Well, weekdays are rocketing by with no chance to blog at all. I have any number of posts I'd like to write, but I'm afraid I'm just going to have to jam what I can into the weekends. I spent most of today getting all my hair cut off (donated to Locks of Love) and Internet shopping for winter clothes for Katydid, now that I can't ignore the fact that summer is over -- it was a damp 50 degrees today and we had our fist fire in the woodstove. But I wanted to get this post out before it was old news. I think I started it on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Way back when we began thinking about homeschooling, I started out by reading the Colfaxes' books (as I'm sure many others did): Homeschooling for Excellenceand Hard Times in Paradise
. I think it was in Hard Times (my favorite of the two) that they use the phrase "practical bookishness" to describe their method of homeschooling. As our vision of homeschooling (and homesteading) has grown, that phrase has stuck with me as something to be aspired to. I, too, would like our homeschooling to be characterized by a "practical bookishness", and to the "practical" end this year, I thought we might learn a bit about baking bread.
Considering the fact that I do not live in an unelectrified homestead in the California mountains, I'm doing this a little less as a necessity and more as an intentional teaching of skills. (Actually, I don't know a whole lot about baking bread myself, so it's really a family affair.) In case anyone else is in need of them, I thought I would share some of the resources I've found:
Making Bread Set, a free download from Montessori For Everyone. Lori's "Simple Yeast Bread" recipe that comes with the cards is aboslutely fantastic. Gareth used it to make "dragon bread" for the Feast of the Archangels on Monday, and the boys completely devoured it. I shouldn't have even made dinner; all they wanted to eat was bread. After watching Gareth make the bread (independently), Farmerboy wanted to make bread, too, so today I used this recipe, plus the cards, with the little boys. First we laid out the cards in order and I read them. Then we gathered our ingredients (each of them taking a particular item to the table) and mixed the dough (each doing a particular job). I can't say it was relaxing, but it went very well. In fact, I imagine that we may be eating quite a lot of what is becoming known around here as "dragon bread" in the near future.
***"Dragon Bread" happens to be dough formed in the shape of a dragon and baked on a cookie sheet instead of in a loaf pan. We let the dough rise, made the shapes on a cookie sheet (using raisins for eyes, etc.), covered the dough and let it rise again. It rose too much on the second rise, though, and the shapes kind of all melted together. I think that next time we make this we'll experiment with only one rise, and maybe ten minutes of "resting" before baking. The kids are already talking about making "Turkey Bread" for Thanksgiving.
Baking Bread with Children. This is a very Waldorf-y book which not only contains recipes but tips, stories, songs, etc., that have to do with baking bread. We haven't used any of the recipes yet, and of course it makes the baking-with-children process sound very homey and peaceful, which is often NOT the case in my experience (homey, yes, peaceful, no). But the recipes do look yummy.
The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book: A Guide to Whole Grain Bread-Making. This one's on order from Amazon. It looks like there's lots and lots of information here.
I haven't looked for picture books yet -- Farmerboy went directly from clamoring to bake bread to clamoring to do sink/float experiments with clay boats (something else we did this week) -- but I would like to read a few to the little boys. If you have any favorite bread books, leave a comment and let me know!