December 9, 2009

Blog Manager:
"We used flour and sugar and water. And we waited two times for it to get bigger. And the bread shapes were different from each other and a different shape than they usually are. I expected it to have a muffin top sort of. The dough smelled like dough sort of. I think the bread got bigger because of the yeast was in it. The bread was good. And Everett was the line leader today." -Orion and Gage

"The bread tasted kind of like muffin bread or tortilla bread. I liked it better than regular bread. MUCH better. MUCH MUCH better. The hardest part of making the bread was kneading it. That tired me out. It was all pretty easy actually. " - Orion

Today we finally made our first loaf of bread! It is a basic white bread recipe, with a twist (hardly any rise time!). You can find the recipe we made here.

First, we had to mix yeast with water and sugar. We smelled each ingredient as we baked, and the yeast smell was really different! Some of thought it smelled like dough, some of us thought it smelled like peanut butter. Some of us liked it, some of us didn't.


After we mixed the yeast with water and sugar, we added flour, salt and vinegar. We smelled the vinegar and no one liked the smell. Everyone thought it smelled very strong and some Bakers were surprised we would put "stinky" stuff like vinegar in bread.



We took turns reading the recipe, discussing measurements, and adding ingredients to our bread-in-a-bag. We noticed that 1/2 cup was smaller than 1 cup, and 1 tsp was smaller than 1 tablespoon. We also practiced measuring accurately. When we measured we used our fingers to brush off the excess ingredient to be flush with the measuring cup. It took alot of large and fine motor skills to make sure we were using the right amounts of ingredients and getting each ingredient into the batter!





After we added all the ingredients together, we needed to figure out a way to mix it all together. Some of us remembered from the bread books we have been reading to "knead" the bread, or "squish" it together. This was particularly easy since the bread was already in a plastic bag.

Some of us punched the bag while we were kneading.

After we kneaded the dough, we let it rise in the microwave. In this recipe, microwaving the dough helps it rise more quickly. We noticed how much larger the dough was after it had risen. We didn't predict that the dough would grow, we thought it would get smaller in the microwave! We didn't know which ingredient had helped the dough rise, but we made predictions. Some Bakers said the yeast, some said the sugar. We'll find out as we continue to bake!

After baking the bread, we finally got to eat it. We had a huge problem though. There were only two loaves of bread, and 17 of us! We decided that it wasn't fair for only two people to get bread, so we decided to divide the bread. Some Mathematicians suggested that we divide each loaf into quarters, but then only 8 people would get bread. We decided that wouldn't be fair either. Eventually, we decided to cut the loaf into pieces big enough (about 1/2 inch thick) to fill our bellies and give everyone a taste of the bread.

We were mainly shocked about the SHAPE of the bread. It wasn't like the loaves we usually see, and some people thought the bread would turn out thinner on the bottom and wide at the top, like a big muffin. Others thought it would turn out long and slim, like a baguette. We couldn't believe how round the bread was!

We were also concerned that Ms. Katie would cut her fingers when she sliced the bread, and reminded her how to cut safely (we remembered from Stone Soup!).

We tasted both loaves and thought that they tasted pretty similar. The second loaf was a bit saltier. We also thought the crust was crunchy and inside was soft and squishy. We thought it was much better than the sandwich bread we usually eat! We gave our bread a two thumbs up!


CAN YOU HELP? Call for baby food jars! We need baby food jars to make butter next week! Does anyone have any we can use? Please bring them in!