Bread: Part 2

Making bread with kids is loads of fun and a lot easier than you might think. You can buy your the dough premade and work from there. Goretti's  has great dough and are great supporters of the community here in town so I am extra happy to recommend them. 

I you are wanting to make bread from scratch, here is the recipe I use with kids:

3 cups flour

1 cup warm water

1 packet of yeast or 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast

1 tsp salt

Mix everything together until flour is all incorporated. Kneed the dough at least 10 times. Let rise in an oiled bowl until doubled. Put the bread in a warm place and cover with plastic wrap or a tea towel. This usually takes about an hour. Punch down and kneed again about 10 times. Put in a loaf pan and let rise again until it is looking like bread. This usually takes less than an hour. Bake at 450' for 30 minutes or until crust is lightly brown. Cool before cutting.

We love making bread in our house and have found a number of great recipes. One of my favorite is from this book. We make bread on a weekly basis. 

Activity: Bread, step 1

 Yeast is a interesting organism to explore with preschoolers. It is dormant or not active until you give it water and something to eat like sugar or honey. Here is a simple activity to explore with your favorite young person.  You will need:

A balloon
A water bottle
Warm water
Yeast
Sugar
Time

Put the water, sugar, and yeast in the bottle. It really doesn't matter how much you put in. In this case I used about a teaspoon of yeast or half a packet and three little packets of sugar. Use the rest of the yeast to touch and even to taste. I swirled it to mix and put the balloon on.

 In about two minutes, the balloon was firm, but it took about 20 minutes for it to look like this:

What is happening is that the yeast is converting the sugar to carbon dioxide and that blows up the balloon. It is also what makes bread dough rise. Next we will play with bread...yummo!