionals - and FINALLY do a hand-stretched pizza (instead of just stretching it in the pan.) The description of the class is:

We love pizza and we've come up with techniques to rival any pie you can buy. Prepare the Neapolitan classic, with hand-stretched dough, and see how to simulate a brick oven at home. 

Class started at 9am but Christian and I got there just before 8 and got some breakfast at the Café. Christian had biscuits and gravy and I got a sticky bun and chocolate croisant that I brought home to enjoy.  

 

Doors for class opened at 8:45 and, of course, Christian and I were the first ones in the room so we got first pick of stations. #teacherspet

Our instructors, Jess and Luc had everything prepared for us to succeed in making delicious pizza, just like you'd buy from a pizza shop (or better!) Our class only had 7 people (3 didn't show up) but I think the class could have gone up to 14 people based on the number of stations.  Christian and I took the front row so we could be super close to the action but there are also TV screens that show the instructors work station so everyone can see.

 

 

The class began with some introductions and then our main instructor jumped right in to the lesson. Jess first showed us a basic pizza dough using regular All Purpose flour. After she demonstrated it was our turn to measure, mix and knead! She and Luc walked around while we were doing this in case we needed help and to give us encouragement. After making our first dough we left it to rise and learned how to make our second dough - using AP and semolina flour.

 

 

After both doughs were made it was time to shape our first pizza! I got mine mostly stretched out using the hand stretching technique and only needed to do a bit of work on the bench. Next up was the scary part - putting them in the oven! We topped our pizzas on parchment paper so we could easily get the pizzas on and off the pizza peel and into the oven. We got to put our pizzas in a take-home box and tasted the pizza Jess made - AMAZING! Then, you guessed it, we shaped and topped the second pizza! This one we did a double batch of dough so we first had to separate it into two pieces, shape those into rounds and put one in a bag to take home for homework. (Aka, make another pizza in your own oven the next day!)

 

Once both pizzas were baked and tasted we were given a quick lesson on how to recreate a pizza oven at home. The basic gist is - get your oven as hot as possible and use a stone or a steel (if you have one) to bake the pizza on for the perfect crust. If you don't have a stone or steel you can use an upside down cookie sheet. Christian and I are looking into buying a steel because I make pizza fairly often and Luc recommended steel over a stone.

 

The Pizza Perfected class was $100 each and we thought it was well worth it for everything we learned and walked away with. We each left class with 2 fully made pizzas as well as an extra ball of dough to use as homework. We've been eating the leftovers all week for lunch and still have one ball of dough in the freezer to make a pizza in the future!

My new Remy Dooney & Bourke bag came along for the lesson!

If you want to take a class at the King Arthur Baking School you'll want to plan pretty far in advance because classes fill up quickly. We booked this October class back in June and we're thinking of maybe doing another class in February that we'll have to book pretty soon (we'll see!) While you're there you may also want to check out Woodstock, a very picturesque New England town nearby. I'll do a "travel guide" (aka, a recap of what we did and still want to do) next week.

After class we went back in to check out the shop and buy things we didn't need. I waited until now to buy the King Arthur yeast measuring spoon because I didn't want to pay for shipping. We also bought some black cocoa powder (to make those homemade Oreos again,) a King Arthur mug, a tee (in a kids size because it was on sale for $5 vs $26, haha!) and a really pretty Nordic Ware Autumn Delights Cakelette Pan that was over half off! Oh, and some yeast because I was running low. I also got 10% off with a coupon we got for taking the Pizza Perfected class.