Yesterday I went to my wife’s class in the morning and baked bread with her students.
This is apparently a big thing at her school. Last year a parent came in and helped he kids bake bread.
Unfortunately, no parents volunteered to help in my wife’s class this year so I’m doing it!
The actual process for making bread is pretty simple. Throw all the ingredients into the breadmaker, program it according to the recipe, and let it go.
The more exciting part is that the kids get to work their teacher’s husband who is a scientist! My wife told me the kids were excited about that part.
Before school started I came to her classroom and anybody who had arrived early was welcome to help me make bread.
I met a few of the kids. I’d imagined more energy, but they were mostly quite subdued. I was surprised at first, but my wife reminded me that the kids haven’t met me before even though she’s told me lots about them. They were all just shy.
One of the kids volunteered to read the recipe while the rest of the little chefs added one ingredient each.
After we got everything in the breadmaker I let them pick how crunchy they wanted the breadmaker to make the bread. They chose medium.
We quickly cleaned the measuring cups and spoons we’d used before putting everything away as school started.
The picture above is from after my wife cut the bread around lunchtime when it was done. Delicious!
It was really cool to be working with kids again. I haven’t done it since the summer after my Sophmore year when I taught gymnastics at the YMCA with my mother-in-law.
Things I’d change next time:
We forgot hotpads for taking the bread out. There are some towels in the classroom, but hotpads are always better.
There’s no dish soap in the classroom. Hand soap works, but it was a little weird.
I got the butter out of the classroom fridge right as we needed it, but that meant it was quite hard and difficult for the kids to cut into smaller pieces. Next time I’ll bring the butter out earlier.
I’ll do those things for now and hopefully the kids won’t be so shy next time as well. I’m looking forward to the improvement of the whole process next week!
-Mister Ed
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