Little Bakers

As we continue our unit on nutrition, we have been participating in cooking projects every Friday with each project pertaining to one of the five food groups. Our first project fell in the vegetable realm — salad making! Check out our pictures in an article below. The next project was making colorful fruit kabobs. Last week, we focused on the grains group. We read the story “Tony’s Bread” by Tomie dePaola. In this story, Tony the baker wows the people of Milan with his delicious bread. Our students decided to try their hand at baking with fantastic results!

 bread

Mmm! Fresh from the oven! 

The students did a careful job measuring out the ingredients for this soda bread. For those of you who would like to make bread with your children at home, here is the very simple recipe we followed: 

INGREDIENTS

3 3/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups buttermilk

PREPARATION:

  1. Preheat oven to 450°F.
  2. Measure flour, salt and soda and mix together in a large bowl.
  3. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk. Stir, adding more buttermilk if needed; the dough should be soft, but not wet or sticky.
  4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead just enough to bring the dough together. Turn it over and pat it into a round loaf about 1 1/2 inches high.
  5. Place on a baking sheet and cut a cross into the top of the loaf with a knife. Cut fairly deeply into the bread, being sure to cut all the way to the edges; this helps the bread to rise properly.
  6. Bake for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 400°F and bake for another 30 minutes or until done. To test, tap the bread on the bottom. It will sound hollow when done.From The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

Happy Baking!