Baking Bread with the Kids

We are a family that loves food.  Its especially nice when our children can participate in the preparation as well as the consumption of the food.  Believe it or not, they even help in the clean up after the preparation!  With some frequency we bake bread on the weekends. It’s a new activity for us in the last 6 months or so, and I’m thrilled about it.  It all started with Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and a few basic tools.  One of our favorite recipies is the Oatmeal Bread – its crusty, hearty, and just a hint of sweetness.  The whole reason that we make bread with some frequency is that its dead easy.  Yep, baking bread can be very easy – and very rewarding.   Its so easy, that my 2.5 YRO helped this past weekend.

Tyler helps with the bread baking

Day Before:

• combine warm water, salt, yeast, maple syrup etc.
• add flour, oat bran, wheat bran and a couple other things in the mixer.
• Rest on counter for 2 hours, put in fridge.

Day of (next morning):

• Lightly grease (Pam) a loaf pan
• Remove a 1.5 lb (grapefruit) chunk of dough, shape, put in pan
• Rest for 1.5 hour
• Preheat oven to 350, for 20 minutes
• Put bread in oven, with 1 c. water in a broiler pan (for some steam)
• Bake 40 minutes.
• Let cool and enjoy

The whole point of the book is that its easy and fast to bake high quality bread. There is no kneading, no thing precise… just throw the ingredients together and bake later. It’s so easy that its hard to do it wrong.

Quick Post: Brownies

What better un-fancy and unfoodie food than brownies made from a box.  You could, of course, make brownies from scratch, but I just don’t think they are as good (Not that I’ve tried).  From what I hear, it sounds like you don’t get that chewiness in brownies from scratch.

Our family *loves* the Ghirardelli 6 Pack of Triple Chocolate Brownie Mix from Costco.

Mix up the batter, pour in a pan, cook,  cool and serve.  Bonus points for a little powdered sugar dusting on top  Easy enough to make and the kids can help out too. In our case, a 2.5 YRO and a 4.5 YRO.

Oatmeal Bread – In 5 Minutes a day

I recieved Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day as a christmas present this past year and I love it. I heard about it on NPR (Splendid Table) and was instantly interested.

I ordered some of the basic supplies:

• Pizza Peel
• Williams Sanoma Baking Stone
• 6-Quart Square Food Container and Cover
• Oven Thermometer

I’ve made the French Bread, Broiche and Oatmeal Bread. The French bread is my favorite so far – its dead easy to make a baguette at home with this technique.

Last weekend the family got to enjoy a couple loaves of Oatmeal Bread from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It ends up a little on the small side, but very tasty. I’m not sure yet if I have a mix problem, or if the bread is just small.