Harvest King Flour - availabilty ?

[ZekeTheCat]

Was trying to find Gold Medal Harvest King Flour last week and couldn't find any local stores carrying it anymore - did GM stop making it ?

I'm weaning myself off of Bay State Bouncer HGF because of it being bromonated and have had good results with Harvest King in the past but it seems to have dissappeared off the market.

[Pete-zza]

Zeke,

The Harvest King bread flour has been replaced by the Better for Bread flour. If you look at the General Mills home consumer website at http://www.bettycrocker.com/products/gold-medal-flour/gold-medal-products.htm, you will no longer see the Harvest King flour. For a while, perhaps as a transitioning period, some bags of the bread flour carried both the Harvest King name and the Better for Bread flour name.

The Professionals section of the GM website still carries the Harvest King name, as noted at http://www.gmflour.com/gmflour/flour.aspx?type=Eharvestking, but there is no spec sheet listed for that flour. However, having ferreted it out before, it is at http://www.gmflour.com/gmflour/Flour_SpecSheet/HarvestKing53722.doc. Whether the Harvest King brand will be phased out on the professionals side also is anyone's guess.

Peter

[djones148]

I had heard good things about the Harvest King flour, but never got around to trying it as I wanted to so I was disappointed when I heard it was discontinued. However. someone on another site stated that the new Better for Bread flour is identical--they were just getting rid of the Harvest King name. I contacted baking author Rose Levy Baranbaum who is the Gold Medal spokesperson (her picture is on the new Better for Bread bags), and she confirmed that it's still the same Harvest King hard red winter flour. She also said it was identical to the Harvest King flour that is sold to professionals.