About King Arthur Baking Company
King Arthur Baking Company traces its roots to 1790, when it started in Boston as an importer and distributor of English-milled flour, making it one of the oldest baking companies still operating in the United States. The company moved its headquarters to Norwich, Vermont in 1978, and in 1996 owners Frank and Brinna Sands began selling the business to its own employees rather than to an outside buyer, a transition that completed in 2004. King Arthur is now 100% employee-owned and certified as a B Corporation, a structure that has kept the company's baking-first focus intact through more than two centuries of change.
That baking pedigree is exactly why its espresso powder stands apart from the coffee-branded jars that dominate the rest of the category: King Arthur formulates it as an ingredient for a mixing bowl, not a mug. On our own bench, that shows up directly in the grind, milled far finer than an ordinary soluble granule so it disappears into a batter with no visible flecks and no gritty pockets, and in the dose, where half a teaspoon deepens a chocolate recipe without making the finished bake taste of coffee. It is also the most-reviewed product we found anywhere in the category, a scale of owner feedback few competitors on the shelf can match.
Brand website: kingarthurbaking.com
What King Arthur Baking Company makes
King Arthur Baking Company's range runs wider than the products we review. The lines we know best from our own testing are marked with a star:
Flour (All-Purpose, Bread, Whole Wheat, Gluten-Free)
the company's founding product line and still its core business
Espresso Powder & baking flavorings
milled fine for baking rather than brewing -- our featured pick is from this line — featured on Brew Gazette
Baking mixes
bread, cake, muffin, and cookie mixes sold alongside the flour line
Yeast and leaveners
active dry and instant yeast sold under the King Arthur name
Baking tools, cookbooks, and classes
King Arthur also runs its own baking school and publishes recipes and instructional content
Why we recognized King Arthur Baking Company
The Brew Gazette Top Brand recognition isn't paid for and can't be applied for. We award it to the brands whose products consistently stand out in our hands-on category reviews. King Arthur Baking Company earned it on the strength of the products below, evaluated the same way every product on this site is: bought, brewed with daily, and judged on what lands in the cup.
King Arthur Baking Company products we rated highly
King Arthur Espresso Powder, 3 oz Jar
Nearly twelve thousand owner reviews at a 4.8 average is the deepest verified record of any espresso powder we found in the category, well ahead of the next most-reviewed baking-specific powder on the page. It is milled far finer than an ordinary soluble granule, so it disappears into a cocoa-and-flour mixture with no visible specks and no gritty pockets. Formulated by a baking company for baking rather than by a coffee company for drinking, it needs very little to work: half a teaspoon in a chocolate batter deepens the cocoa without the finished bake tasting of coffee. It is also certified Kosher and sold in a small screw-top jar that seals properly, which matters because soluble coffee is hygroscopic and will clump if left open in a warm kitchen.
Read the Best Instant Espresso Powder of 2026 guide →What earned King Arthur Baking Company the recognition
- A top pick on our Best Instant Espresso Powder page, backed in our testing by nearly twelve thousand owner reviews at a 4.8 average, the deepest verified review record of any product in the category.
- Formulated specifically for baking rather than drinking, which is the distinction that mattered most in our cup-by-cup and bake-by-bake testing of this category.
- A grind and dose built specifically for baking rather than drinking, milled fine enough to disappear into a batter with no visible specks, which is the property that actually matters for the recipe use case the category exists to serve.
- Over two centuries of continuous operation as a dedicated baking company, including more than two decades as a 100% employee-owned, B Corp-certified business, a structure that has kept its product focus on baking rather than diversifying into unrelated categories.
- Certified Kosher and packaged in a proper screw-top jar, a small but real detail in a category where hygroscopic soluble coffee routinely arrives in bags that clump.