Kids Bake For Good-How to Bake Bread

Over the weekend, my son got to do a really cool thing. He'd been excited about it for the whole week because he knew it was coming and he couldn't wait to do it.

So what was that thing? Well bake bread, of course!

"Huh?" I can hear you think. King Arthur Flour started a program called Bake for Good. It started in 1992 with middle school programs. The classes that participated would be assigned to bake bread to donate to the less fortunate. 

"That's such a noble cause, but about the cost of ingredients? Isn't that something that we have to worry about?" Wrong! Every third-fifth grader at my children's school got to bring home a tote with most of the ingredients. It was kind of cute watching them all pour out of school, swinging their bags. 

Dislosure- I am not receiving compensation from King Arthur Flour or Bake for Good Kids- This blog post was written because this was a class project my son had to do for school. This post does, however contain Amazon Affiliate links which means I could earn a small commission should you purchase fro one of these links. 

What was included?

This tote included two types of flour- one was White All-Purpose and the other one was White Whole Wheat Flour, yeast, a scraper/scourer thing, a booklet with bread recipes, and a bag to put a loaf of bread in. 

What did we need to provide?

The only things we needed to provide were vegetable oil, sugar, and salt- oh and our time and energy. 

More About the Program- This is their own promotion video.

Our Adventure

Step 1. The first thing that you do when you bake, is to wash your hands

Step Two- The next thing to do is to read the instructions and then gather your ingredients.

I think he said he was the Statue of Liberty, here. 

Step 3- Measure and add your ingredients.

The first ingredient was to warm 2 cups of water. 

For precise measurements, look at the liquid measuring cup at eye level.

To gauge the right temperature, you can always use a candy thermometer.

Unfortunately, the thermometer wasn't working, so we used the method the booklet said to use which was to test it with your finger. Too hot will kill the yeast and too cool will not activate it. You want the water to be warm, but not burn you.

The next thing you do is to measure out the sugar and combine the sugar and water, stir until the sugar is dissolved, then add the yeast. 

After that, he had to measure out two cups of white whole wheat flour and pour into the bowl. The instructions didn't say to stir, but we did and then we waited to see carbon bubbles. 

Bubbles!

After we saw the bubbles, he measured and added the remaining ingredients.

Oops! Too much veggie oil!

Ugh- too much again.

All the ingredients are added. Now he's chanting "Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble!"

Evil cackle

Now it's time to knead the dough!

At first he kept playing with it like it was play dough. 

Then he kept slapping it. 

You've almost got it!

After a demonstration from me, he was finally getting the hang of it.

After the nice ball was formed, he had to put it back into a greased bowl, put plastic wrap over it....

Covered it with a towel...

and done!

Flour belly. (fun fact- this apron was made by his daddy. Grandma's been saving it for the grand kids.)

Step 4- Wait. 

Ok, so, your not really done. Baking bread takes some time. We had to wait an hour and a half for the dough to rise.

Step 5- Deflate the bread and shape!

It has grown!

It started to deflate as soon as he started pulling it out.

Slapping it to flatten it. 

Cutting the dough. His sister came to see what those slap sounds were. 

I encouraged him to braid the first one, just for something to do. 

Working hard to smash the ends together- they kept unraveling. 

We decided to shape the second loaf like a regular loaf of bread. He's slicing the artistic lines in. It's artisan now. (My years of working at Subway, years ago, really had me itching to take over, but someone had to take the pictures)

Step 6- Let it rise again then bake.

We had to wait another half hour to let it rise. 

Don't make me put it in here! I'm going to get burned! I had him pose for the picture and then placed the pan in, myself.

 Step 7- You're done!

The bread, is indeed cool, by this time. He's not burning his hands. 

A nice picture with Grandma, the big helper in all of this. 

Conclusion

The whole project was fun to do. It was great for my son because he learned some important baking knowledge, chemistry, and even learned some math while baking his bread. 

It was also conditioning him to be charitable because he got to donate one of the loafs.

We got a tasty snack- each recipe makes two loafs and we were given one bag for donation. We cute it into slices, slathered some butter and jelly, and my was it good!

It taught him kindness and humility- My son decided to keep the ugly loaf for ourselves and donate the nicer one. We thought the ugly loaf would have been the braid because it looked kind of funny whereas the normal loaf looked, well, normal, but as fate would have it, the braided loaf baked beautifully and the normal loaf was bumpy and uneven.  

To have this program come to your school, you can check out the King Arthur website for Kids Bake for Good at this link---> Kids Bake For Good

For bread recipe, click link----> Bread

The camera I used to take these photos was a Nikon D3400. -I'm not a photographer, but I think these came out well without expert experience. So easy I can use it.