Austin Hagwood grew up in Quincy, California, where his family gathered around pie, cheesecake, biscuits, and biscotti. The kitchen was his home’s center of gravity, and Austin’s own baking experiments began while staffing a Forest Service fire lookout tower in the Rocky Mountains, where he lived for five summers.
After attending the University of Notre Dame and receiving a master’s in anthropology from the University of Cambridge, Austin embarked on fieldwork in Papua New Guinea as a National Geographic Early Career Grantee and Fulbright Scholar. He savored the opportunity to learn from cultures across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe during his travels, and he continues to love baking as a universal form of creativity and expression. Sharing these stories eventually led him to the MFA program at the University of Montana, where he studied nonfiction and wrote stories about wildland fire, fish, and occasionally, food.
He joined King Arthur as an Associate Product Manager in 2025 and listens to our customers when curating new mixes, ingredients, and specialty flour. When not in pursuit of the perfect scone, he leans on The Book of Pizza to inspire the next best dinner for his family.
